These unique astrological artefacts have been stored in the British Museum for over a century, but only recently have archaeologists Andrew George and Junko Taniguchi completed their translation.
In total, archaeologists found 61 prophecies on four clay tablets – they were likely written in the ancient city of Sippar in present-day Iraq in the 17th-18th centuries. Ave. me
These inscriptions are the oldest known collection of lunar eclipse prophecies from Babylon, an ancient Mesopotamian culture famous for its astrological beliefs.
About four thousand years ago, Babylonian astronomers closely watched the moon and planets, believing that these elements of the night sky were ruled by the gods and that their movements could help predict the future.
“Observation of celestial signs was a serious political matter,” George and Taniguchi explain. “There is ample evidence in later periods that astrological observations were part of a complex process of protecting the king and regulating his behavior according to the wishes of the gods.”
The king’s advisors were responsible for observing the night sky. If the predictions were unfavorable for the head of state – like the prophecy translated above – an animal had to be sacrificed in order to assess the extent of the threat. If the danger remained, rites had to be performed to drive out the evil spirits.
Recently translated prophecies show how sophisticated this organized “warning” system was. They also reveal how seriously the king’s advisers took their role as prophets.
According to prophecies found in ancient Babylonian tablets, an eclipse “in the morning hour signifies the end of a dynasty” and an eclipse “in the evening hour signifies an epidemic.”
The clay tablets even describe a complex method of systematizing the signs of a lunar eclipse according to the time of night, day and month, the movement of the Earth’s shadow, and the duration of the eclipse itself.
These prophecies, which include warnings such as “the king’s brother will seize the throne in a rebellion” and “the rain will stop falling from the sky,” probably originated from ancient oral accounts.
Some of the prophecies are very specific, such as “the dog will go mad and no one it bites, male or female, will survive.”
These translations of prophecies are a rare glimpse into one of the oldest organized systems of astrology found in the world, according to Science Alert.
The study is published žurnale „Journal of Cuneiform Studies“.
2024-08-25 15:36:30