{"id":189,"date":"2024-10-11T11:13:38","date_gmt":"2024-10-11T09:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/knowtheancients\/?p=189"},"modified":"2024-10-16T08:51:35","modified_gmt":"2024-10-16T06:51:35","slug":"how-far-and-how-close-is-babylonian-horoscopy-to-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/knowtheancients\/2024\/10\/11\/how-far-and-how-close-is-babylonian-horoscopy-to-us\/","title":{"rendered":"How far and how close is Babylonian horoscopy to us?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

October 8, 2024, by Alessia Pilloni<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTell me your zodiac sign (and your ascendant) and I tell you what kind of person you are.\u201d Casting horoscopes is very popular nowadays. People of all ages and cultural backgrounds ask the stars about their character traits, about their compatibility with other people, or about how successful their career will be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is well established that the practice of casting horoscopes had its roots in Mesopotamia, and to be more precise \u2013 in Babylonia<\/strong>, at the end of 5th BC. At present, about thirty Babylonian horoscopes (Rochberg 1998) are known to us, and they were found in the cities of Babylon and Uruk, except for an unusual example found in Nippur. Babylonian astrology is a sophisticated science. It is the result of centuries of celestial divination<\/strong> and complex mathematical calculations<\/strong> that made it possible to predict the movements of celestial bodies. Horoscopes are not the only type of astrological text that the Babylonians produced, but they are the closest link to modern astrology. Were horoscopes made in the same way back then as they are made today? What has changed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Babylonian horoscopes are short cuneiform texts which all begin with an indication of a child’s birth date<\/strong>. Some of the tablets found in Uruk even record the child’s name. Next, they report the position of the planets<\/strong>: the Moon (s\u00een<\/em>), the Sun (\u0161\u00e1ma\u0161<\/em>), Jupiter (M\u00daL.BABBAR), Venus (dil-bat<\/em>), Mercury (GU4<\/sub>.UD), Saturn (GENNA) and Mars (AN). Their positions were calculated <\/strong>with sophisticated algorithms \u2013 and not observed. Astronomically calculated positions of planets at the time of birth are what in modern astrology is known as the \u201cnatal chart\u201d. Although the Copernican Revolution taught us that the earth is not at the center of the solar system (a thousand years after Aristarchus of Samos‘ first attempt), modern astrology still does it the Babylonian way \u2014the place of birth on earth is the point of reference, and the Sun, Moon and the other planets are located somewhere along an imaginary band, called the zodiac<\/strong>, which is divided into twelve equal parts, the zodiac signs. In modern popular astrology, great emphasis is given to the \u201cpersonal zodiac sign,\u201d which is the part of the zodiac where the sun was at the time of birth. For the Babylonians, the solar zodiac sign – as far as we know – did not play an important role in horoscopy. They would not, for instance, have formed a view such as \u201cI am a Scorpio, and thus stubborn by nature.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rest of the information contained in the Babylonian horoscopes varies widely. Some texts from Babylon also record the moon’s passage near certain reference stars (called \u201cnormal stars\u201d in the literature), the date of certain lunar events that occur at the beginning, middle and end of the month (\u201cLunar Three\u201d), and the dates of eclipses, solstices, and equinoxes that fall closest to the date on which the child came into the world. On the other hand, some texts from Uruk indicate whether the moon was moving up or down with respect to the zodiac at the time of birth. These elements, however, are foreign to modern astrology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what do all these astronomical elements tell us? What is their astrological significance? The texts themselves do not give us many clues as to how these astronomical data should be interpreted. Yet there are two \u201castrological\u201d terms that may point us toward a partial understanding of Babylonian horoscopy. These, always followed by the name of a planet, are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n