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Babylonian Astronomy 1880–1950: The Players and the Field

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A Mathematician's Journeys

Part of the book series: Archimedes ((ARIM,volume 45))

Abstract

This essay aims at telling the story of the rediscovery of Babylonian astronomy and of the wrestling of the early pioneers with the astronomical cuneiform texts in trying to understand the ingenious Babylonian numerical schemes for the computation of the celestial positions of the Sun, Moon and planets. When Otto Neugebauer entered the stage in the early 1930s, this pioneering phase had already come to an end. While at that time the field of Babylonian mathematical astronomy had been created, it needed Neugebauer to develop it into a well-established discipline in the history of science. This he accomplished almost single-handedly by systematically analyzing all texts available to him at the time in great depth and detail, eventually resulting in the publication of his magnum opus Astronomical Cuneiform Texts (Neugebauer 1955; here often referred to as ACT). In this essay I will strictly limit myself to the period 1880–1950, but most of what is in ACT is previewed in papers published before 1950.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In spite of several searches in different archives and enquiries at several institutions I have been unsuccessful so far in obtaining a photograph of Epping.

  2. 2.

    See inset B.S.† 2343−A 120-year Perspective.

  3. 3.

    This fragment is part of BM 34580 published as ACT 122 (Neugebauer 1955), one of the most complete lunar ephemerides of system B, which consists of 9 fragments (see inset Babylonian Lunar Theory: 1880–1950). The fragment studied by Epping is the largest central piece of the ephemeris of which the text on the reverse side is best preserved. It contains columns F1 through M1 of a New Moon ephemeris for 13 months of the years 209 and 210 of the Seleucid Era (ACT p. 144–146).

  4. 4.

    But see Neugebauer 1975, 352.

  5. 5.

    Theophilus Goldridge Pinches (1856–1934) joined the staff of the British Museum in 1878 and worked there as assistant and later as curator until 1900, when he was fired after a feud with his superior E.A. Wallis Budge, Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum. He was Lecturer in Assyriology at University College London until his death in 1934 (see his Obituary published in Nature 134, 16, 1934).

  6. 6.

    See also inset Babylonian Lunar Theory 1880–1950.

  7. 7.

    See Hunger and Pingree 1999, 203–205.

  8. 8.

    As acknowledged in a footnote these improvements were stimulated by a letter from Herr August Lorenz from Gross-Leubusch, Germany.

  9. 9.

    It was F.X. Kugler who first realized this 10 years later (see BMR p. 24).

  10. 10.

    This passage is a quote from the review by P. Jensen of Astronomisches aus Babylon published in Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 5 (1890), 121–133. It is part of a longer citation of Jensen’s review in Kugler’s introduction to Die Babylonische Mondrechnung (1900, v–vi).

  11. 11.

    In Neugebauer’s edition of this text (ACT 611) there are several more fragments that are joined to the tablet: Sp II 876 + VAT 1753 + VAT 1755. Apparently Sp II, 876 is already present in Pinches copy LBAT 119.

  12. 12.

    Since I will come back to this later when discussing the work of Paul Schnabel it is interesting to note that Kugler (or Strassmaier) here is the first to draw attention to the colophon which mentions that this ephemeris contains the ‘tersitum ša Kidin(nu)’, the computational table of Kidinnu, who was later identified with Kidenas, the Chaldaean astronomer mentioned by the Greek and Roman writers Strabo and Plinius.

  13. 13.

    Neugebauer 1975, 17.

  14. 14.

    Ziqpu stars are culminating simultaneously with the rising or setting of certain constellations and may have been used for time keeping at night (Hunger and Pingree 1999, 68ff.).

  15. 15.

    This is mentioned by van der Waerden himself in an interview given in 1993 and published in 1997 in Notices of the American Mathematical Society (Dold-Samplonius 1997, 319).

  16. 16.

    Of the two papers contained in this only issue of Eudemus the first was written by another Dutchman; it is a curious coincidence that this happened to be Pannekoek.

  17. 17.

    Acknowledged and corrected in Neugebauer 1945.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Clemens Brodkorb, Archivleiter of the Archiv der Norddeutsche Provinz der Societas Jesu in Munich for his assistance and the access to relevant materials in the Archiv. I further thank Peter Huber, John Steele and Christopher Walker for their critical reading of the paper and numerous useful suggestions for its improvement. Part of the research for this paper was carried out during a 3-month visit to the Department of Egyptology and Ancient West Asian Studies at Brown University. I would like to thank Professor John Steele and the staff of the Department for their hospitality and support, and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research NWO and the Leids Kerkhoven-Bosscha Fonds for financially supporting my visit.

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  1. Astronomical Institute ‘Anton Pannekoek’, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Teije de Jong

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  1. Inst for Study of the Ancient World, New York University, New York, New York, USA

    Alexander Jones

  2. CNRS & Université Paris Diderot, Laboratoire SPHERE, Paris CX 05, France

    Christine Proust

  3. Brown University, Department of Egyptology and Assyriology, Providence, Rhode Island, USA

    John M. Steele

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de Jong, T. (2016). Babylonian Astronomy 1880–1950: The Players and the Field. In: Jones, A., Proust, C., Steele, J. (eds) A Mathematician's Journeys. Archimedes, vol 45. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25865-2_9

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