Babylonian-Assyrian Ittu [Omen] Astrology Before 550 BC

Definition: [Source Texts of Astrology] The Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh and Babylon: Vol II was published in London in 1900.

*Meaning unknown: possibly rust or mildew.

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Front page of: The Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh and Babylon: Vol II. Published in London in 1900, it was the work of R Cambell Thompson, assistant in the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities of the British Museum. Vol I - not shown on this web set - consisted of the transliteration into the Roman alphabet of the cuneiform inscriptions. Vol II - on this web site - contained the translations into English.

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The translation of a Babylonian astrological tablet of a Moon halo omen dating from more than two and a half thousand years ago:. First, the cuneiform writing on the tablet is carefully recorded. then it is transliterated into the Latin alphabet. Finally, it is translated into English.

Stela of Ashurbanipal [king of Assyria, 669 - 631 BC]. Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh forms the majority of the astrological tablets that have come down to us from Neo-Assyria. Ashurbanipal is shown lifting up a large basket of earth for the ritual molding of the first brick of a temple to Nabu, god of writing. British Museum ANE 90865.

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Stela of Nabonidus, with astrological symbols [Neo-Babylonian dynasty, 555 - 539 BC]. Nabonidus was the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, captured by Cyrus the Great when Babylon fell to the Persians in 539 BC. British Museum ANE 90837.

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When do these Astrological Records Date From?

The clay tablets covered with cuneiform writing which make up this unique astrological record date from before about 550 BC. They were found in the 19th century by archeologists excavating the ruins of the city of Nineveh [modern day Mosul], capital of the Neo-Assyrian empire, and the city of Babylon.

Babylon fell to Cyrus the Great of Persia in 539 BC, marking the end of the city as an independent power with its own king. [Cyrus is famous in biblical history for releasing the Jew's from their Babylonian captivity.] The Neo-Assyrian capital, Nineveh, had in turn fallen to the Neo-Babylonians seventy years earlier in 609 BC. These dates give us the latest possible dates for the tablets, but some are perhaps as much as a century older.

Is Babylonian Astrology Before 550 BC the Same as Ours Today?

Though our astrology is a direct descendent of Babylonian astrology [the name we give to Mesopotamian astrology in general] the middle-period astrology of the Babylonians and Assyrians - as shown by these records - is very different to what we have today. Their astrology was wholly concerned by ittu, Akkadian for what nowadays we would describe as omens.

* The Moon, not the Sun, was the most important astrological object in their heavens. Most of their astrology was concerned with aspects of the Moons appearance - its phases and calendar appearances - or planetary and stellar conjunctions with the Moon.

* However, the Babylonian astrologers believed many other aspects of the skies to have some importance in divination: a halo around the moon, clouds, storms, thunder, earthquakes and eclipses, even curious births. This is a long way from the purely planetary astrology of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos seven centuries later - the astrology we still work with today.

* The planets were truly Gods, not mere celestial bodies. What we now call the planet Venus, was the Goddess Ishtar, for example, and similarly Jupiter was Marduk, the chief Babylonian god.

* Neither a 360º Zodiac, nor  30º Zodiac divisions were as yet used astrologically to describe the position of the planets. [Cuneiform horoscopes, with planetary positions against a Zodiac, do not appear before the 3rd century BC.]  There is also no indication that the Babylonians had any concept of a House.

* However, many - though not all - of the Zodiac Constellations we know today had become fixed in astrologers minds, but these were those that lay on the Path of the Moon, not the Sun. Certain stars of these astrological Constellations, notably Regulus, in Leo, the Lion, had particular importance.

* Whereas in modern astrology the placement of a planet in a sign is all important, this concept seems unimportant to the Babylonians at this time.  Conjunctions of planets especially with the Moon were the key astrological concepts.

* There was as yet almost no concept of natal astrology - no astrologer tried to predict the future of an individual from his or her date of birth - and therefore the standard horoscope as we know it today did not exist. The first, very brief, one - a collection of natal planetary positions, without any corresponding interpretation of them - is datable to 409 BC. Similarly, the concept of Rising Sign did not yet exist - the first recorded horoscope containing one dates to the first century BC.

* Astrology did not yet exist as a personal aid; astrology concerned the king and the land but had almost nothing to say about ordinary people. In fact, there did not seem to have been the concept that astrology could say anything about ordinary people.

* Astrologers made no long term predictions - they did not try to predict anything over the period of years.

* Astrologers made very short term predictions - events that would happen within days or weeks.

* There seems to have been the concept that astrology was not fate - otherwise what use would it have been? Astrology consisted of warnings - omens - from the Gods. Armed with these warnings the predicted events could be warded off by - usually the King - taking the right actions.

* Though the Babylonians had charted the positions of many stars before 1000 BC, there seems to have been no concept in the omens of predicting the movement of planets against these stars. Instead, planetary astrology seems to have been completely observational. The omens were based on interpreting what was observed not predicting it. Perhaps - at this time - the Babylonians simply lacked the ability to predict the positions of the planets against the constellations.

* Similarly, it seems very likely that the Babylonians at this time did not know where the Sun was against the constellations, unless they could actually see this during in an Eclipse. On the occasions where the Sun is mentioned in an omen, it concerns the day time appearance of the Sun - usually with respect to the Moon - not where it might lie against the stars [had they been visible.]

* The Babylonians could, however, predict the Sun's position relative to the Moon's and hence to some extent Eclipses. [See for example Omen 272.] Evidence from records suggests that they did this by chronological tables of past observations of Eclipses, which started consistently from the reign of King Nabonassar of Assyria [747 - 732 BC]. [Incomplete ones exist from several centuries earlier than that.] Patterns seen in the tables allowed them to predict future eclipses.

* The Babylonians did not yet have the idea of a Celestial Sphere of constellations against which the Sun's position could be charted. This notion of the heavens did not appear until the time of the Classical Greeks. [The Babylonians at this time also had not discovered that the Earth was spherical.  They considered the world to be flat, with the sky suspended above it.]