of his letter appears to be polemical: either against some other astrologer, or
perhaps even against the king himself. In any case, the astrologer asserts his
expertise and expects the king to respect it; here, the king is not invited to
express his own opinion. The relationship, in calendar matters, between the
king and his astrologers was thus clearly complex and variegated.^37
The joint involvement of the king and his astrologers in setting the month
gives this process at once a‘political’ and an astronomical or‘scientific’
character. But astronomical observation, astrological omens, royal adminis-
tration, and royal policy were all directly interrelated, in such a way that it
would be misleading to treat‘politics’and‘science’as completely distinct.^38
We do not know, for example, how the king would have resolved a conflict
between a predicted new moon and the actual sighting. His decision may have
been guided by political considerations, but it is equally possible (perhaps even
more likely) that other factors, e.g. religious or astrological, would have come
into play.^39 What matters only is that in most cases, it was the king who was
invested with thefinal authority.
Also politically significant was, as noted above, the frequent dispatch of new
moon reports from the cities of the empire to the royal court, executed by
astrologers but also in some cases by imperial officials (e.g. Mar-ištar, King
Esarhaddon’s agent in Babylonia).^40 Inasmuch as the month was determined
on the basis of new moon reports from all over Mesopotamia, the calendar
which the Assyrian king controlled was intended to represent a common time
frame for all the cities of the empire—even if, in practice, the calendar was
perhaps not always reckoned everywhere in the same way.^41 Not only did this
(^37) The king’s dependence on astrologers for calendrical matters is also apparent in letters
where the king asks an astrologer‘what do you take the present month to be?’, and the astrologer
replies by giving the current date: Parpola (1970–83) i, nos. 12 (where the date given is 25
Addaru) and 65 (27 Addaru, and the next month is Nisannu—i.e. there will be no intercalation),
(1993) no. 23. It is possible that the king was asking for the day of the month, rather than for the
month’s name (id. 1970–83 ii. 15), although it is likely that the issue was also whether there was
to be an intercalation. These texts suggest that if the king had lost count of the days, he would
refer to astrologers for the authoritative date.
(^38) See e.g. Brown (2000).
(^39) In some cases the decision may have been based e.g. on the astrological tradition that a 30-
day month was auspicious and a 29-day month inauspicious (see below, n. 53, and Beaulieu
1993: 67–8, Brown 2000: 146–8).
(^40) Above, n. 34.
(^41) Parpola (1970–83) ii. 337 conjectures, with reference at least to the neo-Assyrian period,
that separate calendars were reckoned in Babylonia and Assyria because the distance between
them would cause the new moon to be sighted at different times. However, the difference
between the geographical coordinates of Assyria and Babylonia is rarely significant so as to
affect new moon visibility and the beginning of the month. If separate calendars were reckoned
in Babylonia and Assyria in this period, this is more likely to have been due to the difficulty of
communicating new moon reports from Babylonia to Assyria in a sufficiently short period of
time (see further below, near n. 85). It will also have depended on the level of Babylonia’s
subservience to Assyria: in the chequered history of Babylonian–Assyrian relations, the Babylo-
nians might not always have conformed (see discussion on the intercalation below).
82 Calendars in Antiquity