Did everyone think of the same country?
Scientists have managed to decipher four 4,000-year-old Babylonian cuneiform tablets that predict future disasters based on lunar eclipses.
In fact, they were found about 100 years ago, and the results of the decryption have just been published in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies.
A lunar eclipse is an astronomical phenomenon that occurs when the Earth is between the Sun and the Moon, and the Moon falls into the shadow or penumbra of the Earth. And since celestial bodies have been a constant part of life all over the world, different peoples at different times have had their own explanations for their movement. So did the ancient Babylonians, who believed that the Moon and stars reflected the will and desires of the gods, and even predicted the future.
Judging by the transcripts of the texts, the Babylonians considered lunar eclipses to be harbingers of something bad, such as the death of a king. And in order not to miss a «dark» event, they even developed their own method of calculating the time of eclipses, known as the saros cycle, which covers a period of 223 lunar months.
This collection of four tablets, as far as scholars know, is the oldest of all Babylonian texts currently in world museums. Here is a list of what the lunar eclipses portended for the Babylonians, according to current decipherments:
Interestingly, some of these signs were conditional. For example, certain signs had two options: either the king would die and the people in his land would be well off; or he would not die, but the people would continue to suffer.
In general, the decipherments are consistent with what is known about general religious practices, and the Babylonians also used magical rituals in an attempt to protect the king (if necessary).
Today, lunar eclipses do not carry any such signs (except for individuals). The tablets themselves are just another proof that the Babylonians made significant progress in astronomy thousands of years ago.
Source: iflscience, jpost