Ancient tablets acquired by the British Museum decades ago have finally been deciphered – and that wasn’t exactly good news for royalty.
ADVERTISINGA team of researchers has succeeded in deciphering 4,000-year-old writings on Babylonian cuneiform tablets that had remained untranslated for over a century.
Recent research has focused on four tablets from the British Museum collection dating to around 1200 BC and coming from the ancient city of Sippar in modern-day Iraq.
The newly deciphered texts were published in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies* and show that the Babylonians viewed lunar eclipses not only as celestial events, but as threatening signs of death and destruction.
One tablet states that “a solar eclipse in the morning watch” means “the end of a dynasty.”
Another warns: “If the center of a solar eclipse suddenly becomes dark and then suddenly dissolves, a king will die and Elam will be destroyed.”
The writings were probably written by astrologers of the Mesopotamian civilization and represent the oldest known records of omens of a lunar eclipse.
“Omens created by lunar eclipses are of great importance for good statesmanship and well-considered government,” researchers wrote in a recent Journal of Cuneiform Studies.
“In later periods there is ample evidence that astrological observations were part of an elaborate method of protecting the king and directing his behavior in accordance with the wishes of the gods.”
Fortunately for the kings, there were ways to counteract these omens, including consulting oracles—experts who examined the entrails of animals—and performing prescribed rituals.
Who were the Babylonians?
The Babylonians were an ancient Akkadian-speaking civilization that flourished in Mesopotamia, a region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq and parts of Syria and Iran.
They have shaped the course of human history with important contributions to science, agriculture, literature and law. For example, their base-60 number system is still used today to measure time and angles, and they produced some of the earliest literary works, including the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Babylon began as a modest city-state in the late third millennium BC and rose to prominence under the rule of King Hammurabi (ca. 1792–1750 BC), whose brutal approach to law and order remains one of the earliest and most comprehensive in history.
His strict laws were engraved on a large stone stele, which was originally about 2.25 meters high and is now in the Louvre Museum Paris.
The Hammurabi Code contains 282 rules, each of which provides for specific punishments. To get an idea of the severity of the law, here are a few examples:
Law 21: “Whoever breaks a hole in a house (breaks in to steal) shall be killed and buried in front of the hole.”
ADVERTISINGLaw 157: “If anyone commits incest with his mother after his father, both of them should be burned.”
Law 196: “If one destroys another’s eye, they will destroy his eye. If one breaks another’s bone, they will break his bone.”
One of the most famous sights in Babylon were the Hanging Gardens, often referred to as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
The gardens were probably located near the royal palace in Babylon and have been described as a remarkable feat of engineering. They consist of an ascending series of gardens on several levels, in which a wide variety of trees and vines grow.
ADVERTISINGAccording to tradition, the gardens were created by Queen Sammu-ramat, who reigned from 810 to 783, or by King Nebuchadnezzar II, who supposedly commissioned them to provide comfort to his wife Amytis, who longed for the mountains of her homeland.
Despite extensive archaeological work in Babylon and the surrounding area, no conclusive evidence of the Hanging Gardens has been found, leading many to believe that it is merely a myth.
