Significant progress has been made in understanding Mesopotamian astronomy and astrology since the decipherment of cuneiform tablets containing astronomical and astrological texts in the late nineteenth century. However, until now few attempts have been made to write a detailed history of the Mesopotamian astral sciences as opposed to detailed studies of particular texts and types of astronomy or astrology. My aim in this paper is to present some ideas of how such a history should be written and in particular to (...) consider if and how visual evidence can be brought alongside textual evidence in the writing of this history. (shrink)

Summary Late Babylonian astronomical texts contain frequent measurements of the positions of the Moon and planets. These measurements include distances of the Moon or a planet from a reference star and measurements of the position of celestial bodies within a sign of the zodiac. In this paper, I investigate the relationship between these two measurement systems and propose a new understanding of the concepts of celestial longitude and latitude in Babylonian astronomy. I argue that the Babylonians did not define latitude (...) using the ecliptic but instead considered the Moon and each planet to move up or down within its own band as it travelled around the zodiac. (shrink)

In this paper we publish three fragments of a cuneiform tablet that, when complete, contained the dates and zodiacal positions of Saturn’s synodic phenomena for roughly 60 years. The text is unique in containing comparisons of computed data with observations. Through an analysis of the preserved data we propose that the dates and positions were computed by an otherwise unknown two-zone System A-type scheme and show that the computed data in the tablet can be dated to the fourth century BC. (...) This early date and the comparisons with observations suggest that the text was produced during the period of active development of the planetary systems. (shrink)

The first part of this article examines Patricia O'Grady's recent attempt to identify the method by which Thales might have successfully predicted a solar eclipse. According to O'Grady, some 60% of the potentially visible lunar eclipses were followed 23½ months later by potentially visible solar eclipses. It is shown that this ratio is no more than 23%, and that the method fails to predict after which specific lunar eclipse a solar eclipse will appear. In the second half of the article (...) it is argued that on the basis of his own observations of major solar eclipses, Thales could have concluded that solar eclipses come in clusters of three, the second appearing 17 or 18 months, and the third 35 months, after the first one. In the years after the "predicted" eclipse of 28 May 585 BC, this apparent pattern disappeared again, which would explain why Thales managed to "predict" only one eclipse. (shrink)

The eclipse predictor (or Saros dial) of the Antikythera mechanism provides a wealth of astronomical information and offers practically the only possibility for a close astronomical dating of the mechanism. We apply a series of constraints, in a sort of sieve of Eratosthenes, to sequentially eliminate possibilities for the epoch date. We find that the solar eclipse of month 13 of the Saros dial almost certainly belongs to solar Saros series 44. And the eclipse predictor would work best if the (...) full Moon of month 1 of the Saros dial corresponds to May 12, 205 BCE, with the exeligmos dial set at 0. We also examine some possibilities for the theory that underlies the eclipse times on the Saros dial and find that a Babylonian-style arithmetical scheme employing an equation of center and daily velocities would match the inscribed times of day quite well. Indeed, an arithmetic scheme for the eclipse times matches the evidence somewhat better than does a trigonometric model. (shrink)

The most discussed and mysterious column within the Babylonian astronomy is columnΦ. It is closely connected to the lunar velocity and to the duration of the Saros. This paper presents new ideas for the development and interpretation of columnΦ. It combines the excellent Goal-Year method with old ideas and practices from the “schematic astronomy”. Inspired by the old “TU11” rule for prediction of times of lunar eclipses, it proposes that columnΦ, in a similar way, used the sum of the Lunar (...) Four to predict times of lunar eclipses as well as the duration of one, 6, and 12 months by means of what usually is called “R–S” schemes. It also explains fully the structure and development of such schemes, a fact that strongly supports the new interpretation of columnΦ. (shrink)