The Evidence: Astronomy

In the late 19th century, a number of cuneiform astronomical texts were uncovered in excavations at Babylon and shipped to the British Museum. Among these texts were the Babylonian Diaries. The first astronomical texts were transcribed by the Assyriologist Johann Strassmaier. The mathematician and astronomer Joseph Epping began the decipherment of their astronomical contents.

The Babylonian Diaries are astronomical observations recorded daily by Babylonian priest-scholars for some 800 years, from about the reign of the Babylonian king Nabonassar (747–733 B.C.) until the first century A.D., when cuneiform writing became extinct.

The priests recorded the positions of the sun, moon, planets and stars with respect to one another. They also made note of such celestial events as eclipses, solstices and equinoxes. Their purpose was to extract from the divine heavens helpful omens regarding political, economic and climatic events—such as the outcome of a battle, the fluctuations of commodities prices, or the flooding of the Euphrates River. One Diary entry goes: “In the night Saturn came near to the moon. Saturn is the ‘star’ of the sun. This is the solution: it is favorable to the king [for] the sun is the king’s star.”