Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid Profile picture
Jul 22, 2019 13 tweets 7 min read Read on X
I opened a lecture on the history of astronomy in ancient Mesopotamia today by acknowledging that cuneiform tablets, to an untrained eye, can look like dog biscuits. But what they lack in aesthetics, they make up for in content.

Especially when it comes to the sky. Thread.
2,000 years before Pythagoras realised that the morning and evening stars were one and the same — the planet, Venus — a scribe in Uruk describes a festival of the morning and evening Inana, the Sumerian goddess of love and war associated with Venus cdli.ucla.edu/search/archiva…
Not that every accomplishment needs to be measured against those of “Classical” civilisations, but I am sick to death of hearing that astronomy, medicine, poetry, etc were born in Ancient Greece, as if science and scholarship were and are a uniquely Western enterprise
In the Old Babylonian period (c2000-1600 BCE), scholars began systematically to record celestial phenomena and their related terrestrial events. These took the form of omens, most of which were concerned with the moon and lunar eclipses britishmuseum.org/research/colle…
Eventually, celestial omens were compiled into a “canonical” compendium, Enūma Anu Enlil, which was copied in pretty much the same form for centuries and which sat within a constellation of related scholarly texts, like commentaries

It was 70 tablets long with thousands of omens
To quote @SethLSanders who manages to capture in one concise Tweet just how salient this text was in scholarly circles
To oversimply a very complex history because this is a Tweet, the observational framework structured by omens develops into the framework for observational astronomy that appears in the first millennium BCE.

Enter, Astronomical Diaries.
Astronomical Diaries are *so* cool.

They record daily astronomical observations in detail, like the position of the moon, occurrences of eclipses, and the location of planets in the sky.

They also record earthly affairs like the price of barley and the level of the Euphrates
Cuneiform Astronomical Diaries record observations of stuff happening in the sky and stuff happening below, from the mundane to the major.

Including the death of Alexander the Great.

“...first part of the night, Mercury was 14 fingers above Saturn...The 29th, the king died.”
Reading cuneiform astronomical texts, one is often reminded of the opening lines of a Babylonian epic known as Enūma eliš that divides the world into sky above and earth below.

“When on high, the heavens we’re not named, and below the earth had no name.” lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/csar/fil…
What I love about the Late Babylonian Astronomical Diaries is that they record and make sense of the same phenomena that we observe today.

From the position of Venus in the night sky to Halley’s comet, we can see the world through ancient eyes and our own at the same time.
IMHO this is what makes the history of science extremely fucking cool
Cuneiform tablets might not be the most beautiful artefacts from the ancient world, but they open up a window onto some of the earliest attempts to make sense of the universe in a systematic way - of science-ing.

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More from @Moudhy

Aug 21, 2023
In the ruins of the ancient Babylonian city of Isin lie the 3,000-year-old remains of a temple to the healing goddess Gula.

She was the patron goddess of physicians who wielded a scalpel and a bandage, and her companion was a trusted, pointy-eared dog. Image
Beneath a long ramp or platform in the healing goddess’ temple precinct in ancient Isin, 33 dogs were laid to rest.

Their remains show no evidence of ritual sacrifice, but some did have severe injuries that healed during their lifetimes. Many were puppies.
The tallest dog buried in the temple precinct to the healing goddess in Isin was 65cm tall (about the height of a Ridgeback).

The shortest was about 45cm tall (about the height of a Pit Bull). repository.cam.ac.uk/items/e7e56308…
Image
Read 7 tweets
Jul 24, 2023
Today, I’d like to introduce you to a woman named Lā-tubāšinni (pronounced La-tubashinni) who fought for her children in Babylon in October of 560 BCE Image
Although details of her early life are murky, she may have been adopted only to eventually be sold by her adoptive mother, Hammaya, into marriage.

This marriage-by-purchase might be how she ended up a slave.

Source: Cornelia Wunsch 1998 academia.edu/734422/_1997_9…
The history of slavery in ancient Mesopotamia does not give a clear-cut divide between enslaved and free. There were degrees of freedom and mobility among enslaved and free(d) people. It’s nuanced, important social history.

Image: the sale of an enslaved person named Aya-idâ Image
Read 11 tweets
Oct 25, 2021
did the Sumerians invent the wheel?

i have no idea, but here’s a thread on the history of the wheel in ancient Mesopotamia because the possible answers are unsurprisingly really interesting
there are a few places to look for early evidence of the wheel (or anything really), like…

1. archaeological evidence, or an actual wheel
2. written evidence, or textual references to a wheel
3. art, or depictions of the wheel

all three are attested for ancient Mesopotamia
let’s start with the wheel in art from ancient Mesopotamia.

the Early Dynastic Period was amazing for lots of reasons, and beautifully decorated pottery is one of them. this painted jar from early 3rd millennium BCE Khafajah is no exception
Read 16 tweets
Jul 15, 2021
A clay tablet made by a young scribal student who was practicing the "A" sign 𒀀 over and over again at school almost 4,000 years ago in Babylonia.

Be still my heart 🥺
A Babylonian scribal student practicing the sign "DINGIR" 𒀭 which looks like a star sometime between 2000 and 1600 BCE
This Babylonian student got bored and drew a doodle on his school exercise tablet ~4,000 years ago in Iraq
Read 9 tweets
May 2, 2021
Many of you may have heard of Hammurabi's "Law Code", often (incorrectly) called the earliest collection of laws recorded on a 4,000-year-old diorite monument.

But why is this incorrect, what is this extremely cool artefact about, and what do we still not know about it?
The monument that records Hammurabi's Laws is not the earliest collection of legal provisions.

Three centuries earlier, during the best-documented period of history in ancient Iraq, a ruler named Ur-Nammu (or Namma) had laws written out in the Sumerian language.
"If a man presents himself as a witness but is demonstrated to be a perjurer, he shall weigh and deliver 15 shekels of silver."

Written in Sumerian, the Laws of Ur-Nammu date to around 2100 BCE, but many have not survived.
Read 13 tweets
Apr 2, 2021
In 235 BCE, a boy named Aristocrates was born, and someone made predictions about his life based on where the sun, moon, and planets were in the sky.

“Venus was in 4° Taurus. The place of Venus (means) he will find favour wherever he goes.”
“The moon was in 12° Aquarius. His days will be long.”

According to his horoscope, Anu-belshunu was born on December 29, 248 BCE some time in the evening, probably in Uruk. I just love that we know that about him.
Only ~30 horoscopes survive from ancient Babylonia, and they all contain similar info in a similar order.

Date and time of birth. Positions of the sun, moon, and planets in the zodiac. Eclipses that year. Solstice and equinox data. Sometimes, a prediction.
Read 10 tweets

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