Sky and Telescope - January 2018 - 67
The Sumero-Babylonian New Year began with the first visible evening crescent Moon following vernal equinox (when
the Sun crosses the plane of Earth's equator, south to north)
and therefore usually fell in what corresponds to our late
March/early April. Month names, keyed to the lunar calendar, appear on Sumerian clay tablets written before 3000 BC.
But most of the Sumerian month names known to us relate
to religious festivals that took place during those months:
None refer explicitly to any constellation on the ecliptic.
The Babylonian "Lunar Zodiac"
The oldest, complete, surviving astronomical work is a
2-tablet compilation titled (by the ancients themselves, after
its first words) MUL.APIN, meaning "Constellation of the
Plow." Several copies of it - broken, but almost fully restorable - were found in the mid-19th century in the ruins of
the palace at Nineveh of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal
(r. 668-627 BC). These tablets were written in the early 7th
century BC, but internal evidence suggests that the text itself
was actually composed before 1000 BC.
Sumero-Babylonian Constellations
"In the Path of the Moon"
Horoscope astrology as we think of it today
developed even later: It didn't attain its
final form and great popularity until the
3rd century AD, when the social and
political dislocations of the decaying
Roman Empire made the powerless
multitudes vulnerable to any superstition that promised knowledge about
the insecure future and some illusion of
control over it.
LION: HE VELIUS
Lunar versus Solar Calendars
The First Babylonian Dynasty was founded in 1894 BC,
but the calculation of lunar calendars dates to even
further back. The Sumerians, the cultural predecessors
of the Babylonians in southern Mesopotamia, are usually credited with the development of a calendar based
on lunar months. The precedence of a lunar over a
solar calendar is logical: The path the Moon follows
among the stars is much easier to observe than the
path of the Sun. The downside of a lunar calendar is
evident, however. There isn't an integral number of lunar
months in a solar year - it comes out to about 12 and a half
- so it's necessary to add an occasional intercalary lunar
month to keep a lunar calendar in synch with the meteorological seasons.
Name
Translation
Identification
MUL.MUL
The Constellation par excellence
Pleiades
Gu4-an-na
Bull of Heaven
Taurus
Sipa-zi-an-na
Steadfast Shepherd of Heaven
Orion
Šu-gi
Old Man, Wizard
Perseus
Scimitar, Wizard's Wand
Perseus
Double
Gàm
Cluster
Maš-tab-ba gal-gal
Great Twins
Gemini
AL-LUL
Crab
Cancer
UR-GUL-LA
Lion
Leo
Ab-sín
Ear of Grain
Spica
Ziba¯ ni¯ tum
Scales
Libra
Gír-tab
Scorpion
Scorpius
Pa-bil-sag
[an archaic war-god]
Sagittarius
Šuhur-mašku6
Goat-Fish
Capricornus
MUL.GU-LA
The Great Constellation
Aquarius
Kunmeš
Tail (of the Fishes)
Pisces
Ším-mah
Great Swallow
Circlet of
Pisces
Anuni¯ tum
[the goddess Ishtar]
Northern Fish
lú Hun-gá
Hired Laborer, Plowman
& Beta (β) And
Head of Aries
These entries come from the MUL.APIN, Tablet 1, column iv, lines 33-57. The
transcriptions in the left column follow standard Assyriological practice for
transcribing the original cuneiform.
sk yandtelescope.com * JA N UA RY 2 018
67
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Sky and Telescope - January 2018
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