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The Sky over Ancient Iraq: Babylonian Astronomy in Context
Lecture II: Keeping the Watch:
Babylonian Astronomical Diaries and More
By Mathieu Ossendrijver (*), Humboldt University Berlin
Clay tablets from ancient Iraq
continue to reveal surprising new insights about Babylonian astronomical and
astrological practices during the first millennium BCE. Ever since the first
astronomical tablets from Iraq reached the British Museum and other collections
at the end of the nineteenth century, Babylonian astral science has attracted
the attention of modern specialists. By now, research on this topic has reached
a stage where the technical aspects of Babylonian astronomy are relatively well
understood, but even here surprises are still possible. The focus of much other
research has shifted to various contextual aspects of the Babylonian astral
sciences.
In four lectures Mathieu
Ossendrijver will explore the textual evidence for Babylonian astronomy during
the first millennium BCE, with an emphasis on new textual finds, insights from
recent investigations of various corpora of astral science and their
interconnections, and questions inspired by new approaches informed by the
wider historiography and sociology of science.
The second lecture will focus
on the astronomical diaries and related texts, which are observational reports
that emerged in Babylonia during the seventh century BCE and continued to be
written for at least six centuries. Apart from astronomical phenomena, market
prices, weather phenomena, river levels and historical events were also
reported in these texts. They provide unique opportunities for reconstructing
observational practices and the predictive methods to which these texts turn
out to be intricately linked.
ISAW, Tuesday, April 3.4.2018.
Αλγόριθμοι, πίνακες και αριθμοί
Lecture III: Algorithms, Tables and Figures:
New Insights into Babylonian
Mathematical Astronomy
The third lecture will present
new insights into Babylonian mathematical astronomy, which emerged after about
400 BCE. The underlying mathematical methods for predicting lunar and planetary
phenomena are predominantly based on purely arithmetic methods, that is, they
operate by manipulating sequences of numbers. However, recent discoveries have
corrected this firmly entrenched arithmetic characterization of the Babylonian
methods by revealing that some tablets employ geometric concepts in order to
compute the distance traveled by a planet. These geometric methods imply a
surprisingly deep understanding of the graphical connections between time,
velocity and distance on the part of some Babylonian astronomers.
ISAW, Wednesday, April 4.4.2018.
Rostovtzeff Lecture Series.
(*) Mathieu Ossendrijver is Professor for the History of Ancient Science in the Department of Philosophy at the Humboldt University Berlin. He holds a PhD in Assyriology from the University of Tübingen and a PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Utrecht. His primary research interests are Babylonian astral science and mathematics, Mesopotamian science in general, and contextual aspects of Babylonian scholarship.
ΛΕΞΕΙΣ-ΚΛΕΙΔΙΑ: ΙΡΑΚ, ΒΑΒΥΛΩΝΑ, ΑΣΤΡΟΝΟΜΙΑ, ΑΡΧΑΙΟΑΣΤΡΟΝΟΜΙΑ, ΗΜΕΡΟΛΟΓΙΟ, ΧΡΟΝΟΣ, ΒΡΕΤΑΝΙΚΟ ΜΟΥΣΕΙΟ, ΠΗΛΙΝΟ ΔΙΣΚΙΟ, ΗΜΕΡΟΛΟΓΙΑ, ΑΛΓΟΡΙΘΜΟΣ, ΜΑΘΗΜΑΤΙΚΑ, ΑΡΙΘΜΟΣ, ΑΛΓΟΡΙΘΜΟΙ, ΑΡΙΘΜΟΙ
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