MUL.APIN

MUL.APIN (𒀯𒀳) is the conventional title given to a Babylonian compendium that deals with many diverse aspects of Babylonian astronomy and astrology.

It is in the tradition of earlier star catalogues, the so-called Three Stars Each lists, but represents an expanded version based on more accurate observation, likely compiled around 1000 BC.[1] The text lists the names of 66 stars and constellations and further gives a number of indications, such as rising, setting and culmination dates, that help to map out the basic structure of the Babylonian star map.

The text is preserved in a 7th-century BC copy on a pair of tablets, named for their incipit, corresponding to the first constellation of the year, MULAPIN "The Plough", identified with Triangulum plus Gamma Andromedae.

Date

The earliest copy of the text so far discovered was made in 686 BC; however the majority of scholars now believe that the text was originally compiled around 1000 BC.[2] The latest copies of Mul-Apin are currently dated to around 300 BC.

Astrophysicist Bradley Schaefer claims that the observations reported in these tablets were made in the region of Assur at around the year 1370 BC.[3]

Parts

The text runs to two tablets and possibly a third auxiliary tablet, and is organised as follows:

Tablet 1

The first tablet is the most important resource for any potential reconstruction of the Babylonian star map as its various sections locate the constellations in relation to each other and to the calendar. Tablet 1 has six main sections:

Most of these stars and constellations are further attributed to a variety of Near Eastern deities.[4]

Even though the Babylonians used a luni-solar calendar, which added an occasional thirteenth month to the calendar, MUL.APIN, like most texts of Babylonian astrology, uses an ‘ideal’ year composed of 12 ‘ideal’ months each of which was composed of an ‘ideal’ 30 days. In this scheme the equinoxes were set on the 15th day of the first and seventh month, and the solstices on the 15th day of the fourth and tenth month.

Tablet 2

The second tablet is of greater interest to historians of science as it furnishes us with many of the methods and procedures used by Babylonian astrologers to predict the movements of the sun, moon and planets as well as the various methods used to regulate the calendar. The contents of tablet 2 can be summarised under ten headings as follows:

There is some evidence that a third, and so far unrecovered, tablet was sometimes appended to the series. To judge from its opening line it started with a section of scholarly explanations of celestial omens.[5]

See also

References

  1. ↑ John H. Rogers, "Origins of the ancient contellations: I. The Mesopotamian traditions", Journal of the British Astronomical Association 108 (1998) 9–28
  2. ↑ Mul.Apin edited by Hunger & Pingree, page 9. Earlier scholars such as Papke and Van der Waerden posited a date around 2300 BC, which has been criticised by Hunger & Pingree who opt for a date around 1000 BC.
  3. ↑ "Astronomer traces Zodiac's time and place of birth". The Inquirer. 4 June 2007. Retrieved 2009-11-13.
  4. ↑ Mul-Apin by Gavin White
  5. ↑ Mul.Apin edited by Hunger & Pingree pages 8-9.
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