CHAPTER 5 – MUL.APIN
The Text
The following analysis relies primarily on the critical edition of the sources published by
Hunger and Pingree.^205 The composition known as MUL.APIN is a compendium of 60
stars or constellations and their heliacal rising and setting times. Added to this are another
11 astronomical objects, namely five planets and six circumpolar stars, considered to be
later interpolations to the original list of 60 bodies.^206 Based on the recorded observations
that comprise the text, MUL.APIN has been dated to approximately the end of the 12th
century B.C.E.^207 The text is contained in a series of two tablets of four columns each, the
first tablet of which will be examined here.
(^205) H. Hunger and D. Pingree, MUL.APIN: An Astronomical Compendium in Cuneiform (^) (Archiv für Orient-
forschung 24; Horn: Ferdinand Berger & Söhne Gesellschaft, 1989). 206
207 See AfO 24, 137.
See AfO 24, 10-12. More recently B.E. Shaefer has suggested that the original observations recorded in
MUL.APIN date to 1370 B.C.E. ±100, and were made at a latitude commensurate with ancient Nineveh or
Ashur. Shaefer presented the evidence for this dating at the 210th Meeting of the American Astronomical
Society in Honolulu, Hawaii, on 28th May 2007. See B.E. Schaefer, "The Latitude and Epoch for the Origin
of the Astronomical Lore in MUL.APIN," Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society 39, 1 (2007).