In the path of the Moon : Babylonian celestial divination and its legacy / by Francesca Rochberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rochberg, Francesca, 1952-

Series:

Ancient magic and divination.

Studies in ancient magic and divination

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Astrology, Assyro-Babylonian.

Astronomy, Assyro-Babylonian.

Omens--Iraq--Babylonia.

Omens.

Horoscopes--Iraq--Babylonia.

Horoscopes.

Akkadian language--Texts.

Akkadian language.

Cuneiform inscriptions, Akkadian.

Philosophy, Ancient.

Science--Greece--History.

Science.

Science--Rome--History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (469 p.)

Place of Publication:

Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Celestial divination, in the form of omens from lunar, planetary, astral, and meteorological phenomena, was central to Mesopotamian cuneiform scholarship and science from the late second millennium BCE into the Hellenistic period. Beyond the boundaries of ancient Mesopotamia, the ideas, texts, and traditions of Babylonian celestial divination are traceable in Hellenistic sciences and philosophies. This collection of essays investigates features of Babylonian celestial divination with special focus on those aspects that influenced later Greco-Roman astronomy, astrology, and theories of signs. A multi-faceted collection of philological, historical, and philosophical investigations, In the Path of the Moon offers Assyriologists, Classicists, and historians of ancient science a wide-ranging series of studies unified around the theme of Babylonian celestial divination's legacy. \'The collected essays in this volume, successive steps in an ordered path, constitute an invaluable contribution to a better understanding of Babylonian divination.\' Lorenzo Verderame, \'Sapienza\' Università di Roma \'The reader interested in the multifaceted presentation of the problems related to the explanation of Babylonian celestial divination and well equipped with the knowledge of Akkadian will certainly be rewarded by the study of Rochberg’s latest publication.\' Henryk Drawnel, SDB

Contents:

Fate and divination in Mesopotamia

New evidence for the history of astrology

Canonicity in cuneiform texts

The assumed 29th ahu tablet of Enuma Anu Enlil

TCL 6 13 : mixed traditions in late Babylonian astrology

Benefic and malefic planets in Babylonian astrology

Elements of the Babylonian contribution to Hellenistic astrology

Babylonian seasonal hours

Babylonian horoscopy : the texts and their relations

Continuity and change in omen literature

The Babylonian origins of the Mandaean book of the zodiac

Scribes and scholars : the tupshar Enuma Anu Enlil

Lunar data in Babylonian horoscopes

A Babylonian rising times scheme in non-tabular astronomical texts

Old Babylonian celestial divination

The heavens and the gods in ancient Mesopotamia : the view from a polytheistic cosmology

A short history of the waters above the firmament

Periodicities and period relations in Babylonian celestial sciences

Conditionals, inference, and possibility in ancient Mesopotamian science

"If P, then Q" : form and reasoning in Babylonian divination

Divine causality and Babylonian divination.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-282-78694-6

9786612786945

90-04-18961-0

OCLC:

667291926

Publisher Number:

10.1163/ej.9789004183896.i-445 DOI