Researchers have deciphered ancient Babylonian tablets that predict future disasters.
The 4,000-year-old artifacts were found more than 100 years ago in present-day Iraq, but have only now been fully translated and linked to astronomical events.
The ancient Babylonians had a special interest in the cosmos, especially the Moon, and associated lunar eclipses with natural disasters and historical events.
The newly deciphered tablets contain 61 predictions spread across four clay tablets, including an ominous warning that “a king will die” and a “nation will fall.”
A 4,000-year-old tablet written by the ancient Babylonians contained 61 omens that could connect previous experiences with the positions of the planets, moon and stars
Although the tablets were added to the British Museum’s collection between 1892 and 1914, this is the first time that the cuneiform has been fully translated and linked to astronomical predictions and omens.
The omens foretold severe environmental disasters, including one that said, “In the spring, a swarm of locusts will come and attack the crops/the crops of my land. There will be a shortage of food.”
The investigation also found that uprisings would occur in the country, both from foreign opponents and from the weather.
A deciphered omen read: ‘There will be rain and floodwaters, and Adad will destroy the threshing floors.
There will be an attack by an Elamite army, a Gutian army, on the land. It will destroy a land that rebels. The land will perish.’
Another omen read: ‘As for a country that revolts, the enemy will destroy cities, city walls, my city walls, the walls of our city.’
The tablets are believed to have come from Sippar, a city that flourished during the Babylonian Empire in present-day Iraq. The tablets date to the Middle and Late Old Babylonian period, approximately 1894 to 1595 BC.
The researchers suggested that it is possible that ancient people relied on past experience to determine the omens that predicted lunar eclipses. This discovery makes these plates the “oldest examples of compendia of lunar eclipse omens yet discovered.”
According to researchers, the ancient Babylonians knew when to expect a lunar eclipse and often claimed that it foretold the death of their kind. They then performed rituals to save the current monarch from his supposed fate.
Researchers attempted to decipher cuneiform, one of the oldest known forms of writing and meaning ‘wedge-shaped’. People used a reed stylus to make wedge-shaped signs on clay tablets.
These symbols could be used to write several languages in the ancient Near East, including Sumerian, Akkadian, and Old Persian.
In Mesopotamia, ancient peoples associated eclipses with the death of their kings. They studied them and made predictions to protect their rulers.
People believed that “events in the sky were coded signs placed there by the gods as warnings of the future of those on Earth,” Andrew George, a professor at the University of London, and his co-author Junko Taniguchi wrote in the study.
‘Those advising the king kept an eye on the night sky and compared their observations with the scientific texts on celestial omens.’
The tablets analyzed in the new study date to the middle and late Old Babylonian period from approximately 1894 to 1595 BCE and are the “oldest examples of compendia of lunar eclipse omens yet discovered.”
The research found that the ancient Babylonians predicted omens based on the time of night, the date, the movement of shadows and the duration of eclipses, similar to the way a psychic uses tarot cards to predict someone’s future.
The researchers said a transcribed omen said, “If an eclipse is obscured from the center at once, [and] “It will be clear at once: the king will die, the destruction of Elam,” a region in Mesopotamia in central modern-day Iran.
Another omen foretold the downfall of two other regions in Mesopotamia, Subartu and Akkad, which would occur when “an eclipse of the sun would begin in the south and then clear.”
According to the researchers, the omens could lead people to take drastic measures to protect their leader. For example, one of them said: ‘A king who is famous will fall; his son who is not nominated/appointed as king will seize the kingship/throne and there will be war.
‘The land will be desolate, its cities will become desolate, and its land will become impoverished.’
However, the researchers noted that kings did not rely solely on the omens of an eclipse. If one of them predicted their death, they took additional steps to confirm whether a tragedy would occur.
‘If the prediction attached to a particular omen, for example ‘a king will die’, is threatening, then an oracle investigation by extispicy is [inspecting the entrails of animals] “was carried out to determine whether the king was in real danger,” the study said.
If the entrails indicated that disaster was approaching, the ancient Babylonians believed that by performing certain rituals they could undo the bad omen and overcome the evil that accompanied it.
The moon signs usually predicted the death of a king and according to NASAThe Babylonians sometimes appointed ‘substitute kings…who had to bear the brunt of the gods’ wrath’ to protect the real ruler from harm.
Although no definitive link has been made between the deaths of some of the kings and the omens on the tablet, it appears that one historical leader did fulfill the omens.
“A famous king will come to ruin; his son, who is not appointed king, will take the throne, and there will be war,” was an omen, adding, “The land will be desolate, its cities will be turned into wastelands, and its land will be diminished.”
In 1750 BC, King Hammurabi died at about the age of 60. Although his ancestors had ruled for another 155 years, his death marked the slow decline of the Babylonian Empire.
“The origin of some omens may lie in actual experience – the perception of an omen followed by a catastrophe,” George told Living science.
However, he clarified that most of the omens were likely related to eclipse events from a theoretical or speculative point of view.
