The Heavenly Writing

This book examines the various ways the heavens were studied and understood in ancient Mesopotamia.

Autorentext
Francesca Rochberg is Catherine and William L. Magistretti Distinguished Professor of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship and the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the author of Babylonian Horoscopes (1998) and Aspects of Babylonian Celestial Divination: The Lunar Eclipse Tablets of Enuma Anu Enlil (1988).

Klappentext

This book examines the various ways the heavens were studied and understood in ancient Mesopotamia.

Zusammenfassung
This book, first published in 2004, examines the various ways the heavens were studied and understood in ancient Mesopotamia, by focusing on the observation and interpretation of celestial phenomena as signs from the gods, as well as physical phenomena in their own right.

Inhalt

1. The historiography of Mesopotamian science; 2. Celestial divination in context; 3. Mesopotamian genethlialogy: the Babylonian horoscopes; 4. Sources for horoscopes in Babylonian astronomical texts; 5. Sources for horoscopes in the early astrological tradition; 6. The scribes and scholars of Mesopotamian celestial science; 7. The classification of Mesopotamian celestial inquiry as science.