Topic > Babylonian Astronomy - 685

Astronomy in Babylon was one of the first moments in history that gave evidence of a strong use of mathematical theory, before this it was believed that the earth was surrounded by a large mass on which the stars were attached. Magic, mysticism and the sky had a huge influence on the astronomy of those times. However, around 400 BC mathematics began to play a crucial role in determining lunar and solar theories, as well as planetary motion. Epping and Kugler were two scholars who, having discovered ancient tablets dating back to Babylonian times in the British museum, dedicated their lives to deciphering the tablets and without their efforts thousands of tablets containing information and data would still be hidden and an important part of history Babylonian. of astronomy would remain to be discovered in museums and libraries around the world. Approximately 300 of the recovered tablets contain mathematical astronomy, however, it has been estimated that approximately a thousand tablets copied by Pinches and Sachs (1900–1955) containing qualitative astronomical descriptions added to these texts. Lunar theory appears to be the predominant area of ​​Babylonian astronomy with over half of the texts relating to the subject. The Babylonian calendar was thought to be truly lunar, meaning that they based their months, starting from the first visibility of the new crescent and subsequently, their days began in the evening at the first visibility. Furthermore, the Babylonians observed decades of eclipses and knew that solar eclipses only occurred at the end of the month during the new crescent and lunar eclipses only occurred during the full moon. The Babylonians used cycles that consisted of 12, sometimes 13 months depending on the harvests... mid-paper... early 20th century. Kugler's work 'Babylonische Mondrechnung' (1900) was the first publication to contain procedural texts and remains to this day the most important procedural text for lunar system A. The move to phase two of the development of the decipherment of the Babylonian tablets came with Otto Neugebauer (1899-1990). Neugebauer spent twenty years interpreting and analyzing the tablets and in 1995 created the Astronomical Cuneiform Texts), the first standard edition of the corpus of mathematical astronomy. These procedural texts contain 108 tablets and fragments, including all published and unpublished tablets and fragments in the British Museum. Sachs and Schaumberger discovered the latest astronomical texts with the date of 75 AD. These theories proved to be of a very high level of mathematical nature, analogous to the equivalent Greek systems.