Decoded 4000-year-old Babylonian tablets reveal detailed omens linked to lunar eclipses, predicting war and Kings’ fates

Ancient astronomers of Babylon appear to have been poetically on the money when it comes to foretelling the future, and it makes worrying reading.

“An idiot - a king without claim - will seize a throne, and there will be war in the land”.

History may not repeat. But it does often rhyme.

And that’s something the ancient astronomers of Babylon appear to have relied on when it came to foretelling the future.

Famine. Plague. Drought. Assassinations. War.

A set of four 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablets long buried among 150,000 others of their kind in the archives of the British Museum have finally been deciphered.

It turns out they catalogue the most evil of all signs and portents: The lunar eclipse.

The tablets refer to a set of more than 60 omens.

They describe how to interpret lunar eclipses - when the shadow of the Earth falls on the Moon - to determine which omen applies.

The date. Time of night. The movements of the shadow and its duration.

Old Babylonian astrologers believed such natural events “were coded signs placed there by the gods as warnings about the future prospects of those on Earth,” the researchers write in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies.

Naturally, ancient kings and priests wanted to know what the strange happenings in the sky meant.

Newly translated Old Babylonian prophecy texts. Picture: British Museum

And their oracles needed both compelling answers with enough wriggle room to tell a fragile ego what they wanted to hear.

“The observation of celestial portents was a serious business for the body politic,” write Emeritus Professor Andrew George and Assyrologist Junko Taniguchi.

“Underpinning the whole procedure were the texts that collected celestial omens, which cast in scholarly, written form the theoretical knowledge that codified what was probably already ancient oral lore.”

Secrets of the Blood Moon

Adventurers and enthusiasts visiting modern-day Iraq in the 1800s collected the baked clay blocks. Without the context of where they were found, the then-untranslatable writings were stored for another day.

Their potential significance was first recognised in the 1970s.

But it’s taken until now for a comprehensive translation and analysis to be completed.

And that’s revealed them to be “the oldest sources of lunar-eclipse omens from Babylonia,” the researchers state.

“To sum up, Tablet A was very probably written in the eighteenth century BCE, less certainly Tablet D. Tablets B and C date to the seventeenth century,” the study’s authors write.

“They are all found to bear witness to a single text which organises the omens of lunar eclipse by time of night, movement of shadow, duration and date.”

The tablets have been translated. Picture: British Museum

The originals were discovered in Iraq in the 1800s. Picture: British Museum

In essence, they’re attempts to interpret dark divinations.

“There is ample evidence to show that astrological observation was part of an elaborate method of protecting the king and regulating his behaviour in conformity with the wishes of the gods,” the study reads.

Celestial signs involving the Moon were expected to invoke evil.

The texts helped determine what form that evil would take.

Such helpful tips include:

If an eclipse takes place in the middle of the night, it signifies economic unrest.

If an eclipse becomes obscured all at once, a king will die.

If an eclipse is obscured until dawn, the omen applies to the whole world.

“The origins of some of the omens may have lain in actual experience—observation of portent followed by catastrophe,” Professor George told media.

These unrelated chains of events (correlations) were then written down for future prophets to interpret.

They have been meticulously stored and preserved. Picture: British Museum

This eclipse needs to be tested …

Some of the oracular interpretations were very specific.

“A king who is famous will perish,

“His son, who has not been nominated, will seize the throne

“And there will be war

“The land will become depopulated, his cities will turn into a desolation.”

It’s not the kind of assessment likely to earn a promotion.

But Babylon’s prophets had an answer for that.

“If the prediction associated with a given omen was threatening, for example, “a king will die,” then an oracular inquiry by extispicy (reading the entrails of a sacrificial animal) was conducted to determine whether the king was in real danger,” says the study.

Even if the evil portents were confirmed, the oracles could still offer their king a solution.

After all, the very fact they had identified the specific threat gave their king the ability to act!

Divining the nature of the omen allowed specific prayers, sacrifices and rituals to be invoked to avert that specific evil and invoke good luck.

These prophets of doom took their task very seriously.

So much so, in fact, that the one clearly positive omen came with a proviso attached:

“There will be rain in the sky and floodwater in the rivers, crops will flourish;

“A king will make peace with kings.

“This eclipse is set aside for testing.”

It’s an act of divination doubt that caught the eye of the researchers.

“Since lunar eclipses generally portended evil, it was perhaps wise to be sceptical of any positive prediction and seek corroboration,” they observe.

Originally published as Decoded 4000-year-old Babylonian tablets reveal detailed omens linked to lunar eclipses, predicting war and Kings’ fates