Wrestling with Nature From Omens to Science

16 Rochberg

of Tablets 1–22. Solar phenomena (such as coronas, parhelia, and eclipses)

are found in Tablets 23–36. Tablets 37–49 / 50 include such meteorological

occurrences as lightning, thunder, rainbows, cloud formations, and winds;

and fi nally, planetary appearances were organized into the last twenty tab-

lets of Enu ̄ma Anu Enlil. Tablets 50–53 include omens for the constellations;

59–63, the planet Venus; 64–65, Jupiter. Perhaps one or two tablets were

devoted to Mars, although their numbering in the sequence is unknown.

Mercury and Saturn have omens as well, but are less well represented.

Omens for fi xed stars and constellations, contained in Tablets 50–51,

sometimes include the appearances of the fi ve planets, for example:

If at Venus’s rising the Red Star enters into it: the king’s son will seize the

throne.

If at Venus’s rising the same star enters into it and does not come forth: the

king’s son will enter his father’s house and seize the throne.^7

The apodoses (“then”-clauses) in Enu ̄ma Anu Enlil concern the health

and life of the body politic rather than that of the individual. Predictions

commonly found in Enu ̄ma Anu Enlil refer to concerns of an agricultural

and political nature:

The harvest of the irrigated land will prosper, the land will be happy.

There will be scarcity of barley and straw in the land.

The arable land will prosper.

There will be rains and fl oods, the harvest of the land will prosper.

Downfall of a large army.

Adad will bring his rains, Ea his fl oods, king will send messages of reconcilia-

tion to king.

At an early date, the compendium was given the title Enu ̄ma Anu Enlil,

after the three opening words of its bilingual (Sumerian and Akkadian)

introduction:

When Anu, Enlil, and Ea, the great gods, established by their true decision,

the designs of heaven and earth, the increase of the day, the renewal of

the month (= new moon), and the appearances (of celestial bodies), (then)

humankind saw the sun going out from his gate and (the celestial bodies)

regularly appearing in the midst of heaven and earth.^8

While groups of sources for celestial divination are extant for the pe-

riod from the late second millennium to the fi rst century BCE, there are

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