In the Path of the Moon: Babylonian Celestial Divination and Its Legacy. By Francesca Rochberg. S... more In the Path of the Moon: Babylonian Celestial Divination and Its Legacy. By Francesca Rochberg. Studies in Ancient Magic and Divination, vol. 6. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Pp. xxii + 445, frontispiece. $216.
This paper views the relevance of cuneiform texts to the history of science from inside, i.e., fr... more This paper views the relevance of cuneiform texts to the history of science from inside, i.e., from the perspective of the available sources, as well as from outside, i.e., from the perspective of historians of science outside the field of Assyriology. It reviews some of the methodological problems that beset the reconstruction of science in the ancient Near East as well as a way forward, which acknowledges localism and pluralism as well the compelling continuity from cuneiform traditions of knowledge to later counterparts (astronomy, astrology, magic, astral-medicine). Cuneiform texts will not instantiate a universal or transcultural science but are essential if science is to be seen as embedded in culture and history.
Claroscuro. Revista del Centro de Estudios sobre Diversidad Cultural, 2021
Over the course of many centuries, cuneiform scribe-scholars produced a textual culture of learni... more Over the course of many centuries, cuneiform scribe-scholars produced a textual culture of learning that organized knowledge of the phenomenal world as defined by their particular interests. The ancient term for this culture was ṭupšarrūtu “the art of the scribe.” That we grant this culture the designation scientific is not without problems from the perspectives both of modern philosophy of science and of conventional historiography of science. This essay reflects on the anachronisms entailed in transposing such ideas about science to the premodern cuneiform world and the consequences these ideas have on a historiography of science inclusive of cuneiform scientific texts.
This paper considers Babylonian astronomical predictive schemes as a source for the study of reas... more This paper considers Babylonian astronomical predictive schemes as a source for the study of reasoning and representing via modeling. Two principal questions are addressed: first, whether Babylonian astronomical modeling can be usefully included in the conversation about scientific reasoning with models, and second, how and what the representational value of the practice of astronomical modeling was in ancient Babylonia. It is found that the Babylonian astronomical schemes demonstrate the adaptability and various capabilities of the process of modeling as a powerful tool of representation for scientific knowledge and theorizing.
ASTRONOMY IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST Poetic Astronomy in the Ancient Near East: The Reflexes of Cel... more ASTRONOMY IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST Poetic Astronomy in the Ancient Near East: The Reflexes of Celestial Science in Ancient Mesopotamian, Ugaritic, and Israelite Narrative. Jeffrey L. Cooley (Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Indiana, 2013). Pp. x + 396. $54.50. ISBN 978-157506-262-4.It is perhaps difficult to imagine the impact the recovery of ancient Mesopotamian culture had on the Western world in the late nineteenth century. In 1872 when George Smith, then an assistant in the British Museum, discovered the Assyrian version of the biblical flood story, it is said he "jumped up and rushed about the room in a great state of excitement, and, to the astonishment of those present, began to undress himself".1 Equally momentous was the discovery of Babylonian astronomy, first made public in 1881 by the Jesuits Joseph Epping and J. N. Strassmaier.2 Each of these discoveries fuelled cultural diffusionist ideas about Babylonian origins, not only of stories in the Bible, but of world mythology, astronomy and astrology. Such ideas had a temporary but widespread influence through the school of Pan-Babylonism, a short-lived sport (in the botanical sense) of mostly German nineteenth-century Orientalism.Jeffrey Cooley's Poetic astronomy in the ancient Near East begins and ends with discussion and critique of the Pan-Babylonists, who read Near Eastern mythology as astronomical allegory and anachronistically attributed to those stories great astronomical knowledge, supposedly dating to c. 3000 b.c., but in fact only emerging either in the latter half of the first millennium b.c (the zodiac) or not at all (precession). Some participants in the school (Hugo Winckler) were also involved in the so-called Bibel-Babel controversy which inflamed scholarly opinion and found a formidable opponent in F. X. Kugler, s.j., one of the founding fathers of Babylonian mathematical astronomy. Kugler published an article entitled "On the ruins of Panbabylonism",3 a clever pun on Claudius James Rich's important memoir On the ruins of Babylon (1818), and followed it up with a monograph, Im Bannkreis Babels: Panbabylonistische Konstrucktionen und religionsgeschicltliche Tatsachen (1910), which demolished all credibility of the pan-Babylonists regarding the history of astronomy.One of the detrimental effects of Pan-Babylonism, besides the dissemination of highly fanciful and erroneous interpretations of natureand star-mythology and claims of the diffusion of such ideas from Babylonia to the rest of the world, was to drive a long-lasting wedge between scholars of Babylonian astral science and those of cuneiform literary texts. After Kugler's demolition of pan-Babylonist claims, the very idea that mythology and astral science might have some intertextual resonance became virtually anathema and no Assyriologist in his or her right mind would touch the subject for nearly one hundred years. This division has been slowly eroding in the last generation, and Cooley's study can be viewed as a culmination of this change in attitude. Poetic astronomy in the ancient Near East removes that wedge, provides a corrective to Pan-Babylonism (p. 87), and considers the cultural continuities between narrative and technical literatures, not only of the cuneiform world, but those of ancient Ugarit and Israel as well. The book's thesis is that contemporary knowledge concerning the heavens is indeed found in ancient Near Eastern literature, thus reflecting a cultural matrix in which science and literature are not separate.Taking up Mesopotamian, Ugaritic, and Israelite traditions in turn, as is laid out methodologically in the first chapter, Cooley surveys each and discusses what is now known about celestial science in these distinct yet not unrelated cultures, and analyses their narrative texts in the light of their particular intellectual backgrounds. Chapter 2 usefully surveys the various classes of astronomical/astrological cuneiform sources, from divinatory to astronomical texts, making critical use of David Brown's PCP (prediction of celestial phenomena) paradigm and EAE (Enuma Anu Enlil) paradigm to bring historiographic structure to the long chronological span of the sources. …
In the Path of the Moon: Babylonian Celestial Divination and Its Legacy. By Francesca Rochberg. S... more In the Path of the Moon: Babylonian Celestial Divination and Its Legacy. By Francesca Rochberg. Studies in Ancient Magic and Divination, vol. 6. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Pp. xxii + 445, frontispiece. $216.
This paper views the relevance of cuneiform texts to the history of science from inside, i.e., fr... more This paper views the relevance of cuneiform texts to the history of science from inside, i.e., from the perspective of the available sources, as well as from outside, i.e., from the perspective of historians of science outside the field of Assyriology. It reviews some of the methodological problems that beset the reconstruction of science in the ancient Near East as well as a way forward, which acknowledges localism and pluralism as well the compelling continuity from cuneiform traditions of knowledge to later counterparts (astronomy, astrology, magic, astral-medicine). Cuneiform texts will not instantiate a universal or transcultural science but are essential if science is to be seen as embedded in culture and history.
Claroscuro. Revista del Centro de Estudios sobre Diversidad Cultural, 2021
Over the course of many centuries, cuneiform scribe-scholars produced a textual culture of learni... more Over the course of many centuries, cuneiform scribe-scholars produced a textual culture of learning that organized knowledge of the phenomenal world as defined by their particular interests. The ancient term for this culture was ṭupšarrūtu “the art of the scribe.” That we grant this culture the designation scientific is not without problems from the perspectives both of modern philosophy of science and of conventional historiography of science. This essay reflects on the anachronisms entailed in transposing such ideas about science to the premodern cuneiform world and the consequences these ideas have on a historiography of science inclusive of cuneiform scientific texts.
This paper considers Babylonian astronomical predictive schemes as a source for the study of reas... more This paper considers Babylonian astronomical predictive schemes as a source for the study of reasoning and representing via modeling. Two principal questions are addressed: first, whether Babylonian astronomical modeling can be usefully included in the conversation about scientific reasoning with models, and second, how and what the representational value of the practice of astronomical modeling was in ancient Babylonia. It is found that the Babylonian astronomical schemes demonstrate the adaptability and various capabilities of the process of modeling as a powerful tool of representation for scientific knowledge and theorizing.
ASTRONOMY IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST Poetic Astronomy in the Ancient Near East: The Reflexes of Cel... more ASTRONOMY IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST Poetic Astronomy in the Ancient Near East: The Reflexes of Celestial Science in Ancient Mesopotamian, Ugaritic, and Israelite Narrative. Jeffrey L. Cooley (Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Indiana, 2013). Pp. x + 396. $54.50. ISBN 978-157506-262-4.It is perhaps difficult to imagine the impact the recovery of ancient Mesopotamian culture had on the Western world in the late nineteenth century. In 1872 when George Smith, then an assistant in the British Museum, discovered the Assyrian version of the biblical flood story, it is said he "jumped up and rushed about the room in a great state of excitement, and, to the astonishment of those present, began to undress himself".1 Equally momentous was the discovery of Babylonian astronomy, first made public in 1881 by the Jesuits Joseph Epping and J. N. Strassmaier.2 Each of these discoveries fuelled cultural diffusionist ideas about Babylonian origins, not only of stories in the Bible, but of world mythology, astronomy and astrology. Such ideas had a temporary but widespread influence through the school of Pan-Babylonism, a short-lived sport (in the botanical sense) of mostly German nineteenth-century Orientalism.Jeffrey Cooley's Poetic astronomy in the ancient Near East begins and ends with discussion and critique of the Pan-Babylonists, who read Near Eastern mythology as astronomical allegory and anachronistically attributed to those stories great astronomical knowledge, supposedly dating to c. 3000 b.c., but in fact only emerging either in the latter half of the first millennium b.c (the zodiac) or not at all (precession). Some participants in the school (Hugo Winckler) were also involved in the so-called Bibel-Babel controversy which inflamed scholarly opinion and found a formidable opponent in F. X. Kugler, s.j., one of the founding fathers of Babylonian mathematical astronomy. Kugler published an article entitled "On the ruins of Panbabylonism",3 a clever pun on Claudius James Rich's important memoir On the ruins of Babylon (1818), and followed it up with a monograph, Im Bannkreis Babels: Panbabylonistische Konstrucktionen und religionsgeschicltliche Tatsachen (1910), which demolished all credibility of the pan-Babylonists regarding the history of astronomy.One of the detrimental effects of Pan-Babylonism, besides the dissemination of highly fanciful and erroneous interpretations of natureand star-mythology and claims of the diffusion of such ideas from Babylonia to the rest of the world, was to drive a long-lasting wedge between scholars of Babylonian astral science and those of cuneiform literary texts. After Kugler's demolition of pan-Babylonist claims, the very idea that mythology and astral science might have some intertextual resonance became virtually anathema and no Assyriologist in his or her right mind would touch the subject for nearly one hundred years. This division has been slowly eroding in the last generation, and Cooley's study can be viewed as a culmination of this change in attitude. Poetic astronomy in the ancient Near East removes that wedge, provides a corrective to Pan-Babylonism (p. 87), and considers the cultural continuities between narrative and technical literatures, not only of the cuneiform world, but those of ancient Ugarit and Israel as well. The book's thesis is that contemporary knowledge concerning the heavens is indeed found in ancient Near Eastern literature, thus reflecting a cultural matrix in which science and literature are not separate.Taking up Mesopotamian, Ugaritic, and Israelite traditions in turn, as is laid out methodologically in the first chapter, Cooley surveys each and discusses what is now known about celestial science in these distinct yet not unrelated cultures, and analyses their narrative texts in the light of their particular intellectual backgrounds. Chapter 2 usefully surveys the various classes of astronomical/astrological cuneiform sources, from divinatory to astronomical texts, making critical use of David Brown's PCP (prediction of celestial phenomena) paradigm and EAE (Enuma Anu Enlil) paradigm to bring historiographic structure to the long chronological span of the sources. …
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