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

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Sky and Telescope - January 2018

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