18 Rochberg
Šamaš; he took all the celestial and terrestrial portents on himself, and ruled
all the countries. The king, my lord, should kn[ow] (this).After some discussion of the pertinent eclipse omen from Enu ̄ma Anu
Enlil, the letter concludes with the following advice: “Nevertheless, the
king, my lord, should be on his guard and under strong protection. Apo-
tropaic rituals, penitential psalms and rites against malaria and pestilence
should be performed f[or the li]fe of the king, my lord, and of my lords
the princes.”^10
A nightly watch of the sky, albeit of an entirely different nature from
that instituted at Nineveh and throughout the Assyrian Empire for the
express purpose of celestial divination, was undertaken at Babylon from
the period of the reign of King Nabonassar (747–734 BCE). Although no
eighth- century BCE examples are preserved, this archive of observational
texts was established at Babylon from the middle of that century, as is
indicated in later compilations of lunar eclipse reports. These so- called
astronomical diaries collected lunar, planetary, meteorological, economic,
and occasionally political events night after night, usually (at least in the
later diaries) for six or seven months of a Babylonian year. The Babylonian
astronomers classifi ed these texts with the rubric “regular (celestial) ob-
servation which (extends) from the xth month of the yth year to the zth
month of the yth year.” The term “diary” is apt because the texts record
daily positions of the moon and planets visible above the local horizon, as
in the following lines from a diary dated in the year 331 BCE:Night of the 20th, last part of the night, the moon was [nn cubi]ts below β
Geminorum, the moon being 2 / 3 cubit back to the west. The 21st, equinox;
I did not watch. Ni[ght of the 22nd, last part of the night,] [the moon was] 6
cubits [below] ε Leonis, the moon having passed 1 / 2 cubit behind α Leonis.
Night of the 24th, clouds were in the sky.^11In this diary of 331 BCE, in the section reserved for noteworthy po-
litical events, there is the report of the defeat of Darius III by Alexan-
der the Great at Gaugamela. The diary relates that “(in Month VI on the
11th day) panic occurred in the camp before the king,” and “(on the
24th) the troops deserted him... and fl ed.” The report for the following
month contains the statement, also in broken context, that “Alexander,
king of the world, [came (?) in]to Babylon.”^12 The astronomical diaries,
therefore, compile a wealth of detail, of political and economic historical
value, as well as being a prodigious source of contemporary dated astro-
nomical observations, no doubt the source of the Babylonian observations