Compilation of MUL.APIN and Babylonian astronomy

Date

c. 1000 BCE

Category

Science, technology & invention

Region

Mesopotamia (Iraq)

Era

Ancient Civilizations

Significance

By around 1000 BCE Babylonian scholars had compiled the astronomical compendium known as MUL.APIN ('the Plough Star'), the earliest surviving comprehensive treatise on Mesopotamian astronomy, written in cuneiform on clay tablets.

It catalogues some seventy stars and constellations, organises them into three celestial 'paths' attributed to the gods Enlil, Anu and Ea, lists heliacal rising dates, planetary visibility periods, rules for the luni-solar calendar including intercalation, and celestial omens. This systematic record-keeping rested on a sexagesimal (base-60) number system inherited from the Sumerians, which enabled precise handling of fractions and the division of the circle and the day into sixty parts, a legacy still embedded in our measurement of time and angles. Babylonian observational astronomy and arithmetical methods for predicting celestial phenomena later profoundly influenced Greek and Indian astronomy. The tradition exemplifies the ancient world's fusion of mathematics, calendar-keeping, religion and divination, treating the heavens both as a measurable order and as a source of omens for kings and states.

Empires active in c. 1000 BCE

• Zhou Dynasty
  1046 BCE – 256 BCE
• Kingdom of Kush
  1070 BCE – 350 CE
• Phoenician City-States
  1200 BCE – 539 BCE
• Elamite Kingdom
  2700 BCE – 539 BCE

Related science, technology & invention events

• Standardisation of the Phoenician alphabet
  c. 1050 BCE
• The Cascajal Block: earliest writing in the Americas
  c. 900 BCE
• Casting of the Houmuwu Ding, Peak of Shang Bronze Art
  c. 1200 BCE
• Iron Smelting Develops in the Nok Culture of West Africa
  c. 800 BCE
• The Bronze-to-Iron transition and the early Iron Age
  c. 1200 BCE
• Old Babylonian mathematics: base-60 and Plimpton 322
  c. 1800–1600 BCE

Further reading

A Little History of Science

The wider story

A Little History of Science

William Bynum

Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.

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