Babylonian Planetary Omens: Part Four

This volume presents an edition of first-millennium BC Babylonian cuneiform texts that comprise Chapters 64 and 65 of the compendium of celestial omen texts dealing with the appearance and movements of the planet Jupiter. All are accompanied by an English translation. David Pingree has again provided an extensive introduction and astronomical commentary, in which he discusses the astronomical plausibility of the phenomena that are described in the omens.The textual material and its astronomical interpretation throws light on the extent of the Babylonian scholars’ knowledge of astronomy and furnishes another argument in the debate about observation versus scribal tradition in the description of these phenomena.

Erica Reiner, Ph.D. (1955), University of Chicago, is John A. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor emerita at the Oriental Institute, and editor (formerly editor-in-charge) of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary.David Pingree is University Professor (History of Mathematics) at Brown University.