This volume presents the edition and translation of first-millennium BC Babylonian omens derived from the appearance and movements of the planet Jupiter. David Pingree’s introduction and astronomical commentary shows the extent of the Babylonian scholars’ knowledge of astronomical phenomena.

This third fascicle of Babylonian Planetary Omens contains the edition of all cuneiform texts dealing with the planet Venus known to us. Most of these tablets are kept in the British Museum; the large number of unpublished texts were transliterated and the previously published texts were checked and collated from

MUL.APIN, written sometime before the 8th century BC, was the most widely copied astronomical text in ancient Mesopotamia: a compendium including information such as star lists, descriptions of planetary phases, mathematical schemes for the length of day and night, a discussion of the luni-solar calendar and rules for intercalation, and

There is no doubt that Ancient Near Eastern divination is firmly rooted in religion, since all ominous signs were thought to have been sent by gods, and the invocation of omens was embedded in rituals. Nonetheless, the omen compendia display many aspects of a generally scientific nature. In their attempt

This work provides an in-depth investigation of after-the-fact predictions in ancient Near Eastern texts from roughly 1200 B.C.E.–70 C.E. It argues that the Akkadian, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek works discussed are all part of a developing scribal discourse of “mantic historiography” by which scribes blend their local traditions of history