Babylonian astronomy

Babylonian astronomy was the study of objects in the sky during the early history of Mesopotamia. The Babylonians used a special numeral system based on 60, called sexagesimal. This made it easier to work with big or tiny numbers, unlike our modern system based on ten.

In the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Babylonian astronomers started a new way of studying the sky. They carefully wrote down what they saw and used logic to guess where planets and stars would move. This way of thinking helped science grow and was later used by Greek and other thinkers. The Babylonians split the sky into parts and gave signs to different areas, which helped them follow the planets.

Most of what we know about Babylonian astronomy comes from old clay tablets. These tablets have diaries, math, and ways to study the sky. Even though only pieces of them remain, they show that Babylonian astronomy was the first to use math to explain how stars and planets move. Their work helped astronomy in many places, including the Hellenistic world, India, Islam, and the West.

Old Babylonian astronomy

See also: Babylonian star catalogues

Babylonian astronomers were very good at watching the sky and writing down what they saw. They divided the sky into sections called zodiacal signs. They made lists of stars and how they moved, using tools like water clocks to measure time.

The Babylonians were the first to create ideas about how planets move. One of their oldest records, the Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa, shows the movements of the planet Venus. They thought events on Earth could be predicted using signs from the sky, called omens. The MUL.APIN is an important book they wrote. It includes information about stars, the movements of planets, and events like eclipses.

Main article: Ancient near eastern cosmology

Main article: MUL.APIN

Neo-Babylonian astronomy

Neo-Babylonian astronomy was the study of stars and planets by Chaldean astronomers in ancient Mesopotamia during the Neo-Babylonian, Achaemenid, Seleucid, and Parthian periods. These astronomers kept careful records of the sky. They noticed patterns, like an 18-year cycle for lunar eclipses called the Saros cycle.

They made tables, called ephemerides, to guess where planets and the Moon would appear. Their work used simple math, but they also used geometry sometimes. An important person was Seleucus of Seleucia. He thought the Sun was at the center of our solar system, and that the Earth spun and moved around the Sun. We do not have his original writings, but later writers talked about his ideas and work.

Babylonian influence on Hellenistic astronomy

Many ancient Greek writers, like mathematicians, astronomers, and geographers, have kept works that we still have today. For a long time, people forgot about the achievements of earlier civilizations, especially in Babylonia. Since the 19th century, archaeologists found important sites and many writings on clay tablets about astronomy.

Herodotus said that the Greeks learned important ideas from the Babylonians. These ideas included using a gnomon to tell time and splitting the day into two twelve-hour parts. These discoveries show how Babylonian astronomy helped later Greek thinkers.