Researchers have finally deciphered a set of 4,000-year-old Babylonian tablets — and the messages they carry are not about bright hopes for the future but rather almost entirely about death, doom and despair.
A new study suggests that four clay tablets bearing cuneiform inscriptions predict the death of kings and the fall of civilizations. Published in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies.
The ancient artefacts were discovered over 100 years ago in present-day Iraq and are part of the British Museum’s collection but have only now been translated into modern language.
Fortune-telling among the peoples of southern Mesopotamia depended on the movement of the moon, specifically a lunar eclipse – when the moon falls behind the Earth’s shadow.
The report’s authors, Andrew George and Junko Taniguchi, wrote that these manuscripts “represent the oldest examples of lunar eclipse sign sets yet discovered.”
According to the study, the Babylonians analyzed eclipses according to the time of night, the movement of the shadow, its duration and dates, and then used them to predict various events.
They believed that “events in the sky” were signs from the gods warning of the future of peoples and rulers residing on Earth.
Signs inscribed on the tablets include “A king will die, and Elam will be destroyed,” a region of Mesopotamia in what is now Iran, if “the eclipse disappears from its center at once.” [and] “Clear everything at once.” Live Science reported.
Another predicts the “fall of Subartu and Akkad,” two other regions at the time, if “the eclipse begins in the south and then disappears.”
Other worrying signs indicate that “there will be an attack on the land by a swarm of locusts,” “there will be losses of livestock,” and “a large army will fall.”
Some of these signs may be based on previously observed coincidences between the timing of different eclipses and major events, according to George, emeritus professor of Babylonian at the University of London.
“Some of the signs may have their origin in an actual experience — noticing a premonition followed by a catastrophe,” he told Live Science.
However, it is likely that most of these claims were based on theories rather than real evidence.
The professor added that these tablets most likely date back to Sippar, an ancient Babylonian city located southwest of what is now known as Baghdad.
It was used by the king’s advisors to predict future events.
“Those who advised the king would have observed the night sky and matched their observations with academic texts on celestial omens,” the authors wrote in the study.
To get a second opinion on the likelihood of these signs, advisors would examine the entrails of sacrificed animals “to determine whether the king was in real danger,” according to the researchers.
George and Taniguchi wrote that they also performed rituals to ward off bad omens and prevent predictions from coming true.
Or the Babylonians would appoint a substitute king before the coming danger so that that person would bear the brunt of the gods’ wrath – and eventually be killed – while the real king remained unharmed, According to NASA.
The space administration noted that Babylonian astronomers were able to predict lunar eclipses “with reasonable accuracy.”
The discovery comes on the heels of two ancient structures in North America collapsing within just nine days of each other — a pyramid at the Ihuatzio archaeological site in the Mexican state of Michoacan and the Double Arch in Utah.
But there is a more supernatural explanation according to members of the Purépecha tribe.
“For our ancestors, the builders, this was a bad omen indicating that an important event was coming,” Tarriaquiri Alvarez told The Sun.
