Wrestling with Nature From Omens to Science

Natural Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia 33

that it was still copied and collated by the scribes. Regardless of the way
celestial divination, or astronomy, functioned within the late Babylonian
temple institution, association with the temple was without doubt the
key to the survival of Babylonian astronomy and celestial divination for
so many centuries after it had become defunct in the political sphere. As
a further consequence, the maintenance of Babylonian astronomy and
celestial divination by the temple scholars made possible its transmission
to Greeks interested, as it is put in one Greek horoscope, in the science of
“ancient wise men, that is the Chaldeans.”^58

NOTES

I wish to thank Professor Bernard R. Goldstein for his always valuable comments on
an early draft of this chapter. My gratitude also goes to Michael Shank, Ronald Num-
bers, and Peter Harrison for their constructive and insightful questions and recom-
mendations.

1. T. S. Kuhn, “The Natural and the Human Sciences,” in The Interpretive Turn: Phi-
   losophy, Science, Culture, ed. David R. Hiley, James F. Bohman, and Richard Shusterman
   (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 19, 21.


2. Ibid., 21.


3. For internal analysis of the mathematical structures of these texts, see Otto
   Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 3 vols. (Berlin: Springer
   Verlag, 1975); see also A. Aaboe, Episodes from the Early History of Astronomy (Berlin:
   Springer Verlag, 2001), and N. M. Swerdlow, The Babylonian Theory of the Planets
   (Prince ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).


4. For the Old Babylonian liver models, see M. Rutten, “Trente- deux modèles de
   foies en argile provenant de Tell- Hariri (Mari),” Revue d’Assyriologie et d’Archéologie
   Orientale 35 (1938): 36–52.


5. See W. Mayer, Untersuchungen zur Formensprache der babylonischen “Gebetsbesch-
   wörungen” (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1976), 505: 111.


6. Riekele Borger, Die Inschriften Asarhaddons König von Assyrien (Graz: Archiv für
   Orientforchung, Beiheft 9, 1965), 40: 12–14.


7. E. Reiner and D. Pingree, Babylonian Planetary Omens Part Two: Enu ̄ma Anu Enlil,
   Tablets 50–51 (Malibu, CA: Undena Publications, 1981), 49.


8. L. W. King, The Seven Tablets of Creation, vol. 1 (London: Luzac, 1902) 124; L. W.
   King, The Seven Tablets of Creation, vol. 2 (London: Luzac, 1902) pl. 49: 9–14 (Akkadian
   version).


9. S. Parpola, Letters from Assyrian Scholars to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbani-
   pal Part II: Commentary and Appendices (Neukirchen- Vluyn: Verlag Butzon & Bercker
   Kevelaer, 1983), 113.


10. Ibid., 287.