(For the German version, see previous blog entry.)

17. August 2023, by Mathieu Ossendrijver and the ZODIAC-Team

This year Freie Universität Berlin is celebrating its 75th birthday. The research project „ZODIAC – Ancient Astral Science in Transformation“ took this as an opportunity to ask the following question: how would an ancient astrologer determine the birth chart of Freie Universität Berlin and interpret its future? Not only is the answer itself of interest, but even more so the process of answering can yield interesting results, because by reconstructing the individual steps of the calculation and the interpretation of a horoscope according to ancient methods, possible gaps in our understanding of these methods become apparent.

Horoscopic astrology originated in Babylonia in the 5th century BCE. Babylonian scholars introduced the zodiac with twelve signs of 30 degrees and they developed a new astrological doctrine according to which a person’s future is determined from the zodiacal positions of the moon, the sun, and the five planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) at the time of birth. In its barest form, an ancient horoscope is nothing more than a list of these positions. Another new feature of horoscopic astrology is that it was used by private individuals, and not just by rulers as was the case in older Mesopotamian astrology.

Horoscopic astrology spread from Babylonia to Egypt and the Graeco-Roman world, where it continued to develop. In Greco-Roman horoscopes, in addition to the positions of the moon, the sun and the planets, the so-called ascendant is also recorded. The ascendant is the position in the zodiac, defined either as a whole sign or more precisely to the degree, that rises on the eastern horizon at the time of birth.

The positions of the moon, the sun, the planets and the ascendant were not observed but calculated. This can already be seen from the fact that not all planets are visible on any given day. The creation of a horoscope therefore required extensive mathematical calculations. It is all the more astonishing that horoscopic astrology was able to spread so successfully from Babylonian to the ancient world.

The basis for creating a horoscope is the date of birth. We take the founding date, December 4, 1948, as the date of birth of Freie Universität Berlin. Since a Greco-Roman horoscope also mentions the ascendant, the time of founding must also be known. Unfortunately, the exact time could not be determined. We have assumed 11:00 am Central European Time as the hypothetical time of birth because we consider this to be a plausible time for the founding act.

Since there were different methods of calculating and interpreting a horoscope in ancient times, we had to make a selection from them. We decided on a Babylonian variant and a Greco-Roman variant.

The horoscope of Freie Universität Berlin based on modern astronomical methods

Ideally, all positions would have to be calculated using ancient methods. Since this would be very time-consuming, we decided to first calculate the positions using standard modern astronomical methods. The result is summarized in the following table:

Horoscope for FU Berlin, December 4, 1948 11:00 CET

moon	26º Capricorn
sun	12º Sagittarius
Mercury	8º Sagittarius
Venus	10º Scorpio
Mars	6º Capricorn
Jupiter	4º Capricorn
Saturn	6º Virgo
Ascendent	26º Capricorn

The following figure shows a visualization of the horoscope (thanks to Michael Zellmann-Rohrer):

Calculation of the horoscope according to Babylonian methods using Jupiter as an example

We now show first how a Babylonian astrologer might have calculated that Jupiter was in 4º Capricorn on December 4, 1948. This was achieved in two separate steps:

            (1) Calculation of synodic phenomena (date and zodiac position). The synodic phenomena of Jupiter that were observed and calculated in Babylonia are First Visibility, First Station, Evening Rising, Second Station, and Last Visibility. They form a cycle that lasts about 13 months (Fig. 1).

            (2) Calculation of the zodiacal positions of Jupiter from day to day between the synodic phenomena.

Fig. 1 Apparent motion of Jupiter relative to the stars over one synodic cycle. Up to the first station and after the second station Jupiter is moving forward (right to left); between the first and second station backwards (from left to right). Between last appearance and first appearance the planet is invisible.

Step 1: Computation of Synodic Phenomena

The last synodic phenomenon of Jupiter to occur before December 4, 1948 was the second station. We therefore, in Babylonian fashion, first calculate a table of second stations, starting from an earlier instance of this phenomenon. The Babylonians used a number system based on 60 (sexagesimal). Numbers are represented as sequences of digits 0-59, with each digit belonging to a right-decreasing power of 60. In translations, a comma is used as a separator between digits, with one exception: the semicolon (;) separates the part of the number greater than 1 from the part less than 1. For example 17;5,10 = 17 + 5/60 + 10/3600. The Babylonian calendar of the last centuries BCE. was based on the Seleucid Era, where year 1 = 311/310 BCE. The Babylonian months are abbreviated as Roman numerals. December 4, 1948 then corresponds to day 2 of month IX of year 2259 of the Seleucid Era. The year 2259 would be written by a Babylonian as 37.39 (37 x 60 + 39 = 2259).

As initial values for the table we take the second station of Jupiter that took place on Day 28, Month VII, Year 37,29 (= 2249) of the Seleucid Era in 26º Aquarius. The Babylonian astrologer could have taken these values either from an observational report or an existing table. Starting with the second station in 2249, we compute subsequent instances of the second station using a Babylonian algorithm known as „System A.“ We cannot go into the details of the algorithm here. We end the calculation with the second station on Day 10, Month V of the year 2259 of the Seleucid Era, which corresponds to August 16, 1948.

year of Seleucid Era	month	day	position in zodiac
37,29 (= 2249)	VII	29	26º	Aquarius
37,30	VIII	17;5,10	2º	Aries
37,31	X	5;10,20	8º	Taurus
37,32	X	23;15,30	14º	Gemini
37,33	XII	7;10,40	15;50º	Cancer
37,34	XII2	19;15,50	15;50º	Leo
37,36	I	II 1;21	15;50º	Virgo
37,37	III	13;26,10	15;50º	Libra
37,38	III	25;31,20	15;50º	Scorpio
37,39 (= 2259)	V	10;46,30	19º	Sagittarius

Step 2: Calculation of the daily position of Jupiter since the last synodic phenomenon

In the second step, the zodiacal position (longitude) of Jupiter is calculated from day to day from that second station up to the founding day of Freie Universität Berlin. We use a Babylonian method for this, according to which Jupiter moves at a constant speed along the ecliptic. The following table shows the first four days and the last four days of the calculation while omitting the intermediate days:

year of Seleucid Era	month	day	velocity [º/day]	Position in zodiac
37,39 (= 2259)	V	10	0;8,10	19º	Sagittarius
37,39	V	11	0;8,10	19;8,10º	Sagittarius
37,39	V	12	0;8,10	19;16,20º	Sagittarius
37,39	V	13	0;8,10	19;24,30º	Sagittarius
et cetera
37,39	VIII	29	0;8,10	3;50,10º	Capricorn
37,39	VIII	30	0;8,10	3;58,20º	Capricorn
37,39	IX	1	0;8,10	4;6,30º	Capricorn
37,39 (= 2259)	IX	2	0;8,10	4;14,40º	Capricorn

The calculation ends on day 2, month IX, year 37.39 (= 2259) of the Seleucid Era, which corresponds to December 4, 1948, with the result: Jupiter was in 4º Capricorn. In a similar fashion, the Babylonian astrologer would have calculated the positions of the moon, the sun, and the other four planets.

The horoscope of Freie Universität Berlin on a Babylonian clay tablet

What would the horoscope look like and which data would it contain? The following illustration shows a synthetic Babylonian clay tablet with the horoscope of Freie Universität Berlin, made and described by Alessia Pilloni based on Babylonian examples.

Here follows, for those interested, the transliteration of the clay tablet:

MU.37.39.KAM ITI.GAN 2

E₂.DUB.BA ŠAR₂ ^URUBer-li-in^KI

a-lid ina si-ma-ni-šu₂

sin ina 26 MAŠ₂

šamaš₂ ina 12 PA

MUL₂.BABBAR ina 4 MAŠ₂

dil-bat ina 10 GIR₂

GU₄.UD ina 7 PA

GENNA ina 6 ABSIN

AN ina 5 MAŠ₂

ina E₂ ni-ṣir-tu₄ ša₂ AN

E₂.DUB.BA a-lid

And here is the translation:

Year 2259, Month IX, Day 2,

the University of Berlin

was born. At that time

the moon was in 27° Capricorn,

the sun in 12° Sagittarius,

Jupiter in 4° Capricorn,

Venus in 10° Scorpio,

Mercury in 7° Sagittarius,

Saturn in 6° Virgo,

Mars in 5° Capricorn.

In the House of Secrecy of Mars the university was born.

Interpretation of the horoscope according to Babylonian methods

How would a Babylonian astrologer interpret the horoscope? The rules according to which the future of the newborn was derived from the horoscope are only partially known. One reason is that the predictions were rarely written on the horoscope. For certain configurations of planets and zodiac signs, but not for all that appear in the chart of Freie Universität, there are tablets with predictive rules. Below are some quotes from such tablets, compiled by Marvin Schreiber. The individual predictions are partly contradictory. How a Babylonian astrologer would derive an overall interpretation of the horoscope from this is not really clear.

Moon, Mars, Jupiter in Capricorn

„Region of Capricorn: he becomes poor, falls ill, dies“. This rule from a collection of death predictions does not promise much good, but it is not as bad as most others, such as „Region of the Twins: Death in Prison.“

Jupiter is visible, Mars invisible

The horoscope does not mention whether a planet was visible or invisible. But Babylonian astrologers could also take this aspect into account. On December 4, 1948, Jupiter was visible at night while Mars was invisible because that date is between Last and First Visibility.

„If a child is born, Jupiter rises and Mars sets: this man will prosper, he will see his adversary’s downfall.“ This rule promises good things for Freie Universität, bad things for its „opponent,“ who has yet to be identified.

Mars in his house of secrecy

For each planet one sign of the zodiac was considered to be its „house of secrecy,“ a concept roughly analogous to the „exaltation“ in Greco-Roman astrology. It is likely that the presence of Mars in his „House of Secrecy“ Capricorn will amplify the effects of this unfavorable planet, but how that might play out is unknown.

Saturn, Moon, Jupiter and Mars in trine (Taurus – Virgo – Capricorn)

The trine aspect (= triangle of zodiac signs) played an important role in Babylonian astrology. Three planets and the moon are in the trine Taurus – Virgo – Capricorn. Corresponding predictions have not been handed down, but they would probably be favorable for the newborn.

Interpretation of the horoscope according to Greco-Roman methods

The rules by which a horoscope was interpreted in the Greco-Roman world are comparatively well known from astrological manuals such as those of Vettius Valens (c. 120-175 CE), Firmicus Maternus (300-337 CE), Hephaestion of Thebes (5th century CE). From such manuals, Michael Zellmann-Rohrer compiled the following predictions that apply to the horoscope of Freie Universität Berlin:

Mars in its exaltation

Mars in its exaltation, Capricorn: „Diplomacy in the face of difficult circumstances; sharing in Mars‘ affinity with fine clothing and wine.“

Conjunctions

Jupiter, Mars, and Moon in conjunction: „clever, courageous civil servants with many friends who rise from humble beginnings to great things, gaining confidence and then taking up their duties. They may suffer losses but, thanks to divine or unexpected help, they recover.“

Jupiter and Mars in conjunction: „Honour comes only through hard work“

Jupiter and Moon in conjunction: „Prestigious offices, discovery of treasures“.

Sun and Mercury in conjunction: „Flexibility, common sense, distinction in careers in public life, love of beauty, charity, initiation into divine teachings, perseverance in the face of adversity“

Saturn and Mercury in square aspect

The square aspect connects zodiac signs separated by three signs (90 degrees). It generally leads to unfavourable predictions in Greco-Roman astrology, in this case: „he will be burdened with administrative duties and attacks from envious people.“

Ascendant in Capricorn

„Attachment to friends, prudence, good luck, ample resources, knowledge of the mysteries of sacred rites and foreign ways of life.“

The 12 places

The zodiacal sign of the ascendant was designated as the 1st place, in this case Capricorn. From there, the other 11 places were counted. Linked to this was a doctrine with its own prediction rules.

Moon, Mars, Jupiter in the 1st place: „a very fortunate career, well-deserved advances ahead of siblings, fame, virtue, and good humour. Advancement through brilliant campaigns, generosity, acquisition of great property, which later passes into the treasury.“

Mercury in the 12th place: „Intelligence“.

Saturn in the 9th place: „famous magicians, soothsayers, astrologers, famous philosophers who often let their hair grow long, interpreters of dreams.“

21.02.2023 by Benjamin Scheel

In this blog post, I would like to look at an example of the reception of ancient Near Eastern art in twentieth-century Berlin.

In Germany at the turn from the 19^th to the 20^th century AD, there was a huge fascination with the history and cultures of the ancient Near East. With the excavations and finds of Heinrich Schliemann (1822–1890), a wealthy German businessman and excavator, at Troy in 1871–1873, the German public became more and more interested in the archaeology of ancient Rome and Greece, and in the course of time their interest in the archaeology of ancient Mesopotamia grew as well.

Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941), who visited several places in the Near East during his famous trip in 1898, including Damascus, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, was an admirer of ancient Near Eastern archaeology and history. The Kaiser’s interest was not only research-related but also related to the imperialistic and colonialist ambitions of the German Reich, which was in competition, at the time, with the two great European imperialist powers, Great Britain and France.

In 1898, the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft (DOG) was founded by (amongst others) the Berliner art patron and cotton trader James Simon (1851–1932) and Bruno Güterbock (1858–1940), a private scholar and donor of the Königliche Museen zu Berlin. The DOG was the successor of the so-called Orient-Comité. The Comité was originally founded to investigate the „Trümmerstädte” of the Ancient Near East. The DOG was founded to finance German archaeological expeditions and excavations in the Near East and to lend the discovered and exported archaeological findings to the Vorderasiatische Abteilung of the Königliche Museen zu Berlin. The DOG was supported, financially and politically, by Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Through the efforts of James Simon, the DOG and the Königliche Museen zu Berlin (later Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), the first German archaeological expedition in the Near East began at Babylon in 1897. The two members of this survey were the architect and building researcher Robert Koldewey (1855–1925) and the orientalist Eduard Sachau (1845–1930). The survey was followed by extensive excavations, conducted by Robert Koldewey, at the same place from 1899 up to 1917. The main goal of this archaeological fieldwork was the discovery of ancient architectural remains and works of ancient art that could be brought to Berlin and presented at the Vorderasiatische Abteilung of the Königliche Museen zu Berlin.

From the very beginning of this archaeological expedition, one focus of the archaeological fieldwork at Babylon was the characteristically colorful- and beautifully glazed bricks found (amongst other findspots) at the Ishtar Gate, the Processional Way, and the throne room façade of the so-called Südburg. More than half of the archaeological finds at Babylon were fragments of glazed bricks. Most of them were dated to the reign of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar (604–562 BCE).

Once the excavations at Babylon had gotten underway, the DOG published the first graphic reconstructions of the ornamented glazed-brick façades (e.g., lions, and floral adornments). Little by little, the facades of the Ishtar Gate, the Processional Way, and the throne room façade of the Südburg could be reconstructed. This publication made a huge impact on the interested public.

Around 1900 the Swedish architect Alfred Grenander (1863–1931), based in Berlin, was commissioned by the Gesellschaft für elektrische Hoch- und Untergrundbahnen in Berlin to design train stations for the Berlin U-Bahn. Famous examples for his architectural work on Berlin train stations are the U-Bahnhof Wittenbergplatz (1910–1913), the U-Bahnhof Krumme Lanke (1927/1928), and the U-Bahnhof Alexanderplatz (1927–1931). He also designed the U-Bahnhof Klosterstraße in Berlin-Mitte, which was opened in 1913. It was built in 1911–1913 and contained a mezzanine, which was necessary because of the station’s relatively deep location in the vicinity of the river Spree. For the walls of this mezzanine, Grenander designed a special polychrome decoration, consisting of glazed tiles. The glazed tiles, dominated by the colors blue and yellow, depict stylized palm trees. The walls of the southern part of the mezzanine have in total 38 palms on several walls with double volutes at their top ends (see Fig. 1), while the northern part of the mezzanine includes only seven palms on one wall (see Fig. 2). The double volutes are colored turquoise; the trunks of the stylized palms are depicted in yellow, while the background is kept in blue (see Fig. 3). The seven palms at the northern mezzanine are less decorated: the double volutes are grey and the palm trunks are executed in pale yellow. These wall decorations refer directly back to the graphic reconstructions of the ornamented glazed-brick façade of the throne room of the Babylonian Südburg, which were published by the DOG.

The concrete reason why the U-Bahnhof Klosterstraße was decorated in this way is not known. Some authors have argued that the decoration of this train station was based on its relative proximity to the Museumsinsel, where the Vorderasiatische Abteilung at the Königliche Museen zu Berlin was located. Other authors argue that, as an influential founder of the DOG and important financer of the Königliche Museen zu Berlin, James Simon had his company seat at Klosterstraße 80–82, which led to the special decoration of the train station. This assumption is supported by a recent information table at the train station, on which Simon´s company seat is specified as Klosterstraße 80–82 (see Fig. 4). According to this view, the station’s decoration is a homage to Simon’s accomplishments at the Vorderasiatische Abteilung at the Königliche Museen zu Berlin.

While the reconstruction of the throne room façade at the Vorderasiatisches Museum in the Pergamonmuseum was not finished and presented to the public before the grand opening of the museum in 1930, the glazed tiles with the “Babylonische Palmen” motif at the U-Bahnhof Klosterstraße was the first reconstruction attempt, presented to the train-using Berlin public, almost 20 years earlier.

Partial Bibliography:

S. Bohle-Heintzenberg, Architektur der Berliner Hoch- und Untergrundbahn. Planungen. Entwürfe. Bauten bis 1930 (Berlin 1980)

C. Brachmann – T. Steigenberger, »Svensk arkitektur och möbelkonst i Tyskland«. Das Werk Alfred Grenanders (1863–1931), in: C. Brachmann – T. Steigenberger (Hrsg.), Ein Schwede in Berlin. Der Architekt und Designer Alfred Grenander und die Berliner Architektur (1890-1914) (Korb 2010), 27–152

H. Gries, Das Ischtar-Tor von Babylon. Vom Fragment zum Monument (Regensburg 2022)

P. Güttler, Liste der U-Bahn-Bauten vor 1945, in: Architekten- und Ingenieur-Verein zu Berlin (Hrsg.), Berlin und seine Bauten. Teil X. Band B. Analgen und Bauten für den Verkehr (1). Städtischer Nahverkehr (Berlin – München – Düsseldorf 1979), 100–146

R. Koldewey, Die Königsburgen von Babylon. 1. Teil. Die Südburg (Leipzig 1931)

Landesdenkmalamt Berlin (Hrsg.), Berliner U-Bahnhöfe zwischen Krumme Lanke und Vinetastraße (Berlin 1996)

O. Matthes – J. Althoff, Die ‘Königliche Kommission zur Erforschung der Euphrat- und Tigrisländer‘, MDOG 130, 1998, 241–254

O. Pedersén, The Glazed Bricks that Ornamented Babylon. A Short Overview, in: A Fügert – H. Gries (Hrsg.), Glazed Brick Decoration in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of a Workshop at the 11th International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (Munich) in April 2018 (Oxford 2020), 96–122

J. Renger, Die Geschichte der Altorientalistik und der vorderasiatischen Archäologie in Berlin von 1875 bis 1945, in: W. Arenhövel – C. Schreiber (Hrsg.), Berlin und die Antike. Architektur. Kunstgewerbe. Malerei. Skulptur. Theater und Wissenschaft vom 16. Jahrhundert bis heute. Aufsätze (Berlin 1979), 151–192

R.-B. Wartke – M. Wartke, Mit der U-Bahn durch Babylon, AW 6, 2010, 33–36

We warmly congratulate Dr. Strupler on the publication of his doctoral dissertation, „Fouilles Archéologiques de la Ville Basse I (1935-1978): Analyse de l’occupation de l’âge du Bronze de la Westterrasse.“ The book has been published as the 28th volume in the series „Boğazköy-Ḫattuša: Results of the Excavations.“

This book is dedicated to the research of the residential area in the Lower Town of Boğazköy during the 2nd millennium B.C. The area was mainly excavated between 1970 and 1977, but no comprehensive publication of the results had been made available until now. The examination and analysis of the finds and features of the residential area presented in this study reveal a new facet of the urban life of the city. The methodological approach is based on procedures of digital archaeology, and a main focus of the work is the distribution of the small finds from the 2nd millennium BC, which were interpreted as indicators of activities and contextualized by spatial analysis. To ensure that the conclusions are replicable, the research data were digitally processed and made available to the reader in a transparent form via digital archives. Thus, this work foregrounds the standards of Open Science and deploys methods of Digital Archaeology profitably

The dissertation was awarded the 2022 Dissertation Prize of the Franco-German University.

The archival data on which the work is based can be accessed via the DAI data portal IANUS. (DOI: https://doi.org/10.13149/mmfm-ka36; http://doi.org/10.13149/mmfm-ka36-2)

A digital edition will be available at iDAI.publications two years after the printed edition has been published (DOI: https://doi.org/10.34780/v0e8-6una).

For more information on the volume and the table of contents, please visit the publisher’s website. (https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/Fouilles_Arch%C3%A9ologiques_de_la_Ville_Basse_I_(1935%E2%80%931978)/titel_7165.ahtml)

Wir gratulieren Dr. Néhémie Strupler herzlich zur Publikation seiner Dissertationsschriftt “Fouilles Archéologiques de la Ville Basse I (1935–1978) Analyse de l’occupation de l’âge du Bronze de la Westterrasse”. Das Buch ist als 28. Band der Reihe “Boğazköy-Ḫattuša. Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen” erschienen.

Dieser Band widmet sich der Erforschung des Wohnviertels in der Unterstadt von Boğazköy während des 2. Jts. v. Chr. Das Areal wurde zwischen 1970 und 1977 ausgegraben, ohne dass eine detaillierte Publikation der Ergebnisse veröffentlicht wurde. Die Aufarbeitung und Analyse der nun vorgelegten Funde und Befunde des Wohnviertels zeigen eine neue Facette des urbanen Lebens der Stadt. Das methodische Vorgehen basiert auf Verfahren der Digitalen Archäologie und ein Schwerpunkt der Arbeit liegt auf der Verteilung der Kleinfunde aus dem 2. Jts. v. Chr, die als Indikator von Aktivitäten interpretiert und durch räumliche Analyse kontextualisiert wurden. Damit die Aussagen nachprüfbar sind, wurden die Forschungsdaten digital aufbereitet und dem Leser über digitale Archive in transparenter Form zugänglich gemacht. Somit stellt diese Arbeit Standards von Open Science in den Vordergrund und setzt Verfahren der Digitalen Archäologie gewinnbringend ein.

Die Dissertation wurde mit dem Dissertationspreis 2022 der der Deutsch-Französischen Hochschule ausgezeichnet.

Die der Arbeit zu Grunde liegenden Archivdaten sind abrufbar über das DAI Datenportal IANUS.(DOI: https://doi.org/10.13149/mmfm-ka36; http://doi.org/10.13149/mmfm-ka36-2)

Eine digitale Ausgabe des Werkes wird zwei Jahre nach Erscheinen der Druckausgabe auf iDAI.publications zur Verfügung gestellt (DOI: https://doi.org/10.34780/v0e8-6una).

Weitere Informationen zum Band sowie den Inhaltsverzeichnis finden Sie auf der Verlagsseite. https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/Fouilles_Arch%C3%A9ologiques_de_la_Ville_Basse_I_(1935%E2%80%931978)/titel_7165.ahtml

11. Novermber 2022, by Alessia Pilloni

program of the workshop.

Like all specific topics within the study of antiquity, astronomy too is polyhedral, and each of its expressions can be analyzed from different points of view. One might focus only on a particular textual genre, whether mathematical or literary, or on one particular artistic representation, but this does not always give a satisfactory sense of unity or a complete understanding of the subject. That is why bringing together experts in individual aspects, i.e., history of science, Egyptology, Assyriology, classical philology, papyrology, archaeology, and art history, is so crucial: the intersection of the different approaches sheds light on matters that would remain unsolved, but with wider perspectives, we pave the way for resolving old research questions and posing new ones.

The workshop “Imagining the Sky: The Zodiac and Related Astral Imagery in the Ancient World” aimed to be a bridge connecting the study of ancient astronomy in different times and places, and also between texts and visual representation. In particular, how the concept of the zodiac and related topics has been adapted in images of different times and places and for different purposes, which, from a cross-cultural point of view, has not been studied in depth so far. Both the materials available and the supports are varied: from the schematic and stylised drawings on clay tablets in Mesopotamia, to the rich and colorful representations in Egyptian temples, and further, from the Greco-Roman monuments and small objects bearing cosmic elements, to their adaptation in Indian and Japanese manuscripts.

This blog post is meant to be a tribute to the success of this meeting of researchers of ancient astral sciences and a summary of the main topics that were discussed. All the presentations were connected by a common thread that motivated scholars to discuss and fascinated students and scholars from other disciplines.

Modern science at the service of ancient astronomy

There is nothing better than a projection of the sky at the planetarium to visualize and imagine the sky as seen in antiquity. Indeed, Susanne Hoffmann’s presentation at the Planetarium am Insulaner opened the workshop. The purpose was to show how the heavens and their moving bodies looked 3000 years ago in Babylon, when expert observers divided the sky into twelve segments identified by twelve constellations, the zodiac.

It is a great advantage to use modern instruments in order to visualize the data from ancient texts and images. On a virtual sky one can project the data from texts and images at different times and places in ancient history: the Babylonian lists of stars and constellations in the MUL.APIN compendium, Ptolemy’s coordinates, the uranology of Hipparchus and Aratus, the Zodiac depicted on the Farnese globe and so forth.

Images of the ancient sky and the texts referring to them extend beyond Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome. For this reason, a group of researchers at the Max-Planck-Institut is working on a database on the materiality of the heavens in different cultures. The zodiac, for example, is transmitted and represented with characters from the transmitting culture but also adapted to the culture of the receiver, and patterns of transmission and influence can be traced as far as India and the Far East (China and Japan), as shown in the presentation by Sonja Brentjes.

Mesopotamian diagrams and drawings

Speakers: Jeanette Fincke, Wayne Horowitz, Willis Monroe, Marvin Schreiber, John Steele, John Wee

While there is an abundance of cuneiform tablets providing evidence of astronomical scientific activity in Mesopotamia, only a few also bear traces of graphic representations. The contributions of Assyriologists have in fact focused on this: the interaction between what is written and what is drawn on the tablet, meaning drawings and diagrams. Some drawings carved on the tablets are clearly depictions of constellations, like the ones in the famous astrological tablet VAT 7847.Assumptions about the diagrams, however, such as the ones that appear on the Neo Assyrian circular tablet K 8538, which were interpreted as stylised constellations during the time of the pioneers of Assyriology, such as Archibald Henri Sayce and Ernst Weidner, are to be re-examined. There is still no firm understanding: it is not even certain that the representations refer to astral elements. What is truly important is to reconsider the sources and the previous interpretative positions, in light of the new sources, and adapt them to advances in modern knowledge of Mesopotamian culture. 

Maps of the sky in ancient Egypt

Speakers: Victoria Altmann-Wendling, John Baines, Yossra Ibrahim, Christian Leitz, Daniela Mendel-Leitz, Rune Nyord.

The first example that springs to mind is certainly the spectacular representation of the zodiac in the ceiling of the temple of Hathor in Dendera. There are certainly others: representations of the sky are very well attested in sarcophagi, pyramid ceilings and temples. The central theme is the presence of the personifications of the cosmic elements, such as planets and constellations, for example, the decans, the hours of the day, the winds, and so forth. Such representations aim to be sorts of “maps” of the heavens and are populated by deities and creatures. For instance, a pig swallowing celestial bodies might represent eclipses, and certain animals (scarab and falcon) are often shown carrying the sun—the actions that they perform represent the myth behind the astronomical event.

These images contain elements that confirm stylistic and cultural influences from outside Egypt, but also strong Egyptian features. Once again, the perfect example is the zodiac: a concept originating from Babylonia, but whose elements are represented with the Egyptian iconographic repertoire.

Images of the cosmos in Greco-Roman art and beyond

Speakers: Benjamin Anderson, Nicola Barbagli, Ilaria Bultrighini, Fabio Guidetti, Wolfgang Hübner, Stamatina Mastorakou, Fabio Spadini

In Greco-Roman art, representations of cosmic elements are found on coins, on monuments, mosaics, gems, and other objects. Much has already been said about such artifacts from an artistic point of view, but during the workshop the focus was on the interpretation and meaning of the schemes in which the astral elements are arranged.

From the point of view of written sources, Hellenistic astrology presents a highly sophisticated way of reading the signs, based on geometrical schemes.

On the other hand, in certain artifacts the disposition of the zodiac can assume different dispositions, with the signs oriented differently, for decorative reasons. This brings certain artistic objects far from an astrological purpose.

Some concluding thoughts

The attendance was plentiful both online, with more than a hundred virtual participants, and in person, with sixty participants in the conference room, some of them from overseas institutions: an excellent example of the resumption of in-person research activities, after two arduous years of pandemic.

For a glimpse into the future: the papers will be part of the proceedings volume, which will be curated by Mathieu Ossendrijver and Andreas Winkler and available in open access by winter 2023.

To conclude with a thought of gratitude, all that has been presented and discussed was enriched by a pleasant atmosphere of unity, sharing, and openness to dialogue on the part of the participants, perceptible not only during the presentations, but also during breaks and convivial moments.

It has been an intense dive into the world of ancient astronomy: “imagining the sky”, through pictures and texts, how the ancient people saw and perceived the heavens above their heads, tried to glean signs, and unlock its secrets by creating methods to calculate its motion in order to predict the future.

Tagesspiegelbeilage vom 02.07.2022

Das Institut für Wissensgeschichte des Altertums wird neue Aspekte des menschlichen Wissens in der Antike ausleuchten: Das Projekt „Zodiac“ erforscht die Erfindung des Tierkreises durch die Babylonier

Ist es irreführend zu fragen, ob die Einweihung eines neuen Instituts an der Freien Universität unter einem glücklichen Stern stand? Am 17. Juni 2022 geboren, hat das Institut für Wissensgeschichte des Altertums das Sternzeichen Zwilling mit Aszendent Jungfrau. Dass zum Zeitpunkt seiner Eröffnung, um 11 Uhr, die Sonne im 9. Haus und der Merkur im 8. Haus stand, deutet darauf hin, dass das Institut besonders neugierig und darauf ausgerichtet sein könnte, seine Mitmenschen zu verstehen. Jupiter im 6. Haus spricht dafür, dass es hohe Standards im beruflichen Umgang mit anderen beachten und einfordern wird.

Wissenschaft oder Aberglaube?

Nun man kann derlei Vorhersagen und Horoskopie als Aberglauben abtun. Tatsächlich aber gehen all ihre Bestandteile – der Tierkreis (lat. zodiacus, von griechisch zodiakós), die Sternzeichen, die astronomische Berechnung der Planetenpositionen und die astrologische Interpretation des Ganzen – auf eine wissenschaftliche und kulturelle Revolution zurück, die in genau diesem Institut für Wissensgeschichte des Altertums in Zukunft unter anderem erforscht und gedeutet werden soll.

Der Wissenschaftshistoriker Professor Mathieu Ossendrijver wird eben diesen „zodiacal turn“, der sich im antiken Babylonien vor 2500 Jahren, also um 500 vor Christus, vollzogen hat, als Leiter des im neuen Institut angesiedelten Forschungsprojekts „ZODIAC – Ancient Astral Science in Transformation“ während der kommenden fünf Jahre erforschen.

Matthieu Ossendrijver ist nicht nur Althistoriker und Assyriologe, sondern auch Astrophysiker. Das ist insofern von Vorteil, als das ZODIAC-Projekt sich mit der Geburt der babylonischen Astralwissenschaft, also der Horoskopie, beschäftigen will.

Matthieu Ossendrijver nennt mehrere Elemente, die zusammenkommen mussten, damit die Babylonier die Sternzeichen und das Horoskop erfinden konnten: Erstens hatten sie schon über lange Zeit die Bewegungen der Himmelskörper, der Sterne und Planeten, beobachtet, aufgezeichnet und darin Regelmäßigkeiten und Muster erkannt. Zweitens entwickelten die Babylonier über die bloße empirische Beobachtung hinaus mathematische Techniken und Werkzeuge, mit deren Hilfe sie die Bahnen der Planeten und Sterne mathematisch berechnen und vorhersagen konnten. Ossendrijver nennt das den „mathematical turn“, der Teil des „zodiacal turn“ gewesen sei.

Erst dann wird verständlich, welche Bedeutung die Erfindung des Tierkreises vor 2500 Jahren hatte: Die Babylonier teilten nun den Himmel in zwölf Bereiche auf, denen jeweils eine Figur, ein Name und eine bestimmte Bedeutung zugeordnet wurde: den Tierkreis mit seinen zwölf Sternzeichen wie Widder, Zwilling, Jungfrau oder Löwe.

Schließlich verbanden die babylonischen Astralwissenschaftler diese zu einem Wissenskorpus, aufgrund dessen Berechnungen, zu welchem Zeitpunkt welche Planeten wo im Tierkreis standen, Bedeutungen und Bedeutungszusammenhänge formuliert werden konnten.

Doch was ist eigentlich der Tierkreis, den die Babylonier erfanden und der bis heute in Zeitschriften als Grundlage für Horoskope dient? „Eigentlich handelt es sich dabei um ein Band, einen Himmelsstreifen, der den Bereich ein paar Grad unter und ein paar Grad über der scheinbaren Sonnenbahn und den scheinbaren Mond und Planetenbahnen umfasst“, sagt Matthieu Ossendrijver. „Mit dem freien Auge ist der Tierkreis nicht zu sehen: Vielmehr erfanden die Babylonier eine mathematische Konstruktion, die sie nun in zwölf Teile zu jeweils 30 Grad einteilten, und bei der sie jeden Abschnitt nach dem in ihm markanten Sternbild benannten.“

Erst durch diese Art der berechnenden Astrologie, die etwa die Sonne im 8. und den Saturn im 5. Haus verortet, kann darüber gerätselt werden, was das für ein Kind – oder ein Institut – bedeutet, das an diesem Tag das Licht der Welt erblickt.

Wie hielt sich die Deutung alter babylonischer Zeichen bis heute?

„Für die Babylonier waren die Sterne und die Himmelsphänomene göttliche Zeichen an die Menschen“, erläutert Mathieu Ossendrijver. Die Stellung der Planeten bei der Geburt eines Kindes verrät also etwas über dieses Kind. Und die Astrologie dient dazu, diese göttliche Botschaft zu entziffern und zu verstehen.

Warum aber war – und ist – die Horoskopie dermaßen erfolgreich? Wie konnte sich die babylonische Astralwissenschaft zuerst über die antike Welt ins Römische Reich, dann ins Judentum, in den Islam und ins Christentum hinein weiterverbreiten? Und sich so hartnäckig halten, dass heute noch Menschen zu Jahresbeginn ihr Horoskop studieren, um zu erfahren, ob zum Beispiel das Glück in der Liebe winkt oder ein Rückschlag im Beruf droht?

Für deren Attraktivität spricht dem Wissenschaftler zufolge, dass die Horoskopie einerseits das menschliche Bedürfnis anspricht, etwas über die eigene Zukunft zu erfahren.

Andererseits überzeugt das abstrakte System aus Zahlen und Sternbildern: Es lässt sich unabhängig von einer bestimmten Sprache, Geschichte oder Schrift sehr leicht übersetzen. Man stehe noch am Anfang, sagt Mathieu Ossendrijver, das Institut für Wissensgeschichte – unter der Leitung von J. Cale Johnson, Professor für Wissensgeschichte – ist schließlich gerade erst eröffnet worden. Aber man verrät wohl nicht zu viel, wenn man sagt: Die Antwort steht auch in den Sternen.

The first volume of „A Cultural History of Chemistry in Antiquity“ has been published in Open Access. It is a multi-author monograph by Cale Johnson, Matteo Martelli and Sydney H. Aufrère, edited by Marco Beretta.    

A Cultural History of Chemistry in Antiquity covers the period from 3000 BCE to 600 CE, ranging across the civilizations of the Mediterranean and Near East. Over this long period, chemical artisans, recipes, and ideas were exchanged between Mesopotamia, Egypt, Phoenicia, Greece, Rome, and Byzantium. The flowering of alchemy in the Middle and Early Modern Ages had its roots in the chemical arts of antiquity. This study presents the first synthesis of this epoch, examining the centrality of intense exchange and interconnectivity to the discovery and development of sources, techniques, materials, and instruments.

The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Chemistry presents the first comprehensive history from the Bronze Age to today, covering all forms and aspects of chemistry and its ever-changing social context. The themes covered in each volume are theory and concepts; practice and experiment; laboratories and technology; culture and science; society and environment; trade and industry; learning and institutions; art and representation.

Table of Contents

Volume 1: A Cultural History of Chemistry in Antiquity
Edited by Marco Beretta, University of Bologna, Italy
Series Preface
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction, Marco Beretta
1.Theory and Concepts: The Mythological Foundation of Chemical Theories in Ancient Civilizations, Sydney H. Aufrère, Cale Johnson, Matteo Martelli, Marco Beretta
2.Practice and Experiment: The Conquest of Matter, Sydney H. Aufrère, Cale Johnson, Matteo Martelli, Marco Beretta
3.Laboratories and Technology: From Temples to Workshops: Sites of Chemistry in Ancient Civilizations, Sydney H. Aufrère, Cale Johnson, Matteo Martelli, Marco Beretta
4.Culture and Science: Gods, Myths and Religions, Sydney H. Aufrère, Cale Johnson, Matteo Martelli, Marco Beretta
5.Society and Environment: The Alteration of the Ancient Landscape, Sydney H. Aufrère, Cale Johnson, Matteo Martelli, Marco Beretta
6.Trade and Industry: The Circulation of Trade in the Mediterranean, Sydney H. Aufrère, Cale Johnson, Matteo Martelli, Marco Beretta
7.Learning and Institutions: The Invention of Chemical Recipes, Sydney H. Aufrère, Cale Johnson, Matteo Martelli, Marco Beretta
8.Art and Representation: The Iconographic Imprinting of Ancient Chemical Arts, Sydney H. Aufrère, Cale Johnson, Matteo Martelli, Marco Beretta
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Mark Geller, Jewish Chronicle Professor of Jewish Studies,
University College London, March 28, 2022

British Museum Department of Middle East Newsletter

The great Assyriological medical project that we have entitled NinMed has been running within the Department of the Middle East of the British Museum since 2020. Such international collaboration is not set up overnight, and here we sketch its origins and early development. The story began at Berlin with the Grossmeister of ancient Babylonian medicine, Franz Köcher. Herr Köcher was Professor for the History of Medicine at the Freie Universität Berlin, but he had almost no students and no colleagues who dared work with him, because of his intimidating reputation. He, it was generally accepted, knew everything there was to know about Babylonian medicine, for he had devoted his entire life to it (after five years as a tank commander in the Second World War). His office in his Berlin apartment in the Windscheidstrasse was effectively a university study room, complete with floor-to-ceiling card files recording every single word on every single Akkadian medical tablet. He also had stacks of transliterations and word-studies of Babylonian medicine, none of which came to be published. The Professor was too busy making hand copies (in six impressive tomes) of all cuneiform medical tablets from the Pergamon Museum in Berlin and the British Museum, the two largest and most important collections in the world. And there was one more side to him which everyone then knew of but never talked about: in the last days before the Berlin Wall was constructed, Herr Köcher packed his suitcases with all his research papers on Mesopotamian medicine and crossed over from East to West Berlin. He never returned, even after the Wall came down.

Tere were two younger colleagues from London with whom he had regular contact, which was very exceptional. One was Irving Finkel, and the other was Mark Geller from UCL. Neither would ever consider visiting Berlin without visiting Herr Köcher and his wife in the Windscheidstrasse. Finkel had a particularly close and productive relationship with Herr Köcher over many years, since he regularly sent him transliterations of unpublished Babylonian medical tablets from the British Museum. Geller did the same, but Herr Köcher used to hint that Finkel’s transliterations were more accurate. The only student who was actually brave enough to study with Herr Köcher came to London in 1984, to the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale organised by Christopher Walker, then of the British Museum. She faithfully reported that Köcher had told her before departing, ‘regards to Finkel and Geller, but no one else!’

The problem with this situation was that everyone knew that, in the well-worn phrase, ‘Köcher is working on medicine’, and no one dared rival his dominance of the field. Two things changed the status quo. One was Köcher’s untimely death, aged 85. The second was Geller’s appointment as Guest Professorship at the Freie Universität Berlin, on secondment from UCL, from 2010–2018, under the auspices of a major 10-year research cluster, Topoi, funded by the Deutsche Forschungs-gemeinschaft, which employed some 200 researchers on all aspects of antiquity. Geller’s main programme in Berlin was to carry on Köcher’s research by launching the task of publishing editions and translations of Assyrian and Babylonian medicine, which was greatly facilitated by a five-year grant from the European Research Council for the project known as BabMed.

With an excellent BabMed team assembled, including Strahil Panayotov and later Krisztian Simko, something very unexpected happened. Before he passed away, Franz Köcher had sent to Finkel and Geller an invaluable reconstruction of a group of related tablet fragments from Yale, which turned out to be a unique catalogue of approximately 90 medical treatises from about 700 BC, from the city of Ashur. One additional fragment of the work from the Oriental Institute in Chicago had previously been copied by Finkel in the 1970s. This carefully structured catalogue with composition titles and line totals revealed that Mesopotamia possessed a highly systematic and extensive corpus of medicine more than two centuries before Hippocrates, often considered to be the father of modern medicine. The BabMed team began working on this catalogue, and eventually Strahil Panayotov realised that there was a parallel relationship between the Ashur catalogue of all the titles and the existing Assyrian medical tablets in Ashurbanipal’s Royal Library in Nineveh. Instead of being a large but random collection, as it had seemed, the Nineveh medical tablets could now be shown to constitute a medical encyclopaedia, organised into the same 12 major genres of medical literature set out in the Ashur medical catalogue. This discovery meant that, after the Berlin BabMed project concluded, the crucial next task was to reconstruct the medical library of Nineveh against the background of the ancient catalogue.

The problem was to find funding to assemble a new research team with sufficient knowledge and experience of working with Akkadian medical texts. Even experienced Assyriologists experience difficulty in reading cuneiform medical texts, due to the technical nature of the language and writing style. Fortunately, the years of work on medicine in Berlin provided the expertise which was needed, in Panayotov and Simko. The obvious choice for funding was to turn to the Wellcome Trust, which announced grant programmes for major research projects in Medical Humanities. The Trust has inspiring grant programmes which are well organised, with Wellcome staff even offering useful advice to applicants on how to create a successful application. The advisors warned, however, that final decisions on grant applications were made by special panels, and these panels changed regularly and were not always interested in all the topics submitted. They also gave sound advice: to make the application for Nineveh medicine more general than a simply textual project, but to show how important the material was for other fields, such as the history of medicine and various aspects of anthropology. The application was sent to two senior researchers at UCL who worked in other fields of medical history and who themselves had won Wellcome awards. Both were enthusiastic about the value of the project, and their further suggestions were incorporated into our submission.

After our initial submission was turned down, and a brief telephone call to Jon Taylor and Irving Finkel, it was decided that a new proposal could be submitted directly from the British Museum to the Wellcome Trust, to make this valuable treasure trove of medical history accessible and available, through digital editions and translations of Nineveh medicine. That proved successful.

During the first six months of the NinMed project, substantial textual material has been gathered, edited, and worked through, with the aim of providing accurate readings and translations of each text. Weekly online meetings of the entire team (the two researchers Panayotov and Simko, plus Taylor, Finkel and Geller) greatly facilitate the results. Two colleagues from Paris, two more from Berlin, and one from Geneva, also join this weekly working group, which reads through each text line-by-line with problematic passages analysed and discussed. The idea is to create translations which are not only meant for specialists but will also be meaningful to medical historians and members of the public, especially doctors who have an interest in ancient or Middle Eastern medicine. The aim is to have all major texts in the Nineveh medical library transliterated and translated by the end of the project.

Postscript: the progress of scholarship after 171 years (1850–2021)

In describing our great new Project on the cuneiform medical texts of the Nineveh library, it is fitting to acknowledge which of the many such tablets in the British Museum was the first to be discussed in print by one of the Assyriological pioneers of the 19th century. The answer proved to be the large Nineveh tablet numbered K 191+, a study and translation of which was given as early as 1850 by the Oxford Assyriologist and polymath A.H. Sayce (1846–1933), who published his article entitled ‘An ancient Babylonian Work on Medicine I’ in the journal Zeitschrift fur Keilschriftforschung II/1: 1–14. Curiously, it is exactly this tablet, part of the ancient medical therapeutic series entitled ‘If a man suffers from a cough’, that the international team were jointly reading under the editorship of Dr. Krisztian Simko when this Newsletter report was prepared. It is only fitting to state that everyone was astonished when they saw what Sayce had been able to accomplish at so early a stage of Assyriological work, for he had achieved an extraordinary level of understanding of this ancient technical literature with no published work by other scholars to depend on, although it is probable that T.G. Pinches, then in the department, might have helped. In tribute to our early predecessor, we illustrate Sayce’s treatment printed in a cuneiform font, a hand copy of the same text and a modern digital photograph for comparison.

17 February, by Marvin F. Schreiber

Melothesia is an astrological concept of assigning human body-parts to celestial objects that was extant in Greco-Roman astral science. Its conceptual background was the assumed sympathy between macrocosm and microcosm. The limbs were often assigned to zodiacal signs, the internal organs to
planets. It was mainly used in astrological medicine, e.g. to find the assumed heavenly origin of a disease via the affected body part. Different systems of assignment existed side by side, named after the category of celestial object to which the body is connected: decanal, planetary, and zodiacal melothesia.

Decanal melothesia is of Egyptian origin (decans, subdivisions of signs into three parts, are an element of Egyptian astrology). The first securely dated attestation of zodiacal melothesia in Greco-Roman astrological literature is in Manilius, Astronomica (1st century CE); but there is evidence that the zodiacal form, as well as the planetary, was developed in Babylonia.

With a uniform structure such as the twelve divisions of the zodiac, introduced in Late Babylonian astral science in the late 5th century BCE, it became possible to connect the body and the stars in a systematic way. The structure of the zodiac was mapped onto the human anatomy, dividing it into twelve regions, and indicating which sign rules over a specific part of the body. The ordering is from head to feet, respectively from Aries to Pisces. The main document that contains the original Babylonian melothesia is the astro-medical tablet BM 56605. The text can be dated roughly between 400–100 BCE.

The obverse contains a section that resembles the 29th tablet of the diagnostic-prognostic omen series Sakikkû and subsequently a text about twelve stars that are affecting specific body-parts by “touching” them, each followed by a remedy. This text could be seen as a pre-zodiological stage of melothesia.
The tablet’s reverse also consists of two sections: one column on the right contains an astro-medical zodiac scheme (‘stone-plant-wood’ for each sign) in combination with a hemerology, on the left (roughly three quarter of the tablet’s reverse) follows a micro-zodiac table.

The top row of the table consists of twelve squares with the zodiacal signs, below that an equal row with the assigned body-parts. Underneath each sign and body part are vertical sub-columns of squares with the names of animals, accompanied by numbers (referring to the micro-signs). The sequence of body parts in this text was first identified by J. Z. Wee in 2015, who uses the term ‘zodiac man’ for it.

The arrangement is the following:

Another thing that points to a Babylonian origin of melothesia is that the zodiacal form itself already had its forerunner in calendrical melothesia. It can be found in a group of medical texts from Sippar (northern Babylonia) dating to the late 6th or early 5th century BCE, and therefore older than the zodiac. In this form the body-parts are assigned to the twelve months of the Standard Babylonian Calendar.

There are four fragmentary tablets that could be used for a reconstruction of calendrical melothesia: BM 43558+, BM 42385, BM 42407, and BM 42655.

The first three of these texts treat the body-parts in their associated months and describe a therapy for each: ointments with oils, animal fats and healing stones, herbal potions, and short ritual instructions; although a diagnosis is never mentioned. BM 42655 is somewhat different: the text mentions certain
days, together with a stone-plant-wood-scheme that is identical with the zodiacal scheme that appears in the right column on the reverse of BM 56606 (see above). What follows is a sequence of body-parts which is in accordance with the calendrical melothesia documented in the other texts. The calendrical melothesia from the Sippar texts is the forerunner to Late Babylonian zodiacal melothesia, what shows that such a form of healing dates back at least to the late 6th century BCE, and is most likely of Babylonian origin.

The following table is a comparison of the reconstruction of calendrical and zodiacal melothesia.

	Calendrical Melothesia Logogram (Akkadian)	Zodiacal Melothesia
I	IGI.MEŠ (pānū), SAG.DU (qaqqadu) Face and head.	SAG.DU   Head.
II	GABA (irtu), GÚ (kišādu) Chest and neck.	ZI (napištu) GÚ Throat and neck.
III	ŠUII (qātā)   Hands.	Á (aḫu) MAŠ.SÌL (naglabu) Arm and shoulder.
IV	TI.MEŠ (ṣelānu)   Ribcage.	GABA/TI.MEŠ (?)   Chest/Ribcage.
V	ŠÀ (libbu)   Belly.	ŠÀ   Belly.
VI	GÚ.(MURGU) (eṣemṣēru) MURUB4 (qablu) Spine and waist.	GÚ.MURUB4   Spine and waist.
VII	(…)	GU.(DU) (qinnatu)   Buttocks.
VIII	(…)	PEŠ4 (biṣṣūru)   Female Genitalia.
IX	maḫirtu maḫirtu-leg(bone).	TUGUL (gilšu) Upper thigh.
X	DU10.GAM-iṣ (kimṣu) Knee/shin.	kimṣu   Knee/shin.
XI	ÚR.MEŠ (pēnū)   Legs.	ÚR   Leg(s).
XII	ŠUII.MEŠ (?)   ‘Hands’ (error for ‘feet’?).	GÌRII (šēpā)   Feet.

An arrangement of body parts ‘from head to feet’, this scheme, in Akkadian known as ištu muḫḫi adi šēpe, was also used, e.g. in the diagnostic-prognostic omen series Sakikkû. As mentioned above, the obverse of BM 56605 contains some diagnostic omens that resemble omens from Sakikkû. A sequence of twelve tablets (tablets 2–14) of this series is ordered according to the scheme ‘from head to feet’, what maybe inspired the later concept of melothesia in combination with the twelve months or the twelve signs.

Further reading:
Schreiber, M. F. (2019) ‘Late Babylonian Astrological Physiognomy’ in Johnson, J. C. and Stavru, A. (eds.) Visualizing the invisible with the human body: Physiognomy and ekphrasis in the ancient world (Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Cultures 10). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 119–140.

Wee, J. Z. (2015) ’Discovery of the Zodiac Man in Cuneiform,’ Journal of Cuneiform Studies 67, 217–233.

Am Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (MPIWG) wird 2022 mit der Internationalen Max Planck Research School „Knowledge and Its Resources: Historical Reciprocities“ (IMPRS-KIR) eine neue internationale Graduiertenschule zum Thema der historischen Wechselwirkungen zwischen Wissen und Wissensressourcen starten. Sie basiert auf einer Kooperation des MPIWG mit der Freien Universität Berlin, der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin und der Technischen Universität Berlin im Rahmen des Berliner Zentrums für Wissensgeschichte. Am Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (MPIWG) wird 2022 mit der Internationalen Max Planck Research School „Knowledge and Its Resources: Historical Reciprocities“ (IMPRS-KIR) eine neue internationale Graduiertenschule zum Thema der historischen Wechselwirkungen zwischen Wissen und Wissensressourcen starten. Sie basiert auf einer Kooperation des MPIWG mit der Freien Universität Berlin, der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin und der Technischen Universität Berlin im Rahmen des Berliner Zentrums für Wissensgeschichte.

An der Graduiertenschule werden Promovierende darin ausgebildet, Wissen, Ressourcen des Wissens sowie die vielfältigen Wechselwirkungen zwischen diesen beiden Kategorien zu analysieren. Im Zentrum des Programms steht eine „historisch-politische Epistemologie“, die eine Vielzahl historischer Ressourcen der Wissensentstehung in den Blick nimmt: politische Systeme, technische Infrastrukturen, soziale Interaktion, materielle Objekte und Medientechnologien.

Mit den Dissertationen wird die Wissensgeschichte an den Schnittstellen wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen neu gestaltet. Auf der einen Seite stehen die Wissenschafts-, Technik- und Medizingeschichte und -philosophie (HPSTM: History and Philosophy of Science, Technology, and Medicine), auf der anderen Regional Studies, Global Studies, Science & Technology Studies (STS), alle Felder der Geschichtswissenschaften, Medienwissenschaften, Museumswissenschaften, Archäologie, Kunstgeschichte, Literaturwissenschaft, Philologie, Umweltwissenschaften und Forschung im Bereich der Digital Humanities. Die Studierenden werden darin geschult, innovative Forschungsmethoden anzuwenden. Sie werden zu Fachgrößen ausgebildet, die in der Lage sind, die dringend benötigte vergleichende Perspektive, Reflexion und historische Tiefe in die Gestaltung von Wissensgesellschaften weltweit einzubringen und sich in einem breiten Spektrum von Berufsfeldern zu betätigen, ob im Journalismus, in sozialen Medien, Kunst, Museen und Archiven oder im Bereich der Wissenschafts- und Bildungspolitik.

Das Leitungsgremium der IMPRS-KIR, dem Prof. Dr. J. Cale Johnson von der Wissensgeschichte des Altertums an der Freien Universität Berlin beigetreten ist, ist die „Principal Teaching Faculty“, der neun Professorinnen und Professoren der vier Partnerinstitutionen angehören. Sie werden von der Sprecherin, Prof. Dr. Dagmar Schäfer (MPIWG), und den beiden Co-Sprecherinnen Prof. Dr. Viktoria Tkaczyk (HU) und Prof. Dr. Christine von Oertzen (MPIWG/HU) repräsentiert. Ihnen obliegt die Federführung beim Aufbau der neuen Graduiertenschule. An der IMPRS-KIR wird es insgesamt 15 Promotionsstellen geben, die erste Kohorte von fünf Studierenden wird am 1. September 2022 ihre Arbeit aufnehmen.

Für weitere Informationen zu IMPRS-KIR klicken Sie bitte hier.