The Babylonian World - Historia Antigua

— David Brown —
So far as astrological thinking is concerned, it first became clear the extent to which
the Greek zodiac descended from the cuneiform one, as well as many other aspects
of classical astrological theory. This study was then revolutionised by the recognition
that some already published ‘astronomical notes’ were in fact Babylonian ‘horoscopes’,
now known to date from 410 to 69 BC (Sachs 1952; Rochberg 1998). These texts
do not use the ascendant (horoscopos in Greek) as a signifier, but are nevertheless records
of a snapshot of the heavens at birth designed to provide data that can be interpreted
for the benefit of the client in question.
Celestial divination was democratised first in Babylonia. 23 A system that once provided
prognostications for a king was transmuted into one that could be used by everyone,
and what made that possible was the invention of accurate prediction, giving the
location of all significant heavenly bodies at any given moment – i.e. the time of
birth. This was the change that turned the interpretation of the heavens into a system
that could spread all over the world, and it occurred on the back of the earlier invention
of predictive astronomy, and, in its turn, served to motivate the development of still
more accurate techniques in that field.
As to astronomy, the decipherment of the cuneiform sources revealed that, while
the achievements of those Greeks who devised kinematic astronomy was great, it
nevertheless depended on the adoption of certain key Babylonian parameters. 24 In the
kinematic model, it is assumed that the heavenly bodies move in a way that is the
sum of certain circular motions. Circular motion is a premise, derivable from particular
assumptions in respect of the nature of the matter which makes up the universe, and,
while patently wrong so far as the heavenly bodies are concerned, was much admired
until the later Middle Ages. The kinematic model was, and often still is, seen as a
great leap forward in terms of mankind’s thinking about the universe, based as it
was on a physical and not merely numerical model of heavenly behaviour. Its premises
were, however, ideological, and the best fit with observed reality, when finally achieved,
was done so on an ad hoc numerical basis, using parameters that could not themselves
be derived from considerations as to the material of the universe. Only with Newton
does a true physics of the universe, in this sense, commence.
Most recently it has become clear that specific Babylonian astronomical methods
spread along with Babylonian astrology. Even after Greek kinematic astronomy had
developed to a level whereby it was capable of making all the calculations astrology
required, many astrologers continued to favour Babylonian and Babylonian-style
arithmetic astronomy for centuries to come. Recent discoveries in the papyri from
Oxyrhynchus in Egypt have shown that Babylonian astronomy did not simply provide
Greek astronomers with observational data and parameters that they could ‘cherrypick’
to serve their own ends, it also had a profound, direct influence on great swathes
of Greek society, particularly that of Ptolemaic Egypt (see now Jones 1999).
We have over-estimated the importance of the kinematic astronomy of Hipparchus
(see note 24) and Ptolemy vis-à-vis its arithmetic uncle, simply because knowledge
of the former was never lost. The discoveries in the cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia
have revealed the sophistications of arithmetic astronomy, and evidence from Roman
Egypt means that it is now no longer clear if, when, and to what extent Greeks and
Romans themselves favoured kinematic astronomy over arithmetic. It is no longer
clear that the adherence of the former to a materialistic explanation of the nature or
physis of the heavens added to its appeal. The cuneiform ephemerides, in particular,
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