DIREITA DA
GHERARDO GNOLI
Vol. LXXVIII
FROM B,ABYLON TO BIKANER
1997
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TUTII I DIRITII RJSERVATI
Finito di stampare nel mese di luglio 1997
Grafica: «Cristal», Via degli Orti di Galba, 26 - 00152 Roma - Stam.pa «STI», Via Sesto Celere, 3 - 00152 Roma
CO TENTS
Abbreviations ... .. ..... ... ....... ,, ........... ... .......... .. ... .... .... ......... .. ......... ...... .. .. ." ... . 7
Introduction ........... ... ..... .... ... .... ... ...... ~ ..... ...... .... ..... .................. ..... .... .... ... 9
Chapter 2. The Origins of Greek Astrolog .......... ..... .. .. ....... ... ... .......... ... 21
Chapter 3. Babylonian Omens and Greek Astrolog in India .... ..... .. .... 31
Chapter 4 . The Recovery of Sasanian Astrology ............ ...... ......... .. ...... 39
Chapter 5. Kanaka: an lndian (?)Astrologer at Hiirun al-Rashid Court 51
Chapter 6. Arabic Astrolog in B zantium .. ..... ........... ............ ... .... ... .. .. 63
Chapter 7. Tajika: Persian A trolog in Sanskrit ... .... .. ..... ............... ..... 79
Chapter 8. Astronom at the Court of Aniipasif!Iha .. ...... ... .. ... .... ..... .... .. 91
Indices .. ....... ....... .. ... ... ......... .... .... .......... ... ...... ....... ....... .... ........... ... ... ... 105
ABCD: F. Rochberg-Halton Aspects of Babylonian Celestial Divination, Horn 1988.
ABOR/: Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.
ACT: 0. Neugebauer, Astronomical Cuneiform Texts, 3 vols., London 1955.
AfK: Archiv fii,· K,eilschriftforschung.
AfO: Archi, fiir Orieniforschung.
Bl: Bibliotheca lndi a.
BO: Bibliotheca Orientalis.
BPO: E. Reiner & D .. Pingree Bqb Ionian Planetary Omens 2 fascs., Malibu 1975-1981.
BSOAS: Bulletin of the School of Orienwl and African Studies ..
CCAG: Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum 12 ols. in 20 parts, BruxeHes 1898-11953 ..
CESS: D. Pingree Census of the Exact Sciences in Sanskrit Series A, vol . 1-5 Philadelphia 19170,-1994.
Cl/: Corpus lnscriptiomtm /ndicarurn.
Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 16 vol ., ew York, l 970-1980.
Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Grazer Morgenlandische Studien.
Gaekwad Oriental Series.
HAMA : 0 . Neugebauer, History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy 3 vols., New York 1975.
HOS:
JAOS:
JCS:
JEOL:
IHA :
JHAS:
JNES :
JWCI:
OLZ:
Journal of Cuneiform Studies.
Journal for the History of Astronomy.
Journal for the History of Arabic Science.
Journal of Near Eastern Studies.
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes .
Orientalische Literaturzeitung.
Revue d''Assyriologie .
Singhi Jain Series.
Zeitschriftfur Assyriologie.
ZGA-IW: Zeitschrift fur Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissen­ schaften.
ZPE: Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik.
8
INTRODUCTION
Thi coHection of e ay i intended to explore the development of cele - tial omen in Mesopotamia their relation hip to the a trology developed in the Hellenistic period by the Greeks, and the spread of astrology to the East and its amplification there. In the e tudie I ha e attempted to illu trate the incredible facility with which the e cience , which serve as an example for other ystem of knowledge, were tran mitted from one culture to another, and to indicate a few way in which the recipient cultures changed the re­ ceived theorie .. I have and w iH write more extensi el elsewhere about the technical tran formations that accompanied the transmissions ..
For thi book i not a technical hi tory of the origins and internal devel­ opment of a trology but a imp le narrative ba ed on all of the known origi­ nal source , of a number of case of transmi· ion. The fir t and last chapters deal with the tran mi ion of knowledge wiihin the cultures of Me opo­ tamia and lndia re pectively~ the · econd with the creation of a trology, in part from material tran mitted from Mesopotamia in the Greek East~ the third with the tran mis ion of astrolog to India from Greece; the fourth with the evidence for the tran mi ion of a trology to Sasanian Iran from Greece and India~ the fifth with an Indian astrologer erving some of the early cAbba id caJiphs· the ixth with the tran mw ion of Arabic astrology to Byzantium; and the eventh with the tran mission of Arabic/Persian as­ trology to India. The e idenoe that each of the e tran mi . ion wa an his­ torical reality re ts on three foundation : the direct tatements by the recipi­ ents concerning the ource of their knowledue, the u e of tran literated technical term and the improbabilit that oomple theorie which as I hope aU my reader . will agree are invalid as explanation of the world would
9
be constructed independently in different culture . The arne general con­ siderations provide the evidence for similar transmi ion of a tronom .
* * *
These eight essays are based on a series of lectures that I gave in Rome, Bologna, and Venice in June 1995. I am most grateful to my generou ho t at the Unjversities of those three cities and at IsMEO who made every effort to make my visit to their institutions enjoyable and rewarding. I am particu­ larly indebted to Antonio Panaino, who organized with incredible efficiency my entire program, and to Gherardo Gnoli, who has graciou ly accepted this book for publication in the 'Serie Orientale Roma'. Finally I thank my wife, Isabelle, who typed the manuscript with her usual uncommon accu­ racy. To her I dedicate this book.
Providence, RI. 29 November 1995
10
CHAPTER 1 MESOPOTAMIA CELESTIAL OMENS
The reading of cele tial omen was a relati el. late development within the Me opotamian cience of omen 1
, following after extispicy, oneiromanc , teratology and phy iognom and more or le s contempora­ neou with animal and plant omen . ormall the god communicated with the king through exti picy, in which in re ponse to a question, Samas, the Sun god conveyed the god repl b contorting the liver and other internal organs of a heep2
• By cele tial omen the gods without being asked any question, voluntaril communicated to the king their intentions by altering the normal appearance and behaviour of the tar and planets, which serve as the phy ical manife tation of the di ine pm ers in the world of men. The description of the ominou phenomena form the protasis of an omen, the associated phenomena affecting the king hi court and his country con ti­ tute the apodo i . The u efulne of the e divine warnings lay in the fact that propitiation ritual called namburbis could assuage the anger of the god and ameliorate the ituation of the king.
From the la t half of the 2nd millennium B.C., the principle collection of celestial omen in Ak.k:adian was the eries of probably more than eventy
1 On the type of omens typically used in the early 2nd millennium see, e.g., J .M. Durand, Archives episrolaires de Mari Ell, Pari 19 8.
2 On Me opotamian exti picy ee al o I. Starr, The Rituals of the Diviner, Malibu 1983, and U. Jeyes, Old Babylonian E~rispicy, l tanbul 19 9.
11
Tablets entitled Enii.maAmt EnliP, though there exists abundant e idence of non-canonical omens either cited as such in the Letter~ and Report of the celestial diviners, alluded to in texts uch a the Diviner's Manua/6 or pre­ served on tablets specifically designated as extra-canonical abii)1. The ear­ lier history of celestial omens in Mesopotamia is hard to delineate. There probably were such omens being observed in late Sumerian time in the late 3rd millennium B.C. , though no Sumerian tablet with uch content are as yet available. However, the technjcal term in the prota e of the Akkadian omens are normally written with Sumerian logogram ·· and ome of the lunar eclipse omens refer in their apodo e to hi torical e ent from the late Dynastic Period, in particular concerning the dynasty of Akkad and the Ur III dynasty which the descriptions oflunar eclip e allow u to date at least tentatively in the time between 2300 and 2050 B.C. . There i no hard evidence, however, that a system of interpreting uch omen exj ted at thi early period.
From the Old Babylonian Period itself- that is, rough] , the fi t half of the 2nd millennium - we have a small number of urviving tablet . The oldest fragment deals with the appearance of the ky and the Moon on cer­ tain numbered day in a lunar month9• An Akkadian text found at Emar in
3 Ch. Virolleaud, L'AstrologieChaldeenne ,3vols.,in 14fa c. Pari 1905-1912.Thi i being replaced by a new edition , of which there have appeared: F. Rochberg-Halton. A:rpecrs of Babylonian Celestial Divination: The Lunar Eclipse Tablets of Eniima Anu E11lil AfO Beiheft, 22, Hom 1988 (Tablets LS-22); W.H. van Soldt, Solar Omens of Eni,ma Am, En/ii: Tablets 23 (24)-29 (30), Istanbul 1995; and E. Reiner & D. Pingree, Babylonian Pfanetar)' Omens, fasc. J, Malibu 1975 (Tablet 63), fasc . 2, Malibu 1981 (Tablets 50-51; ee a] o W. Horowitz, 'A Join to Enuma Anu Enlil 50 ', JCS 46, 1994, pp. 127-29), and f c. 3, (Tablets 59 (?)-62(?)) . See also-F.N.H. Al-Rawi & A.R. George, Enuma Anu Enlil XIV and Other Early Astronomical Tables' , AfO, 38/39, 1991-1992, pp. 52-73 and, for a preliminary Ii t of copies of Tablets I to 50, E.F. Weidner, ' Die a trologi che Serie Enuma Anu Enlil ·, AfO 14, 1941-1944,pp. 172-95 and 308-18; 17, 1954-1956, pp. 71-89; and 22, 1968-1969, pp. 65-75· and U. Koch-Westenholz, Mesopotamian Astrology, Copenhagen 1995.
4 S. Parpola, Letters from Assyrian Scholars to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, 2 vols., Neukirchen-Vluyn 1970-1983; the first volume, containing lex and rran lation , has been replaced by Id., Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars, SAA, 8, Hel inki 1993; see, for instance, Letter 101.
5 H. Hunger, Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings, SAA, IO Helsinki 1992; ee, for instance, Report 147.
6 A. Leo Oppenheim, 'A Babylonian Diviners Manual',] ES, 33, 1974, pp. 197-220. 7 F. Rochberg-Halton, 'The A sumed 29th Abii Tablet of Em1ma Anu Enlil', in Lan­
guage, Literature , and History, ed. F. Rochberg-Halton, ew Haven L987, pp. 327-50; Id. , 'Canonicity in Cuneiform Texts' ,JCS, 36, 1984, 127-44.
8 P.J. Huber, 'Dating by Lunar Eclipse Omina' , From Ancient Omens to Starisrical Me­ chanics, Copenhagen 1987, pp. 3-13, and the literature citated therein.
9 To. Bauer, 'Eine Sammlung von Himmel vorzeichen ', ZA, 43, 1936 pp. 308-14, report­ ing on a text originally published by V. Sileico in Russian in 1927.
12
Syria, of which a Hittite er ion ha al o been found, i concerned with the appearance of the horn of the ere cent Moon 10
... There are four Old Babylonian tablet concerning lunar eclip e 11
• And lunar eclipse omen texts in Akkadian ha e al o been found at EmarL and at Mari13 also in Syria. Beyond thi we are left with conjecture , uch as that a group of the Venus omens is sub tantially con tituted of Old Bab ionian omen , or with such fact a that the ob ervation of the heliacal ri ing and setting of Venus in Tablet 63 were made during the reion of Ammi. aduqa 14 who most likely reigned from 1702 to 1681 B.C. 1
, though we are not at all certain that they were original} regarded a ominou .
.
There exi t more tablets relating to lunar ecbp e 1 • In Akkadian is written a
Middle A yrian tablet found at the abii Temple in ine eh, though per­ haps it had been brought there from A ur during the reign of Tiglathpileser I1 8; thi tablet i related to part of the urvi ing Old Babylonian tablets that I have mentioned and of Tablet 15 of Enuma Anu En/ii the first in that series to deal with lunar eclip e . Al o from A ur are three fragment , one of Tablet 15 and two of Tablet 20 19
• A Middle Bab Ionian text from Nippur remains unpubli hed20
. A tablet ontaining a er ion of Tablet 22 wa found at Su a21 and another at Qatna in S ria2
. A group of lunar (including lunar
10 H.G. Gi.iterbock. 'Bilingual Omens from Bogasko A Scientific Humanist: Studies in Memor) of Abraham achs Philadelphia 198 , pp.16l -73; Giiterbo krefer to several other Hittite texts on lunar omen . See al o E.F. Weidner,. 'A trologi che Tex.te aus Boghazkoi ', Afl{, 1, 1923 pp. 1- , and .K. We tenholz, 'Me opotamian Astrology at Hattusas ', in Die Rolle der Astronomie in den Kulmren Mesoporamiens, ed. H.D. Galter, GMS 3, Graz 1993, pp. 231 -46.
11 To be publi hed by F. Rochberg; ee ABCD, pp. 19-22 and cf. the Old Babylonian orthography pre erved in Tablet 2.
12 ABCD, p. 32 .. 13 Durand, op. cit. pp. 504-6. 14 Besides BPO 1 eeC.B .F. Walker,' ore on the enu Tablet of Ammi. aduqa' , JCS,
36, 1984, pp. 64-66. 15 P.J. Huber et al. Astro11omical Daring of Babylon I and Ur l/1 , Malibu 1982. 16 V. Scheil Dech.iffrementd'un document anz.anite relatif aux presage ', RA , 14, 1917,
pp. 29-59. 17 ABCD pp. 27 -79· cf. al. opp. 3- . 18 ABCD, pp. 70-74 (Source B). 19 ABCD pp. 217-19 (Sourc Y and Z). 20 ABCD, p. 25. 21 V. Schei!,' n fragment u ien du livreEnumaAnu (ilu) Elli/, RA, 14 1917 pp. 139-
42· ee al o ABCD p. 271. 22 J. Bottero, Autre te ·tes de Qatna RA- 44 1950, pp. 105-1 22 e p. pp. 105-12 and
IL 7; ee al o ABCD pp. 271-72.
13
...
eclipse) and solar omen tablets , with some references to planet and con tel­ lations, was discovered at Emar in Syria23
• Also from Syria from Alalakh, are two pieces, one connected with the Old Babylonian and Hittite tradi­ tions, the other with either Tablets 17-18 or 2224
• The Hittite tradition i represented by two pieces in Akkadian, of which one contain Section II of Tablet 1925, and several Hittite adaptations of Akkadian material26
• Al o from Boghazkoi comes a collection of solar omens including olar eclipses writ­ ten in Akkadian27
• It is claimed also that a text written in Ugaritic from the Late Bronze Age ID (c. 1350 to 1175 B.C.) mentions a olar eclipse which has been variously dated to 3 May 1375 B.C.2 and to 5 March 1222 B.C.29•
a necessary word of caution about any such interpretation of tbj opaque text has been issued by Walker3°. In any case, the solar eclip e it elf, if such it was, was not interpreted as an omen, but the phenomenon apparently pro­ voked an interrogation of the gods through an extispicy. However a few fragments of celestial omens, mostly lunar, have been found at Ugarit31 •
Finally, from this period we have two fragments of tablets in Akkadian con­ taining 'meteorological' omens; one, concerning earthquakes, was found at Nuzi32
, and the other, on thunder-storms, at Nippur33.
Now we must turn to the question of the construction of a canonical e­ ries out of this and other material. The series bears the title of the fir t three words in its introduction - or at least the introduction to the fir t ection, that on the Moon, called Sin by modem scholars - Enuma Anu Enlil. Thi
23 D. Arnaud, Recherches au pays d' Astata-Textes sumeriens et accadiens. £mar Vl 4 Pari 1987, pp. 251-82 (nos. 650-65).
24 P.J. Wiseman, The Alalakh Tablets, London 1953, pp. 114-15 and plate Lil-Lill; ee also ABCD, pp. 32-33.
25 ABCD, p. 168. 26 ABCD, pp. 33-34. 27 M. Leibovici, ' Un texte astrologique akkadien de Boghazkoi ,RA, 50, 1956, pp. 11-2 1. 28 F.R. Stephenson & J.F. Sawyer, ' Literary and Astronomical Evidence for a Total Eclip e
of the Sun Observed in Ancient Ugarit on 3 May 1375 B.C. ' , BSOAS,. 33, 1970, pp. 467-&9~ see also F.R. Stephenson, 'The Earliest Known Record of a Solar Eclip e' ature, 22 , 1970, pp. 651-52.
29 T. de Jong & W.H. van Soldt, 'Redating an Early Solar Eclip e Record (KTU l. 78 ', JEOL, 30, 1987-1988, pp. 65-77; see also W.H. van Soldt &T. de Jong, 'The Earliest Known Solar Eclipse Record Redated ', Nature , 338, 1989, pp. 238-40, and W.C. Seitter & H.W. Duerbeck in M. Dietrich & 0 . Loretz, Mantik in Ugarit, Mun ter 1990, pp. 2 1- 6.
30 C.B.F. Walker, ' Eclipse Seen at Ancient Ugarit ', Nature, 338, 1989, pp. 204-5. 31 Dietrich & Loretz, op. cit. , pp. 165-95. 32 E.R. Lacheman, ' An Omen Text from Nuzi ', RA, 34, 1937 pp. 1-8. 33 A. Ungnad, 'Ein meteorologischer Bericht aus der Ka itenzeit ' , OLZ., 15, 1912, pp.
446-49.
14
introduction appear in Sumerian and Akkadian; there is al o a Hittite trans­ lation that must date from before 1300 B .C. 34 .. Perhaps e en earlier is a copy from Emar35, though it appears at the end of a tablet on lunar eclipses rather than as the introduction to a erie . The occurrence of the introduction, then, does not necessarily indicate that a eri.es had been formed, nor does it in­ form us of its contents if it had indeed been formed.
A letter written by the priest of Assur Akkullanu, to Assurbanipal in 657 B.C. quotes from a met,eorogical omen included in a Report sent by Ea­ musallim to Marduk.-nadim-alJlJe, the king of Babylonia from 1099 to 1082 B.C.36
. This shows that inc. 1100 B..C. the Babylonian king employed ob­ servers who reported to him on cele tial phenomena, and that an archive of their reports wa available in inev,eh in the 7th century B.C. Unfortunately, in W,eidner's attempt to identify tablet from the library of Marduk-nadim­ alJ.IJe 's Assyrian oontemporary Tiglathpileser I (1114 to 1076 B.C.}, found at A sur37 , on]y one tablet i though doubtfully , identified as containing celestial omens3
.• But there are many tablets found at Assur containing ce­ le tial omens, including the Middle Assyrian copies of Tablets 15 and 20 that we have already referred to. Al o from Assur comes a fragment of a catalogue of Enuma ArlU En/it 9• thi broken fragmem lists only Tablets num­ bered 39 to 60, of which Tablet 39 and 40 belong to the section on meteorogical omens (Adad), while Tablets 46 and following seen to belong to the section on con tellation and planetary omens (Btar). The numbers of the Tablet given in this catalogue do not correspond to the numbers that can be assigned to Tablets with the same incipits found at Nineveh. We do not know as yet what more substanti e differenoes may have existed be­ tween the celestial omens at A ur, tho eat inev,eh and those at Babylon.
The great mass of tablets containing celestial omens, whether canonical or not, comes from A urbanipal s library at ineveh. One of the most im­ portant persons instrumental in building up this collection was the priest Nabu-zuqup-kenu of KalalJ (Nimrud), who copied the series under Sargon ll (721 to 705 B.C.) and Sennacherib (704 to 681 B.C.) often from tablets that had originated in Babylon or Borsippa40
•. It was probably this same scribe who copied Enuma Ariu Enlil' at Kalal] onto sixteen waxed ivory tablets for Sargon II's palace at Khorsabad between 712 and 705 B.C.41
. We are also
34 KUB XXXIV 12· see Westenholz, op. cir. p. 236. 35 Arnaud, op. it.. p .. _63 Emar 1652,. 80'-83'). 36 S. Pa.rpola, SAA, 8, pp. 16-78 (no. WO). 37 E. Weidner ' Die Bibl iothek Tiglatpilesers I AfO. 16 195--1953, pp. 197-215. 3 Ibid ., p. 200 (VAT 947 ,. 39 E. Weidner i:nAfO, 14 1941-1944 pp. l 4- 6 and Tafel m ,(VAT 9438 + 10324). 40 /bi.d., pp. 176-77. 41 D.J. Wiseman 'A rian Writing B ards I raq, 17 1955, pp. 3-1 3. ; ee also H. Hun­
ger, ' eues on abfr-zuqup-kena', ZA 6_, 19172 pp. 99-10 I.
15
fortunate to have fragments of three acce ion li t to A urbanipal li­ brary42. From these records we learn of 107 tablet and 6 board containing parts of Enii.ma Anu Enlil being accessioned at the Ulbrary at ine eh a a re ult primarily of the confiscation of private librarie in Bab lonia that took place in 647 B.C. , the year following A urbanipal conque t of Babylon. This emphasizes the fact that the copie of cele tial omen found at Nineveh do not represent a uniform tradition but were colJected from many part of Me opotamia.
Toe same can be seen from the Reports and Letters ent to E arhaddon (680 to 669 B.C.) and As urbanipal (668 to 627 B.C. from college of ten celestial observors each located at such citie a ArbeHa A ur Babylon Borsippa, Cutha, Dilbat, and Uruk as wen a of cour e, from ine eh it­ self43. Since these ob ervor con tantly quote from non-canonical collec­ tions of celestial omens, copies of the e text were pread all o er Me opo­ tamia - and the authorities in Nineveh undoubtedly had their own copie in which they could check the accuracy of the citation . One of the e ob ervor Sumaya (perhaps he who is referred to as the on of abu-zeru-le vir in two Letters44 though another Sumaya was the on of [Kabt]iya45
.•
42 S. Parpola, 'Assyrian Library Record ',JNES, 42, 19 3, pp. 1-27. 43 A.L. Oppenheim, 'Divination and Celestial Ob ervation in the Last A rian Empire ,
Centaurus, 14, 1969, pp. 97-135. 44 SAA, 8, pp. 203 (no. 257) and 228 (no 29 l). 45 SAA, 8, p. 308 (no 37 l ). One of the e Sumayas may have been the rituali t who wa
criticized by Nabu-nadin-sumi for ha tening from Kalab to u urp the function of the writer. SAA , 8 , p. 214 (no. 273).
46 SAA, 10, pp. 102-4 (nos. 175-180) and 274 (nos. 49 -499). 47 In the Diaries themselves, in so far as they have yet been publi hed (A. Sach & H.
Hunger, Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylon, ol . l-2, Wien 19 -1989) the few instances in which the cribe's name is recorded (373 B.C . in vol. l, p. 115· 362 B.C. in vol. 1, p. 139; 325 B.C. (?) in vol. 1, p . 203; 322 B.C. in ol. l , p. 229; and 2 2 B.C. (?) in
ol. l , p. 309) the title is not used. But a number of document dated between 127 and 116 B.C. refer to several 'scribes of Enuma Anu En/ii' who were employed by the Esagila or Temple of Marduk in Babylon to make ob ervation , pre umably for the Diaries (R.J . an der Spek 'The Babylonian Temple during the Macedonian and Parthian Domination , BO 42, 1985, pp. 542-62, esp. pp. 548-54, which impro e the tran lation and interpretation offered by G.J.P. McEwan Priest and Temple in Hellenistic Bab Ionia, Wie baden 1981 pp.17-2 1).0neofthefamilie towhichsomeofthe eastronomer belonged was.de cend.ed from a certain Musezib; thi family was al o involved in copying Diaries that for 22 B .C. and, probably tho e for 362 and 325 B.C.) and astronomical table at Bab Jon (ACT, ol. 1 pp. 15-16 and J.P. Britton & C.B.F. Walker, 'A 4th Century Bab Ionian Model for enu :
16
A we tum, then, to on ider the cele tial phenomena that are found in the canonical Tablet of Em,ma Anu En/ii and ome of the non-canonical tablet a well. the o erwh I ming majorit , of, hich are known to u through tablet from A urbanipal library, we mu t keep in mind the fact that man · of the e prota e go back to earlier time , and that the 7th-centur collection at ine eh repre en tradition fi;om all o er e opotamia and be ond (e.g. from Elam). We are not ret well enough informed to di tribute the e omen chronologicaJl and patially in a definitive manner; o, ha ing entered this caveat I will de rib the phenomena briefl a they are.
The ection on the oon, called in modern time Sin, deal with the ap­ pearance of the Moon and of uie k at the time of the luminary' appear­ ance at the end of the month, at its appearance as ew Moon ( with , pecial attention paid to it horn ) at Full Moon, and at it ri ing in general; with halo large and maH urrounding the Moon, and ometime enclo ing a con tellation or a planet well: and ith lunar eclip e . The variables con­ nected with the interpretation of lunar e lip e in lude : the month and day of the month in which it c ur ; whether it occur at the expected time' or not; the watch of the night in whi hit o cur · the duration of the eclip e· it magnitude; the dire tion in v hich the ob curatmon mo e · the color of the eclip ed Moon- the direction in \ hich the wind i blowing; the concurrent occurrence of cloud • rain, thunder and lightning or earthquake and mud lide · and the i ibilit of nearb planet and con tellation during the eclip e. Between the fir t et of Tablets and tho e devoted to lunar eclip e i Tablet 14 on which are recorded table for determining the duration of vi ibility of the Moon on each of the 30 nigh . of an equinoctial month according to the tradition of ippur and of Bab Ion; the length of the day and of the ni oht on lhe fifteenth and thirtieth ,, chthemeron of each month; and the period of i ibilit. , of the Moon on the first da and the period till ri ing on the fifteenth da of e ery month .. Thi . i tlle only tablet in Eniima Anu Enlil that deal e ·clu ivd , \J ith mathematical a tronomy.
In the ection on olar omen Sam ) the ominou phenomena include the appearance of the Sun at the unri e following the ighting of the ere - cent Moon in ea h month of the ear· halo urrounding the Sun- parhelia (and paraselene · the p ition and colo of cloud formation at unri e, and the orange glow abo e the horizon hortl before un et" the isibility of planet and con tiellation with the Sun~ and olar ecilip e ..
B.M. 552', Cenra11rus 4. 1991 pp. 97-11 . p. pp. 110-1 ). [n none of their colophons i any of th numerou membe of thi family entitled ' ribe of Eniima Anu Enli/' but tv o other crire. of tr nomi aJ te ts from Bab Ion (one dared IO B.C.) as e eral from ruk are call db thi titl ACT \IOI. I pp. 1 -l - . The re i aJ of the title then cannot at pre ent be confirmed for pre- eleu id periods, thouoh it might oo bac· to Muvezib, who certainly lived ome time before 2_ B.C.
4 ABCD, pp. 6-6 .
_.
The next section (Adad), which refers to 'meteorologicaJ phenomena in the protases, is based on the time, frequency or duration, direction, and mag­ nitude of thunder, lightning, rain, rainbows, and earthquake .
And the finaJ section (!star) utilizes phenomena in olving con teUation and planets. For the constellations the omen are concerned with the time of their heliacal rising or settings in term of the cal:endar, whi.ch i clearly assumed to be intercalated so that the months vary at mo t by one, and phe­ nomena of faintness, brightness , scintillation, color apparent motion and mirages caused by the distortion of a star's light as it pa . e through the earth's atmosphere. For the planets49 the phenomena can be divided into those that occur near the horizon and those that occur anywhere in the sky. The former include the planets ' heliacal ri ing and setting where the vari­ ants are: the time (including the question of whether or not it ( thee pected time), the position of the rising or setting point on the horizon (that i , which of the three 'paths' it is in), the duration of the period of vi ibility or invi - ibility, and the stars or other planets it is near at first or la t isibility. Also the horizon phenomena include whether the planet appear or di appear above the same point on the horizon on successive nights , and the optical illusions occasioned by the passing of the planet 's light through the earth atmosphere. Phenomena that occur anywhere in the sky are conjunction with constellations or other planets, distortion due to cloud or haze, and especially for Jupiter and Mars, retrogressions from one con tellation to another. The Istar section also includes omens involving meteor and com­ ets, as well as ones in which constellations 'approach' each other· the Neo­ Assyrian commentators interpreted the moving constellations in the e last omens to be planets, but it seems possible that instead they were u ed as a celestial clock in much the same way as the decans were in ancient Egypt
The importance of these celestial omens in Mesopotamian royal courts from the last few centuries of the 2nd millennium B.C. till the Achaemenid period depended on their being regarded as the principle means for the god to signal their intentions to the king. Therefore, throughout this long period the kings (and probably their enemies) employed numerous ob ervor to watch the heavens for the divine messages. In performing trus duty star­ gazers in Mesopotamia acquired an intimate knowledge of the varying ap­ pearances of the celestial bodies and of the motions of the Sun, the Moon, and the other planets. This familiarity led them to recognize the periodicity of certain celestial phenomena, and to devise increasingly ophi ticated math­ ematical models permitting them to predict recurrences of those phenom­ ena, at least approximately. This inaugurated the process that eventually led
49 For Venus see D. Pingree, 'Venus Phenomena in Eniima Am, Enlil, GMS 3, Graz 1993, p. 259-73.
18
to the development of mathematical astronomy. Although we know · irtualJy nothing about Me opotamian celestial omens
in the Achaemenid period beyond an Egyptian adaptation of solar and lunar eclip e omen and probabl , lunar omen 50 and Sanskrit versifications of Indian adaptation of omen from all ections of Em7ma Anu En/ii (and Summa alu)51 the tradition certainly continued into the Seleucid and Parthian periods when , as we ha e een astronomer at the both Babylon and Uruk often bore the title ' cribe of £mi.ma Anu Enlil and when many copies of Tablets from that serie e pecially commented ones were made52 and a catalogue wa compiled in Uruk: . It was probably during this late period that cele tial omen oft pe belonging to Enllma Anu Enlil were translated into Greek54; the earlie t fragments associated with the name Petosiris or simply ascribed to the · ancient Egyptians , seem to ha e been composed in the middle of the 2nd century B.C.55
• Through the Sanskrit and Greek adap­ tation of the e omen they pread in space to China and to Western Europe and in time, through Latin Byzantine Greek, Hebrew, Syriac Arabic, Per­ sian, Sanskrit, Chine e , and other languages through the medieval period to modern time .
But the diviner of the Late Babylonian period also began to devi e new way to apply cele tial omen way that would appeal to all members of ociety rather than just to the king in whose interest Eniima Anu Enlil was
compiled but who, no longer being the product of Mesopotamian culture. but Macedonian or Parthian in ader were not as enthusiastic to employ the diviners as had been the eo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian kings or even their Achaemenid ucce or . Bit of uch anempts at modernization have been published; I mention a examples a text on making an economic fore-
50 R.A. Parker A Vie ,ma Dem01ic Pap wu 011 Eclipse-and Lunar-Omina, Providence 1959.
51 D. Pingree ' enu Omen in India and Bab Ion ·, Language, Literature and History, New Ha en 1987, pp. 293- 15; Id. , ' Bab Ionian Planetary Theory in San bit Omen Texts ', From Ancient Omens ro Srarisri al Mechanics Copenhagen 1987, pp. 91-99· Id. ' Me opota­ mian Omen in Sanskrit '. La cir rtla1ion des biens des personnes et de idees dans le Proche­ Orient ancien, Pari 1992, pp. 375-79.
52 See, e.g. , S. Langdon, ' Mi cellanea A riaca IV .. An Omen Tablet ' Babyloniaca, 7, 1913-1923, pp. 230-36; and the tablets from Uruk:publi hed b F. Thureau-Dangin, Tablettes d'Uruk , Paris 1922 plate XXX-XXXVJ (no . 16-1 · b H. Hunger Spii.tbab lon.ische Texte aus Uruk, Berlin 1976 pp. 9.,_95 (no . 90-92 · and byE. on Weiher Uruk. Spiitbabylonische Texte aus dem Pla,1quadrar . 1 , Mainz 1993 , pp. LOO-IO- (no . 16~62).
53 E.F. Weidner,A/0 14 1941-1944 pp. I 6- 7. 54 Some triking parallel , ere as embled b C. Bezold & F. Boll, Reflexe astrologischer
Keilinschriften bei griechischen Schriftsrellem SHAl PhiL-hi t. Kl. , Heidelberg l9 l l , Abh. 7· many more could be adduced.
55 D. Pingree in DSB ol. lO e York l974 pp. 547-49.
19
cast for the year on the basi of the po ition of the planet at wt beginning 6
several on predictions of and from the weather57 and other a ociating vari­ ous terrestrial object with the zodiacal ign and indicating ariou under­ takings appropriate to the astral conditions5
• The other inno ation v a the application in the late 5th century B.C. of cele tial omen to personal. nati itie to produce a class of texts (wrongly entitled horo cope ince the latter term refers to the ascendant and imp lie the computation of the cu p of the twelve astrological places which play no role in the e cuneiform texts . They remain omens applied to individuals, but partake of some of the characteri - tics of astrology.
56 Hunger, op. cit., pp. 95-99 (no. 93); this tablet was copied by a well-known cribe of Uruk, lqISa, in about 320 B.C.
57 Thureau-Dangin, op. cit., plats. XXXVIl-XL (nos. l 9-20); see H. Hunger A trologische Wettervorhersagen ', ZA, 66, 1976, pp. 234-60.
58 E.F. Weidner, Gestirn-Darstellungen auf babylonischen Tontafeln SOAW phil.-hist. Kl. 254, Wien 1967, Abh. 2.
20
CHAPTER 2 THE ORIGINS OF GREEK ASTROLOGY
The science of astrology ' wa de eloped in, most probably, the late 2nd or early 1 t oentury B.C.2 as a mean to predict from horoscopic themata draw up for the moment of an indi idual's birth (or conception), the fate of that native. Thi form of astrology called genethliaJogy is rooted in Aristo­ telian physics and Hellenistic astronomy, but also borrowed much from Mesopotamia and some elements from Egypt as well as developing many theories of its own3. The adaptation of this £onn of astrology to detennine the best time for initiating actions is termed catarcruc astrology. These are the two main forms of astrology known in the West; interrogational astrol­ ogy was developed in India in the 2nd and 3rd oenturies. A.D. on the basis of Greek catarchic astrology4 and historical astrology in Sasanian Iran in per­ hap the 5th or '6th century A.O. on the basis of continuous forms of Greek genethlialogy . AU of the e types of astrology depend on the notion that the
1 See D. Pingree, 'A trology ' in Dictionnry of the Hi'st.ory of Ideas, vol. l , New York 1968, pp.1 18-2,6.
2 A.A. Long, ' A tirology: ~guments Pro and Contra ' in Sciellce a,zd Speculation, Paris 1982, pp. 165-92.
3 The two most significant treatments of Greek astrnlog are A. Bouche-Leclercq, L'astmlogie grecque, Pari l 99 repr. Bruxelles 1963 now very O)UCh out of date, and W. & H.G. Gundel, Astrologumena Wiesbaden 1966 v hich uffers se erely from innumerable inaccuracies in dating and attribution and from a lack of a, areness of the rele ant material in Sanskrit and Arabic. Of fundamental! importance for the manu cripts of Greek astrology is the Caw.logus Codicwn Asrrofo orum G.raecorum L vol . in 20 fascs ., Bruxelles 1898- 1953.
4 See Chapter 3 befow. 5 See Chapter 4 below.
21
planets, in their eternal rotations about the earth, tran mil motion change) to the four elements and to the assemblages of elements anjmate and inani­ mate, in the sublunar world. This theory i completely different from that of celestial omens, in which the gods, who e phy ical manife tacion are the constellations and planets, end me age concerning their intention re­ garding kings and countries by means of cele tial phenomena. That the e divine intentions con be altered by the u e of propitiatory ritual namburbis in Mesopotamia6, §antis in lndia7) emphasize the fundamemal conceptual difference between omens and astrology.
But astrology does have a Mesopotamian background. The olde t form of this pre-astrology is a 13th century B.C. Hittite tablet ba ed on a tran la­ tion from an Old Babylonian Akkadian text in which a brief prediction i made for a person depending on the month in which he wa born ; thi . frag­ ment is a part of the well-known series entitled lqqur ipus9. But the do e t Babylonian parallels to Greek astrology are the o-called 'horo cope ' , which record planetary positions and other data at the time of a native ' birth and sometimes, computed conception10
, and the texts which inform the diviner about the interpretation of these omens 11
• These proto-horoscopes them elve
6 E. Ebeling, 'Beitrage zur Kenntnis des Beschworung erie amburbi ', RA, 4 1954, pp. 1-1 5; 76-85; 130-41; and 178-91; 49, 1955. pp. 32-41; 137-48; and 178-92; and 50, I 956, pp. 22-33; and 86-94; R. Caplice, 'Namburbi Texts in the Briti h Mu eum ' Oriemaiia NS, 34, I 965, pp. 105-3 I ; 36, 1967, pp. 1-38 and 273-98; 39, 1970, pp. ll 1-51 · and 40 1971 pp. 133-83; Id.,' An Apotropaion against Fungus', INES, 33, 1974 pp. 345-49; Id., The Akkadia11 Namburbi Texts: an Introduction , Los Angeles 1974; and S. Parpola, Letrers from As yrian Scholars to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal. Parr II , eukirchen-Vluyn 19 3, pp. xxii-xxxiv.
7 The earliest sanli-rituals in India date from the middle of the last millennium B.C.; ee D. Pingree,Jyoti~sastra, Wiesbaden 198 l, p. 67.
8 B. Meissner, ' Ueber Genelhlialogie bei den Babyloniem', Klio, 19, 1925, pp. 432-34 esp. p. 434.
9 K.K. Riemschneider, Babylonische Geburtsomina in hethitischer Uberse rzung, Wiesbaden 1970, p. 44, n. 39; the lqqur ipus text is R. Labat, Un calendrier babylonien des travaux des sign.es et des mois, Paris 1965, pp. 132-35 (§ 64).
10 A. Sachs, 'Babylonian Hora copes' , JCS, 6, 1952, pp. 49-75, on pp. 54-63 publi hed six ' horoscopes ' databl.e 29 April. 410 B.C. (mentions computed date of conception; brief prediction); 4 (?) April 263 B.C. (with predictions)· 15 December 258 B.C. (computed. date of conception; no prediction); 3 June 235 B.C. (with prediction ); 3 July 230 B.C. (no predic­ tions, but only four lines preserved); and l March 142 B.C. no prediction preserved); and F. Rochberg-Halton, ' Babylonian Horoscopes and their Source ' Orientalia, S, 5 , 1989 pp. 102-23, on pp. 1 l 1-19 publishe three more datable 13 January 410 B.C. (no prediction ); 4 February 202 B.C. (no predictions); and 3 September 76 B.C. (no predictions). At the time of writing this anicle Rochberg includes thirty-two relevant text datable between 410 and 69 B.C. in her forthcoming edition.
1.1 TCL VI 14 was transcribed and translated in Sachs, op. cir., pp. 66-75; for TCL VI 13 see F. Rochberg-Halton, 'TCL 6 13: Mixed Traditions in Late Babylonian Astrology', ZA 77, 1987, pp. 207-28. There exist a number of other uch texts; see, fore ample the excerpts
22
generally give little infonnation beyond the date of birth, sometimes the date of conception, data concerning the Moon at the syzygies of the current month (pre umabl to be utilized in computing the date of conception) and the zodiacal sign ( ometime with degrees) in which the planets were posi­ tioned~ occasionaH it i al o noted whether a planet was visible or not. The treati es on interpretation are difficult to interpret because of their use of a technical vocabulary that i not et under tood: the rallu in which a planet may tand and the DUR and mibru to which it may stand. Other, more obvious phenomena are a birth (when the Moon. or the Sun?) is in a place (dodecatemorio11? ) of each zodiacal ign . when each planet has come forth (risen), when one planet has oome forth while another has set, when each planet has ri en or et heliacall when various fixed stars have come forth, and when one of the luminar•e i eclip ed.
One of the prediction in the principle manual of instruction, preserved in TCL VI 14: 'The plaoe of Cancer: death in the ocean 1
- probably provided the background for Chry ippu argument concerning the analysis of the conditional: ' If someone is born when Canict.tla (Sirius) is rising, he will not die in the ocean 13• Thi correlation if correct hows that the Babylonian science of birth omens was known in the Greek world by the late 3rd cen­ tury B.C. Other Stoic of the econd century B.C.. such as Diogenes of Babylon and Panaetiu of Rhode are said by Cicero14 to have accepted in part or totally to have rejected the birth omens of the Chaldaeans; although Cicero, perhap following Panaetius eems to have Hellenized this 'astrol­ ogy somewhat there is nothing in its bask procedures that cannot be paral­ leled in the cuneiform texts and nothing also that must be interpreted as referring to HeUenistic genethlialogy. ordo Cioero15 and Augustine16 clearly connect Posidonius with any specific doctrine of genethlialogy.
But Babylonjan birth omen were probably known in Greek long before these Stoic philosopher debated about its validity. Eudoxus, according to Cicero17 thought that one hould not at aU believe ' the Chaldaeans in their prediction and noting down of anyone's life from the day of birth'; this could be a Peference to the proto-boro copes or w the nativity hemerologies;
published by Rochberg-Halton 'Bab Ionian Horoscope and their Sources ', cit., pp. 109-lO, and orne among no . 158 -1630 in A.J. Sach Lare Babyionia,i Asrro11omical and Related Texts, Providence 1955,. pp,. 256--68.
12 Sachs, 'Babylonian Horo cope · , cit. , pp. 66 and 68. 13 Cicero De Jato 6 12, ed. R. GionlU1i Leipzig 1975 p. 155 .. 14 Cicero De dfrinatione II 4 ' 87) - 47 (97), ed. R. Giomini, Leipzig 1975, pp. 119-23. 15 Cicero, De faro, 3, 5-6, ed. Giomini, pp. 151-52_ 16 Augu tinus, .De civirate Dei , _ and 5 ed .. E. Hoffmann, 2 ols. , Wien 1899- l 900, vol.
i, pp. 211-13 and 217. 17 Cicero, De d1'\,irwtio11e [l 4_ ( 7) ect, pp. 11 -19.
23
and Proclus 18 cites Theophrastus as prai ing the theory of the Chalda an in his clay whlch ' predicts the lives and death of indi . idual . Howe er one wishes to interpret these fragments attributed to Eudoxu and Theophra tu the passage in Vitruvius 19 that attributes to Bero u who wrote in about 290-280 B.C.) the successful teaching of genethljalogy in whrch the zodia­ cal signs and the planets are indicator of the nati e fate can onl be refer­ ring to the ' proto-horoscopes', though Pliny20 goe too far in claiming that the Athenians set up a statue of Bero u with a gilded tongue becau e of hi ' divine' predictions .. The one astrological method ascribed t.o Bero u in­ volves the use of the rising-times of Babylonian Sy tern A to determine the maximum life of a native to be 116 (= 40 + 40 + 36) years21, but thi meth­ odology is totally foreign to everything that we yet know about Bab Ionian nativity omens; and so the two fragments seem to ha e been included cor­ rectly by Jacoby among those of pseudo-Bero us22
. The ame two fragment inform us that Epigenes claimed that the maximum human life- pan is less than 112 years; this implies the use of the rising-time computed for AJex­ andria by Hypsicles in the second half of the second century B.C. according to System A also (38;20 + 38;20 + 35 = 111 ;40). I would uggest then that both pseudo-Berosus and Epigenes should be dated toward the end of the 2nd century or in the 1st century B.C.
Vitruvius in the passage cited above states that there was afterward (Berosus ') student, Anti pater, and again Achinopolus, who left the reason behind genethlialogy explained not from the nativity but from the conception'. As we ha.ve seen, this is in full agreement with Mesopotamian practice. We know nothing more of these two followers of Berosus, but later on in the 3rd century we are informed of a Chaldaean baru named Su dines who performed an extispicy of sorts for AttaJu I of Pergamon before his victorious battle with the Gauls in about 235 B.C.23
• Strabo include him along with Cidenas and Naburianus among the noteworthy µafu)µanKol of Babylon24
; and Sudines is quoted for the 'astrological ' theory that Venus i the destroyer of women in the summary of a commentary, probably by
18 Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum IV (285F), ed. E. Diehl, vol. 3, Leipzig 1906, p. 15 I. 19 Vitruvius, De architectura IX 6, 2, ed. V. Roe, Leipzig 1899, pp. 229-30. 20 Pliny, Natura/is historia VII 37 (123), ed. C. Mayhoff oL 2 Leipzig 1909, p. 42. 21 Pliny, Natura/is historia VTI 49 (1 60), ed. Mayhoff, vol. 2, p. 55, and Cen orinu , De
die natali 17, 4, ed. N. Sallmann, Leipzig 1983, p. 33. For System A ee HAMA vol. l, pp. 368-69, and vol. 2, pp. 715-21.
22 F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, 3C, Leiden W958, p. 39'7 (F22a and b).
23 Polyaenus, Strategemata [V 20, ed. I. Melber, Leipzig I 887, p. 2] 9; cf. Frontinu , Strategemata I 11 , 15, ed. R.L Ireland, Leipzig 1990, p. 27 who name the king Eumene , presumably intending Eumenes 11, Attalus ' son.
24 Strabo, Geographica XVl I, 6, ed. A. Meinecke, vol. 3., Leipzig 1904, p. 1030.
24
Po idoniu , on Plato Timaeus25 • Thu there exi t ufficient indications that at lea t in the 3rd century B.C. in A ia Minor and probabl already in the 4th century in Athen omething was known about Mesopotamian binh omen · and that the philo ophical i ue the rai e concerning fate were debated among Stoic in the late 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C. Al o in the 2nd centur - in about it middle - appear a few indication of Greek elaborations on Me opotamian astral di ination. ' Hipparchu and the an­ cient (a trologer ) of the Egyptian are aid by Hephaestio of Thebes to have de cribed a y tern in \ hich different countries are under the influence of part of the constellation fom1ing the twel e zodiacal signs-6. This idea may have been ugge ted b the Bab Ionian y tern of a . ociating months with countrie . Firmicu Maternu inform u that Fronto followed the antiscia of Hipparchu , which related the degree in the ecliptic from Cancer l O to Saginariu 29° to tho e from Capricorn I O to Gemini 29°27; there is nothing that we know like thi in Babylonian astral omens. Neugebauer suggests that Hipparchu u e of the term antiscia may have been in connection with the arztis, ion referred to in treati e on the sun dial and may have had nothing to do with 'a trology
Contemporary with Hipparchu was a work on celestial omens closely related to tho e of Eniima Am:t En/ii but pre ented under the fictitious author­ ship of Petosiri · 9• Thi treati e evidently included a section on computing the date of the nati e conception ° which eem to be an elaboration of the Babylonian method ba ed on the po ition of the Moon. Attributed to this
25 F. La erre, • Abrege inedit du comrnentaire de Po idonio au Timee de Platon (PGen inv. 203 ', Proragora , A11tifonte, Posidollio, Aristotele, Firenze 1986, pp. 71-127; see also W. Hiibner 'Zum Planetenfragment de Sudine Pap. Gen in . 203)' ZPE, 73 1988, pp. 33-42; Id. Nachtrag zurn Planetenfragmentdes Sudines. P. Gen. inv. 203', ibid. pp. 109-10.
26 Hephae tio, Aporele matica I 1 7 (Arie . and l6_ (Sagia.arius), ed. D. Pingree Leipzig 1973, pp. 4 and 22; · ee al o I I ,.;.7 (Tauru , 46 (Gemini) 85 (Leo), 104 (Virgo), 143 (Scorpiu ), 182 (Capricorn 201 (Aquarius , and 220 Pi ce ) ed. Pingree, pp. 6-7, 8-9, 13, 15, 19 24-25 27, and 29 though ome of th e may deri. e from the similar s rem ascribed to Odap u ; • ee Hephaestio, 1 I 65 Cano r 123 (Libra 163 (Sagittariu ) and 221 (Pisces), ed. Pingree, pp. IO- I I 17 22, and 29.
27 Finnicu Matemu , Marhesis II pra.ef., 2. ed. W. Kroll & F. Skutsch vol. I, Leipzig 1897, p. 40.
28 HAMA, ol. l, p. 331. 29 D. Pingre , ' P eud -Pelo iri in DSB, vol. LO, · \ York 1974 pp. 547-49. Mosl of
the fragment ere assembled, though ithout av arene of their di parate sources, by E. Rie s, ' echep on.i et Peto iridi fraomenta magica ', Pliilolo us Suppl. 6 1892 pp. 327- 94.
30 See Porphyniu lntroducrio, , - , ed. E. Boer & S. Weinstock CCAG, V 4, Bruxelles 1940, pp. 185-_2 at p. _[O· Hephae tio II l , 9, ed. Pmgre.e, p . 8 , and ill lO, 5 ed. Pingree, p. 266- and cf. Proclu f,z Platoni Rempublicam, ed. W. Kroll ol. 2 Leipzig 1901 , p. 59.
25
collection by Riess31 is a chapter ofHephae tio of Thebe 'Apore/esmatica32 ,
which was written in the early ~th century A.D. e en thouoh Hephae tio only mentions as hi source 'the ancient Egyptian wi e men . The chapter makes annual predictions from the position of the pl.anet at the heliacal rising of Sothis (Sirius). In this chapter is a paragraph33 in which the di tance of the planets from the earth are taken into con ideration , with the farther planet transmitting its effect to the nearer until the Moon tran mit them all to the earth, as well as each planet ' s own changing di tance from lhe earth due to its traveling on an eccentric or an epic cle or both and the five tar­ planets' stationary points. This reflects a stage in the de elopment of Greek mathematical astronomy that certainly doe not antedate the 2nd century B.C., though that does not prove either that thj paragraph wa an original part of the work of the 'ancient Egyptians' relied upon b Hephae tio or that that work was identical with the omen book of p eudo-Peto iri .
In any case, by the l st century B.C. 'horoscope begin to appear in Greek, and to be mentioned in Latin literature. The earlie t datable example i for a nativity on 21(?) January 72 B.C., that would have been computed many years later34; the next is that on the relief of a lion, repre enting the constel­ lation Leo, carved for Antiochus I of Commagene at imrud Dagh; on the lion are depicted the nineteen stars of the con tellation Leo the Moon Jupi­ ter (near the head), Mercury (in the center), and Mar . (near the tail). Neugebauer and Van Hoesen35 have dated thi 'horn cope 6 or 7 July 62 B.C. and have argued that it refers to the recognition by the Romans of Antioch us' rule over Commagene. It is not, then a birth horo cope or even a Mesopotamian nativity omen, but rather an application of the idea of celestial omens of this form (i.e., the pre ence of planets in a zodiacal ign) to a political event.
However, sometime in the late 2nd or early 1st century B.C. omeone, perhaps in Egypt, invented genethlialogical a trology which a ume an Aristotelian universe in which the earth at the center, con i ting of the four sublunar elements, is surrounded by the eternally circling phere of the seven planets in the so-called Hellenistic order (Moon, Mercury Venu , Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn). This author al o assumed the ability to compute the longitudes of the planets and the rising-point of the ecliptic for any given
31 As fragment 12 on pp. 351-55. 32 Hephaestio, Apotelesmatica l 23 , ed. Pingree. pp. 66-73. 33 Ibid. I 23 , 8-11, ed. Pingree, pp. 67-68. 34 0 . Neugebauer & H.B. Van Hoe en, Greek Horo copes Philadelphia 1959, pp. 76-78. 35 Ibid., pp. 14-16.
26
time, and to di ide the ecliptic into the t\ elve a trological place . To each of these twel e place he a igned an pect of the native' life (life wealth, sibling , parents, children ickne marriage. death tra els, occupation, gain and los · the first eight are omerjme treated a a et). Furthermore, each of the planets and each of the zodiacal ign was endowed with certain characteri tics and influence o er particular component of man and of the sublunar world in general · and the planets were endowed with rulership o er the zcxliacal ign and their parts (the decan or thirds , the dodecatemoria or twelfth , and the term and the influenced each other and the astrologi­ cal places by mean of either conjunction with them or aspect (sextile to 60°, quartile to 90° trine to 120° and oppo ition to 180°). While many further particulars were added to thi collection of indicators, and ome modi­ fication were made, thi i the basic et of a wnption that astrologers rely upon.
Some elements in addition to the central idea of predicting the life of a native from cele tial phenomena came to the Greeks from Mesopotamia36•
The ign in which the planets ha e their exaltation according to the Greeks were Arie for the Sun Tauru. for the Moon Cancer for Jupiter, Virgo for Mercury, Libra for Saturn Capricorn for Mar and Pi ces for Venus; the ame region of the ecliptic contain the a "ar ni~irti or ecret places of the
planet in cuneiform eel tial omen texts beginning in about 700 B.C. Pre­ sumably the di tribution i based on the easons: Venus, the Sun, and the Moon, a common Babylonian triad . we as ociated with spring; they are op­ posite to Mercury and to Saturn (the Lauer being known as 'the Star of the Sun') which are a ociated ith autumn; and the benefic Jupiter in summer faces the malefic Mars in inter> . A ju t indicated the Babylonians con­ sidered ome planets to be benefic and others malefic3 • the Greeks followed them in this, making Jupiter and Venu benefic and Saturn and Mars malefic . From the Babylonian point of view thi djvision i in accordance with the deitie who e manifestation the e planets are considered to be; for Jupiter is Marduk and Venu I""'tar. both normally benign gods, while Saturn is Ningirsu, the god of wind torms . and Mars i Nergal the god of the un­ derworld. The Me opotamian name as that of Mercury s god Nabu, were recognized by Philip of Opu in the Epinomis to be the origin of the Greek
36 F. Rochberg-Halton 'Element of the Bab Ionian Contribution to Hellenistic Astrol­ ogy ', JAOS , 10 , 19 . pp. 5 l -62 .
37 H. Hunger & D. Pingree, M l.APJ . · 11 Astronnmical Compendium in Cuneiform , AJO, Beiheft 24 Hom 1989, pp. 146-47.
3 F. Rochberg-Halton, ' Benefi and Mal ft Plane in Bab lonian A tro logy' , in A Scinetifi Humanist. Smdies in M mory of Abraham Sachs , Philadelphia l 9 8, pp. 323-28.
27
names of the planets39 • In the Sin section of Enunza Amt Enlii, in Tablet 2
lunar eclipse are associated with the four geograph.i al direction ac ord­ ing to four sets of three months each spaced a are the zodia al ign in the four triplicitie of the Greeks, which are the group Arie Leo, and Sagitta­ rius (associated by the Greeks with fire), Tauru Virgo and Capricorn a - sociated with earth), Gemini , Libra, and Aquariu (a ociated with air), and Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces (a ociated with water . The triplicitie , in fact are explicitly attributed to the Chaldaeans by Geminu in hi lntrodu tion to ( astronomical) phenomena, who also associate them with the four cardinal directions4
l . The zodiacal signs them elves, of cour e where de eloped as a convenient measuring device for the longitude of the planet by the Babylonians in the late 5th century B.C., and are perhaps referred to already by Plato42
, though named and described fir t by Eudoxu '13 • ln later cunei­
form texts appears the mini-zodiac in which each zodiacal ign i divided into twelve equal parts of 2-1/2° each, and each of the e ub- ection i called by the name of one of the twelve signs44
• These are the dodecatemoria used by Greek astrologers, especially in order to modify the influence of the Moon by associating it with another zodiacal sign in addition to the one it happens to occupy. Also in the Seleucid and Parthian period in tablet found at Uruk, there occur elements of Greek genethlialogy uch as the aspects of a native's life influenced by the individual zodiacal ign the masculinization and feminization of the planets, and the planetary melothesia, and some traces of catarchic astrology dependent on the zodiacal ign occu­ pied by the Moon45
• In some cases it is clear that the Chaldaean . have adopted this material from the Greeks since the texts have uch clear trace a calling the first sign the Ram instead of the Hired Man as wa universally done in previous cuneiform texts; but in other cases it is not yet clear whether the e late Babylonian texts or their Greek counterparts are the original . The gen­ eral outline of the relationships between Mesopotamian cele: tia1 omen . and Hellenistic astrology are quite clear; but many questions about the details
39 Epinomis 986e-987d in L. Taran, Academica: Plato. Philip of Opu , and the Pseudo- Platonic Epinomis, Philadelphia 1975, pp. 196-97.
40 ABCD, pp. 323 (text f., rev. 3-4) and 27. 41 Geminus, lntroductio II 7-11 with II 4, ed. C. Manitiu , Leipzig I 98, pp. 20 and 22. 42 Plato, Phaedrus 246e-247c, ed. I. Burnet, Platonis opera, vol. 2, Oxford 1901. 43 There are frequent refences to Eudoxu ' de criptions of the con tellati.on with re pect
to zodiacal signs in the fragments of his Phaenomena and Enoprron; see F. Lasserre, Die Fragmente des Eudoxos von Knidos, Berlin 1966, pp. 38-67, e: p. fragment 9 (p. 41) from Hipparchus, and the fragments mentioned by Las erre in connection with ic.
44 0. Neugebauer & A. Sachs, 'The "Dodecatemoria" in Bab Ionian A trology , AfO, 16 1952-1953,pp.65-66.
45 E. Reiner, Astral Magic in Babylonia,. Philadelphia 1995 IJP· 108-[2.
28
remam unan ered becau e of the lo of o much of the rele ant Greek material of the la t four centurie B.C. and the cantine of the cuneiform text from the ame period. But we can et hope that ne\ d i coverie an10ng the papyri and the ta blet v ill offer the olution to the remaining problems without po ing too man ne\ one .
29
I I INDIA
The influence of Bab Ionian astronomy on Indian thought i already per­ ceptible in Sanskrit texts of the first half of the last millennium B.C. 1
; and so the earhe t omen t,ext: in India - lw,.ujikiis 93-136 of the Kausikasutra2 of the Athan m eda and the common ou.rce of the Adbhutabrahma~1a4 (which is adhya a VJ or V of the Sac}, i1?1iabnihma~za , rv l 1-2.- of the Asvalayana­ grh aparisi~fa, and theAdblmtascmn of the Athan a1 ed41parisi~fas-may well al o ha e been rnfluenced by Babylonian omens. In both sources the emphasis i upon the siirlli (pacification) ritual by which the anger of the god who • ent the omen i appea ed· the e are clearly parallel to the
1 D. Pingree, 'M L.APIN and \fe:di . ·. tron m •' DUMi -E -D B-BA-A. Studies in Honor o/Ake W. Sjoberg, Philad lphfat 19 9 pp. 49 -45. ·
2 M. Bloomfield The Kau ika.- utra of the Alharva- eda' JAGS, L4, 1890, pp. i-lxviii and 1-415. e p. pp. 247- 9; reprinted Delhi 19'72. Fora general a ountof celestial omens in. lndia ee D. Pingree, Jyoti~1 ·as1ra, Wi. baden 19 1. pp. 167- 0.
3 • T uji ' On the Formation of the Adbhuta-Brahm~a· ABORI 48-49 1968, pp. 173- 78.
4 ~a(jviJ?isabral11na.!1,a itfl eid<J.rrhapmhi.sika of Siiya~w ed. B.R. Sharma, Tirupati 1967, pp. 195-2_5 (adh a)'a 6 tran fated b • _ . .B. Bollee, . aq,,iqi.fo-Briihma,:ia, Utrecht 1956 pp. 104-12 (ad'1yiiyo .
5 Asvalayanagrh •apar.i-'i. !a I I l-22 in A1
·ata 'anagrhya fitra. ed. G. Gokhale, Poona 1.978, pp. 192-95.
6 Pari 'UaLXVIlinTJteP;ari \ !a ofrli Arhancn·eda ed.G.M. BoUing&J. onNegelein, vot I, 2 part Leipzig 1909-1.'9 LO, pt. 2, pp. 2-37.
31
Babylonian namburbis. In the econd ource the omen nt b r a u. th god of the wind, include the hape of animal een in the l ud . rain dust or blood and palace in the air7, tho e ent b oma includ the fall in_ of meteor , the glowing of the quarter and comet , and tho e em b i. QU
include halo about the Sun and the Moon9 • 11 of the e men ar farn'li r
from the prota e of En ii.ma Anu En/ii a are man , of the other. terre trial omens in thi ource from the prota e of the Bab Ionian men erie umma aiu!O.
The date of the two ource mentioned abo e remain uncertain though they must have been compo ed in about th middle of the la t miHennium B.C., either hortly before or short ly after the Achaem nid o cupation of Gandhara, which must have occurred before Dar·u c u ed th Behi tun in cription to be inci ed in about 520 B.C. In the earl · 4th century B .C., since hi nirvar;a seems to have occurred in about 350 B.C. 1 t , th Buddha i alleged to have delivered a sermon the Brahmajala utta that i in luded in the D'fghanikaya12; in tltis sermon he ca tigate the immoral a ti itie en­ gaged in by some Srama:i:ia and Brahma:i:ia i:n rerurn for food 1
• ome of these activities involve various form of acrifice and thee p lling of de­ mon and other undesirable being ; but a large number ar concerned with various forms of divination. Almost every t pe of omen mentioned by the Buddha i found in both the earlier cuneiform literature and in the later San- krit text ; and the terre trial omens are enumerated in an order - hou e ,
ghosts, snake , poisons, scorpion , mice ulture , crow and quadruped - that corre ponds almost completely with the order of the Tablet of umma alu 14
• The Buddha also lists in his sermon a number of ele tial and atmo - pheric omen : lunar eclip es olar eclip e , ob ervation of the tars nakharta = nak~atra, probably including the planet here the Moon and the Sun
7 Adbhutabriihma,:ia 8, ed. pp. 212- I 4; Asvalayanag,:hyaparisiHa IV 17. ed. p. 19 ; and Athan,avedaparisiHa LXVII 7, 1-5, ed. p. 434.
AdbhutabriihmmJa 9, ed. pp. 215-16; and Asvalaya,wg,:hyapari'( ra r 19 ed. p. 194: omitted in Atharvavedapari.si~[a LXVII.
9 Adbhutabrahmarya 10, ed. pp. 217-2 1; Asvaliiyanagrhyaparisiffa I 21, ed. p. l 4: and Atharvavedaparisi~!O LXVIl 6, I-7, ed. p. 434.
10 There is an incomplete edition by F. otscher, Hau -und Stadt Omi11a. oJ ., Rome 1928-1930; a useful urvey i provided by S. Moren in her 1978 Ph.D the i ubmiued to the Univer ity of Penn ylvania, The Omen Series "Summa all/': A Preliminary lm·e 1igarion.
11 H. Bechert, 'The Date of the Buddha Recon idered IT, W, 19 2. pp. 29-36. 12 Dighanikiiya j 1, 1-3, 74, ed. T.W. Rh Da id & J .E. urpenter. ol. I, L ndon 1 90.
pp. 1-46. 13 Dighanikaya i I, 21-27, ed. pp. 9-12. 14 D. Pingree, 'Mesopotamian Omens in San krit ' La cirrnlalion des biens, des personne
et des idees dans le Proche-Orienr ancien, Pari 1992, pp. 375-79.
32
,
<.-
.
Thu the Babylonian a tral ien es in a form that the had reached in the Achaemenjd period before the remarkabk de elopment in a tronomy, or the le remarkabWe one in omen . of the Seleucid period became the foundation of Indian ;)ori~1 ',a rra. With the inten ification of direct trade by ea bet\ een Eg pt and lnd•a in the late 1 t century B .C. under the aus­ pice of the Roman Empire. and thee tabh Junent of Greek colonie in In­ dia the po ~bilit of a dwect tran mi ion of both Hellenistic astrology and a tronom emerged· and it t' clear from the Indian le t of the 3rd through the 6th centurie A.D. that man Greek text in both ciences were rendered into San krit. For the influence o Greek tronom 17 we rely primarily on the Paitiirnalwsiddhiinta of the\ i_ ~wdharmottarapurii.,.7a 1
, written inc. 425;
15 For thi ersion of the Gar asa,r1hifii ee D. Pingree, Census of rhe Exact Sciences in anskrit, Serie A. o . I- - Philadelphia 1970-1994, A l 16a-l I 7b· A 3, 29b· A 4 78a·
and A , 7 b. S e al o D. Pingree. ' enu Omen in lnclia and Babylon ', Language, Litera­ wre, and Hi rory, L ew Haven 19 . pp. 29 -"L .
16 D. Pingree. ·Toe fe opotamian Origin of Early Indian Mathematical A tronom ' , )HA 4,197 pp. ]- I ; Id. ·Bab:Ionian Planetary Theory in San krit Omen Text' , From Anci Ill Omens to tori tical 1ecl1a1,ic . Copenhag n 19 7, pp. 91-99.
17 D. Pingrre , 'The Rec very f Early Greek tronomy from India· , IHA 7,. 1976, pp. 109-2"; [d_ 'Hi tory f fathemati _al tron m , in India . D B . ol. I 5, pp. 533-633.
1 CE S. A 4. p. 25 a; D. Pingree. ·Toe Pu.rii.Qas and Jyotil)'astra: tronomy JAGS, 110, 19 0 pp .. 274- 0: and D. Pingree • P. Morri e 'On the Identification of the Yogaufras of the Indian alqmra '. JHA. 20. 19 9. pp. 99-H9.
33
the Aryabha(iya of Aryabhata19 , written inc. 500; and the Paiicasiddhiintika
of Varahamihira20, written inc. 550. For the origin of jiitaka or genethliaJogy in Greek astrology21
, on the other hand, we rely primarily on the Yavanajataka of Sphujidhvaja22
, written in 269/270; the Vrddhaym anajiitaka of Minaraja23 ,
written inc. 300-325; and the Brhajjiitaka of Varahamihira-4, written in c .. 550, with the commentary on it, Jagaccandrika, compo ed by BhanotpaJa25
in C. 970. Sphujidhvaja's Yavanajiitaka is a versification of a San krit translatfon
of a Greek astrological treatise; the Greek original wa written in Egypt probably in Alexandria, toward the beginnjng of the 2nd century A.D. and was turned into Sanskrit by someone bearing the title Ya anesvara Lord of theGreeks',in 149/150. Themostlikelylocaleforthi tran lationi Ujjayin1 under the rule of the Mahiik$atrapa, Rudradaman I, a prominent member of a Saka dynasty in whose kingdom Greek influence was extremely trong. This conjecture is strengthened by the fact that it wa Rudradaman who initiated the use of a mathematically determined caJendar which was made possible by the Greco-Babylonian astronomy taught in the Ya vanajataka26•
The facts that Sphujidhvaja is also a raja (presumably a Yavanaraja)27 and that Minaraja is a Yavanadhiraja28 indicate that they came from the ame social milieu, that of the kingdom of the Western K~atrapas , as had Yavanesvara; the title was also borne, in the form Yoraji, by the ruler of Saiijayapura (Safijan?) in about 330.
The prime indisputable evidence that the Ya vanajiitaka is indeed influ­ enced by Greek astrology is the presence in it of a large number of technical terms that are simply transliterations of their Greek equivalent ..
anapharii (X 1, 4, and 13-17) = ava¢op<i (when the Moon ha passed a planet; usually called chr6ppOLa.).
19 CESS, A I, pp. 50b-54a; A 2, p. 15b; A 3, p. 16a; A 4 p. 27b, and A 5, pp. I 6a- I 7a; ee also D. Pingree, 'Aryabhata, the Paitamahasiddhanta, and Greek A rronorny ' , SHMS, S, 12, ]993, pp.69-79.
2° CESS, A 5, pp. 563a-564b. 2 1 Pingree, JyotilJsasrra, cit. , pp. 81-100. 22 Sphujidhvaja will be included in CESS, A 6; fornow see D . Pingree, The Yarnnajataka
of Sphujidhvaja , HOS, 48 , 2 vols. , Cambridge Mas . 1978. 23 CESS, A 4, pp. 427a-429b, and A 5, pp. 31 Oa-3 IOb. 1 refer 10 the edition by D. Pingree,
The Vrddhayavanajataka of M'inariija , GOS, 162-163, Baroda 1976. 24 CESS, A 5, pp. 573a-587b. I refer to the edition with the [ika of Bhaqotpala by Go inda
Devasthali , Mumbai San:i. 1983 = A.O. 1926. 25 CESS, A 4, pp. 272a-275a; and A 5, pp. 246b-247a. 26 In adhyiiya LXXIX; see D. Pingree, ·A ote on the Calendars U ed in Early Indian
Inscriptions ' , JAOS, 102, 1982, pp. 355-359. 27 Yavanajiitaka LXXlX 62, ed. vol. 1, p. 506. 28 Vrddhayavanajiitaka LXVII 1, ed. vol. 2, p. 374.
34
iipoklima (l 53 and 94 = ci OKALµa cadent: the third, sixth, ninth, and twelfth place ).
daurudhum (X 1 5 and I -27) = oopu<f>opla (when the Moon is between two planets).
drekaf_la (I 34 and 39· III; XXIlI 6-9· XXVII 2 and 5-8; and XXIX) = 8EKav6s' third of a zodiacal ign; or Decan).
hipaka (148) = im6ynov the fourth place . hora (I 31 34 39 and 48· II- XX ID· and LXXVI 49-50) = wpa (ascend­
ent; half of a zodiacal i rn; or Hora). jiimitra (149) = 8L<iµE pas- the e enth place). kemadruma (X 2 and 6 = 1KEvo8poµia (when there is no planet before or
behind the Moon). kendra (I 53) = Kmpov (cwdine: the first, fourth eventh, and tenth places). lipta (LXXIX 2 ) and liptaka (l 38 and 43) = A.E rrT6v (minute of arc). me(1yai a (I 50) = µ11 LCILOS" (lunar). me~urwia (I 49 = µEcroupciVT')µa midhea en). paf_laphara , I 53) = inava<popa. ( uccedent: the second, fifth eighth, and
eleventh place ). sunaphii (X 1 3, and 8- 12 = cruva<M (v hen the Moon approaches a planet). triko~w (l 5 l) = Tpl ,•wvov (trine· the fifth place. The ninth place is called
' tritriko,:z.a ). vasi (XI I 3 and 6-7 = cpd<JLS' ri ing . When we examine the doctrines of the Ya anajataka and compare them
•
After hi co erage of genethlialogy in adhy{1 as I to LI Sphujidhvaja has
29 Pingree The Yava11ajiitaka, it. ol. 2 pp. 195-415. 30 D. Pingree, The Indian Iconography of the Decan and Horas ', JWCl, 26, 1963, pp.
223-54.
35
added a ection on interrogation (pra.foa 'asrra3 ' in adhyaya LII to LXX:ll.
Thi branch of astrology was an Indian in ention. dra ing upon b thjiitaka , for the subjects of the query , and Greek catarchic a trolog , for th an er· if not devised by Sphujidhvaja himself, he mll t ha e been able to d ri e it from ome Indian astrologer writing in the centur before he ompo ed the Yavanajiitaka. The difference between catarchic and interrogational a tr l­ ogy is that with the former the a trologer determine a propitiou time for his client to begin doing omething, while with the lati r he an v er a p - cific question from the horo cope of the moment at which the que tion wa a ked. Interrogations, as will be made clear in chapter 4 and 6, ere an important contribution by Indians to later a trologie ; o al o wa militar astrology, (ya.tn:i.32
), which i based on a combination of omen with atarchic a trology. Sphujidhvaja inaugurate the long Indian tradition of the mi ed form of thi type of astrology in adhya a LXXIII to LXXVI, whil he deals with catarchic astrology it elf (muhurtasiistra33
) brief! in adh)a a LXXVII-LXXVIII.
MTnaraja, wbo copies or repeat many of Sphujidh aja' v mo t of the Vrddhayavanajataka to genethlialog (adhyiiya 1-LXIII), but appends eight chapters on omen at the end. Much of what he ha added to the genethlialogy of the Yavanajiitaka eem to have been deri ed from th lost work of Satya, who appears to have been able to draw upon a cond translations of a Greek a trological work a well a upon Ya ane' ara clearly Satya must be dated to the 3rd century. The main inno ation made by Minaraja in the field of genethJjalogy were the de elopment of a pecia.l field of women's horo copy (strijiitaka) in adh)ii)as LVIII-LXll and the theory of the rays (rasml) of the planet e pounded in adh ii)a L VI; the e rays are a mea ure of the di tance of each planet from it exaltation and therefore only express in a new way an old idea.
Varahamihira, while normally following Sphujidh aja or Satya in hi Brha}jataka (he refer to Satya by name in Il 15· Il 9, lO and l · XII 2· XX 20; and XX] 3, but never by name to Sphujidh aja de pite hj ecboing of Sphujidhvaja' word from time to time) depend on man other author­ itie a well. He cite at various point the opinion of JI a' arman II 9
31 See Pingree, lyoti~siistra, cit., pp. 110-14. 32 Ibid ., pp. 107-8. 3 Ibid., pp. 101-7. 34 See The Yavanajiitaka, cit., ol. 2, pp. 198, 207, 209,210, 224, 236, _40. 241 246. 273.
275,293,331 333,339,348, and 354. For Sarya ' u e of Ya ane' ara ee ibid., vol. , pp. 299 and 337-38.
35 CESS, A 3, p. 70a.
36
II 7), Para 'ara3 ( II_ . Bhadatta3 (VII 11 ) Maya39
( II l) i.1:mgupta I1 and I" . Saktipurva41 (VIl l ) and Siddha ena II 7 . all of \Vh m eem to have \\'linen in the 4th or 5th cen­ tur . It i apparently Tnaraja , horn he refer to as Yavanfil) in XII 142
, but hi other referenc to the a anas are irher to the lo t rran lation u ed by Sat a (XXI 3~3
) or t another l t tran lati n fr m the Greek ( ill 944 and XI 1). And in II l he refe epararel) to Ya ana4
- and to MaIJittha46 , whose
name repre en the Greek ~1m,i6wv, alleged author of a Greek a trological poem in i book . though mo t of the fragmen of hi lo t San krit treati e are high\ Indianized. Bhan rpala~7 arefull di tingui he th is Yavana, who e, ork he ha nor een but\ horn , becau e of hi agreement with Satya, he a ume to be identi al with a ane ' ara, from Sphujidhvaja. One or the other or both of t h lo t tran lat ion m a ha e been known to Go inda vamin , wh in the earl 9th cenrury, a able to quote verses from Ya anac.arya, Ya an ' . ara. and Cirantana a ana49
, as well as from MaJJittha and Sphujidhvaja.
V arahan1ihira · acquaintan ith Greek ource other than that u ed by Sphujidh aja i furth r pr ved by hi u e in the Brhajjaraka of Sanskrit tran literation of Greek te hnical tem1 other than tho e found in the Yavanajataka. The are:
tikokera (I ) = 1 y6KEpws apri om). tira (II 2· 14; I I · XXlII 14.; and XXVI 9) = PTlS' (Mar ) . a phujir II ; XXI 1-,: and 'VI 9 · = 4>po8tlll (Venus) . ittha I 8; perhap arahan1ihira wmte ,-ktha = ·1 xeus- (Pi ce ). karki l I · V 20· XI 9: and XXIII 9 = KapK(vQS' (Cancer). ko~,a ( 2 = Kp6v (Saturn . kaurp a I = L'Kopmos- S orpiu . kri a (I 8· III 3· 21 · XJ 10; XVIl l; XVIII I; and XXVI 9) = KpL6S'
(Arie ) .
"J6 CES 3, p. 12 1 . 37 CESS 4, p. 199a. 38 A cording to BhanorpaJa on Brhajjatako Il 11 Bhadatta i identical with Satya. 39 CE S, 4 p. 3 b. 40 CESS, A -, p. 704a. 41 Saktipurva i id nti aJ with Parasara a ording rn Ba!1otpala on Brhajjiitaka VII9. 42 Pingree, The Yavam1ja,aka. cir., o1. . pp. 0- I. 43 Ibid.. ol. 2. pp. _9_.9 . 44 Ibid., vol. 2 p. 4 . 45 Ibid. ol. - , p. 46 CES , A 4, p. 4 b. 47 Pingree, op. cit., vol. - pp. 7-" . 4 CE S,A2,p. l44a;A4, p. 6b:andA - , p. lOla. 49 C£S, A - p. - ·b.
37
jituma (I 8 and XXVI 9) = t.L8vµm (Gemini) juka (I 8; XIX 2; and XXV 8) = Zuy6v (Libra). tavuri (I 8) = Taupos (Tauru ). tauk~ika (I 8) = To~OTIJS' (Sagittariu ). dyii.na (I 16; XXIII 3 and 13; XXIV 8 and 9) = 8uvov (de cendent . pathona (I 8 and xxm 1) = Tiap8EVOS (Virgo) . Leya (I 8) = AEwv (Leo) . h,:droga (I 8) = 'Y8pox6os- (Aquariu ). hemna (II 2) = 'Epµf]S' (Mercury) . heli (ll 2) = "H}._LOS' (Sun). [n conclusion we must note that VarahamihiLra . a a Maga Brahmru:ia wa
subject not only to Greek influence but to Iranian. Thi become apparent not in his a trology (for the Iranian astrology of the 6th century wa haped by Indian and Greek, as wiH be shown in the next chapter but in hi a tro­ nomical Paficasiddhantika, wherein hi Ii t of the deitie a ociated with the thirty day of each Persian month is de eloped from an Iranian Ii t50 .
50 Thi topic will be discussed in a fonhcoming paper by A. Panaino.
38
CHAPTER 4 THE RECOVERY OF S S IAN ASTROLOGY
Virtuall th entire · rpu of trol gi al te that once existed in PahlavI ha long inc di app ared'; of that hi h remain the chief pa age i that on the horo cop of the world :a c i eha,z) in the 9th century Bundahishn2•
Thi i , in fact a the nati it , of Ga ,omart the Indian horo cope of a mahapuru. a with the n plane in the zodiacal ign of their exalta­ tion without an peci.fication of their degree within tho e igns, and with­ out actualll · mentionino ercury po ition in Virgo which i a tronomi­ cally irnpo ible . The horo cope of the rnahapuru. a fir t appears in the San krit Yavanajataka omp db Sphujidh aja in 269/270 A.0.4
• How­ e er the Pahla i adapter of thi horn ope ha made ome additions, of which the main one i that the ending and de cending node of the Moon, which are ref rred to as the Head and Tail of the Dragon Gocihr (the Indian Rahu and Ketu are pla ed in Gemini and agittariu re pectively· the e exaltation of the node do not occur either in Cla ical Greek or in Indian
1 There i a brief re,rie, of the Pahla I material b , C J , Brunner, · A tronomy and A trol- oay in the anian P riod' , Efr _ pp. 862a- 6 b; ee ai o D. Pingree ·Masha'aliah: Some
asanian and yria c urce , E ay on Islamic Philosoph_ and Science Alban 1975, pp. 5-14.
2 D. 1• Ma kenzi , 'Zoro trian trolog in the 81mdahis11' BSOAS, 27 1964 pp. 511- 29. Important thi arti le w in i rim . it n no to be thorough! re i ed.
3 [n ome ve ion f th:i mahiipufi$a h ro ope i.t i al o rated that the Moon is full, which again i tronomi all r im ible in e it i on] one zodiacal ign from the Sun.
4 Yava11ajiitaka VIII · and lX _ in D. Pinl!ree Tlze avmwjiiwka of Sphujidvhaja HOS, 48, 2 ol ., Cambrid e ,1 . 197 .
39
astrology, but represent a Sasanian innovation ba ed on the Indian ' inclu­ sion of the two nodes among the planets, which then number nine; this in­ clusion occurred only in the late 4th or 5th century, after MTnaraja wrote hi Vrddhayavanajiitaka between 300 and 3255
. This indicate that the Pahla I original of this horoscope of Gayomart doe not go back earlier than c. 500 and was probably proposed during the reign of Khu ro Anu hirwan,. who ruled from 531 till 578.
Other Indian element in this horoscope of a mahiipuru.Ja include the references to the nak~atra Azarag, corre ponding to the San krit A' le . a:6; and the bonds that connect the five star-planet to the Sun remind one of the chords of wind that bind them to their fighroccas (corresponding to the Sun) in Indian astronomy7, though the lengths of the bonds for Venu and Mer­ cury - 2831 = 47; 11 ° and 1850, for which read 1350 = 22;30° re pec­ tively- are Venus' maximum equation of the anomaly according to the Sasanian Zik-i Shahriyariin of Khusro Anu hirwan and the radiu of Mer­ cury's epicycle according to Ptolemy9
• Thus, the idea advanced by Cumont that the Greek version of this horoscope, which cans it Chaldaean, repre­ sents some Babylonian prototype 10 (which is in fact totally inconceivable since the Babylonians did not cast horo cope ), is ab urd; rather the Greek is a most interesting Byzantine version of an Arabic description of the Zoro­ astrian horoscope of the world. That Arabic original in fact , is preserved in, inter a/ia, the eighth book of <An ibn Abi al-Rijal Kitiib al-biiri ( (Book of the Skilled) 11
, where it is attributed to the Kitiib al-biz[daj of Vettius Valens as commented upon by Buzurjmihr.
The other references to astrology in PahlavI literature assure us that that science was widely practiced in Sasanian Iran; and those examples I have been able to examine indicate that among the types of astrology then in u e was that of interrogations 12
, an Indian invention based on Greek catarchic astrology but differing from it in the way described in chapter 3.
5 D. Pingree, Jyoril_zsastra, Wiesbaden 1981 , p. 83. 6 D.N. Mackenzie, BSOAS, 27, 1964, p. 514 n. 2. 7 D. Pingree, ' Astronomy and Astrology in lndia and Iran ' , Isis, 54,_ 1963, pp. 229-46,
esp. 242. 8 See, e . .g., E.S. Kennedy & D. Pingree, The Astrological History of Mashii 'alliih, Cam­
bridge, Mass. 1971, p. 82. 9' ~uVTa~LS µaOl)µaTLKTJ IX 9. 10 In CCAG, 5, 2, p. 131; the 0EµDrns <iaTpovoµu<ljs T{xvns Ka Ta TOVS' XaX.6ofous
&x;a was edited by I. Bidez, CCAG, 5, 2, pp .. l30-37. 11 Kitab al-biiri' VIlI 35, cited by C.A. NaJ lino, 'Tracee di opere greche giunte agli Arabi
per trafi.la pehlevica', A Volume of Oriental Studies Presented to Professor E.G. Bror ne Cambridge 1922, pp. 345-63, esp. 353. The same horo cope i referred to by f:lamza al­ I~fahani (I 5) and pseudo-Hermes; see Pingree, ' Masha.'alliih' , cit., p. 12 n. 6.
12 A. Panaino, 'The Two Astrological Reports of the Kiirnamag i Ardafir i Pabagiin (III, 4-7~ IV, 6-7)', Die Sprache 36, 1994, pp. 181-98.
40
But for the mo t part e rel on Arabic tran lation of and references to the Pahla i te t for our recon tru tion. The e tran lation from Pahlavi were virtuaH the earLie t ientifi te ts in Arabic 13 · and earl cAbbasid a trology like its astron m 1
~, wa largel Sa anian and Greek in origin, with Indian material entering in through i being intermingled with the Greek and Iranian element in S anian trolog , while most of the practicing astrologer of the late eighth and earl · ninth centurie were lranians. I need only name awbakht \. ho came to al-Man. iir court as a Zoroastrian claim­ ing de cent from Gev but \ ho then onverted to I lam 15
• Ma ha>allah ibn Athari, a Per ian Je\ from B~ra 16
; and 'Umar ibn al-Farrukhan from Tabari tan 17 all three of whom were pre ent at the casting of the catarchic horoscope of Baghdad for 30 Jul 76_1
• to them may be added al-FaC,l ibn Sahl from Sarakh 19 Sahl ibn Bi hr, a Jew who worked in Khurasan20 Abu Ma' shar ofBalkh 1 and bu Yu uf Ya<qub ibn 'Ali al-Qa.ran'i22 , to restrict our elve to only the more important authorities who were Persians and who relied dire tl y or indirectly, on Pahla i ources.
A number of genuine translation of Pahlavi books have survived, though there al o are e eral Arabic te t that fal ely claim to be such translations. The most noreworthy of the latter group entitled Kitiib care/. mifia~1 asrar al­ nujum (Book of the Latitud of the Ke of the Seo~ets of the Stars), is attrib­ uted to Henne and i aid in the unique manuscript in the Ambrosiana23 ,
13 D. Pingree, • trolog · Hl Tire Cambridg,e Histm of Arabic Literature: Religion, Learnin and Scien e in 1he'Abbas;d Perwd Cambride:e 1990, pp. 290-300, esp. pp. 292-95.
14 D. Pingree ·Toe Greek Influence on Early l lamic Mathematical Astronomy ', IAOS, 93, 1973 pp. 32-43.
15 F. Sezgin, Ge chi hie de arabiscl,en S hrifrrwns, ol. VIl Leiden 1979 pp. 100-1; for hi claim to ancient Ka}ranian anc try ee D. Pingree, Elr 1, pp. 369a-369b.
16 E.S. Kenned & D. Pingree, op. cit.~ D. Pingree, DSB, ol. 9 , ew York 1974, pp. 159- 62; GAS, VII pp. 102- · D. Pingree ·Classical and Byzantine A trology in Sasanian Persia', DOP, 4 , 1989 pp. __ 7_39 and Id. 'Masha,allah: Greek Pahla i , Arabic and Latin Astrol­ ogy ', to appear.
17 D. Pingree DSB , ol. 1 ew York 1976,. pp. - 8-39; GAS, VU, pp. 111-13; and D. Pingree, 'The Liber niversu of < lnar Ibn al-Farrukhan al-Taban ,JHAS, 1, 1977, pp. 8- 12.
1 D. Pingree 'The Fragmen of the V orks of al-FazarI , J ES, 29, 1970, pp. 103-23, esp. p. 104.
19 GAS VTI, pp. U 5- I6. 20 GAS VII pp. 12:5-2 . 21 R. Lema , Abz"i Ma 'shar and Larin Aris tot lia.ni min the Twelfth Century, Beirut 1962;
D. Pingree, The Thou ands of Ab1, Ma' har, London 1968 and DSB vol. l, New York 1970, pp. 32-39: and GAS. Vll, pp. l39-5l.
22 GAS VII pp .. 13' -9· and D. Pingree & W. Madelu.og. 'Political Horoscopes Relating to Late Ninth Century cAlids , J ES 36, 1977, pp. 247-T .
23 M .342 (C86 describedb •E. GriffmiinRSO 7, 1916-1918,pp. ll0-27,ff. lb-lOOa; see GAS VII pp. 53-4.
41
-
whose copying was finished on Friday 7 Rabi' al-aw al in 107 l A.H. or 12 ovember 1660, to have been tran lated in Dhu al-qa'da in 125 A.H. r
between 26 August and 24 September in 742. The text i a confu ed treati e on historical and political a trology based on permutation of the id a of the revolutions of the world-year (sinf a/- 'iilam) a form of astrology that we shall see to have been invented and popular in Sa anian Iran. Bau ani' notion that thi text quotes from Abu a' har Kitab a~kiim ta~uiwf/ al­ maw ii!Td, composed in about 850, i unfounded24
., though he i certainl right to deny that the pseudo-Hermetic work wa tran lated in 125 .H. Of the dozen or o horn copes that it contain , none ield a ati factory date between 600 B.C. and 1600 A.D. except for one who e date i incontro ert­ ibly 24 March 142825
• This p eudo-Hennetic text i then, tripl bogu ·· it i neither by it alleged author, nor wa it tran lated in 742 nor, indeed \ a it a translation at all. It shows ign of being an Arabic forgery of the 15th or 16th century.
The arne manuscript contains a fragmen t of a book on a familiar form of Sa anian hi torical astrology ba ed on conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter. This work26 is attributed to Jama b, and is claimed to have been tran. lated from PahlavI by Mu}):ammad .ibn AbI Bakr al-Fari T who i probably the Mu];Iammad al-Fari I who wrote in Arabic in the Yemen the al-Zij al-Mu1affar1
24 A. Bau ani, ' II Kitab <Art/. Mifta}:,. an- ujum attribuito a Henne : prima traduzione araba di un te to astrologico?', Atti de/la Accademia fazionale dei Li11cei, erie ottava, Memorie , Cl. Sci. mor., star. efil., 27, 1983, pp. 3- 141 e p. pp. 9 and 126. Bau ani doe not realize that the De revolutionibus nativitatum publi hed at Basel in I559 i definitely a translation from the Greek ver ion of Abu Ma' har' Kiuib ta}:,.iiwil sini al-mawii/,d edi ted b D. Pingree, Leipzig 1968; nor that the style of the Kitiib (anj miftaf:1 al-nujiim i totally fo r­ eign co that of Abu Ma'shar.
25 Bau ani 's attempt (op. cit., pp. 85-89) to di cu the date of ome of the horo copes i quite u eless. The horoscopeof24 March 1428 i found on f. 62a; see Bau ani,op. cir. p. 129.
Planets Ambro iana m . Computation Saturn Sagittariu Sagittariu _J O retr. Jupiter Aquaria Aquariu 20° Mars Arie Arie 70 Sun Aries Ari 130 Venu Aries Mercury Pi ce Moon Cancer Cancer l 0
A cending node Arie Arie 23°
The po ition of the planets are taken from B. Tuckerman, Planetary, Ltmar, and Solar Positions A .D. 2 to A.D. 1649, Philadelphia 1964· the po ition of the a cending node from P.V. Neugebauer, Sterntafeln van 4000 vor Chr. bis w Geg,em art , Leipzig 1912 pp. 6 -76.
26 On ff. 101b-l 17b. GAS, VII, p. 88.
42
in 126227 • There i hrtle rea on toe 'pe t either of the e , ork to yield an purel Sa anian material, thou .... h a i the a e \ ith mo t Arabic astrology, some of their onten pre umabl I go ba o uch a ource.
The a.me i true of three t , pre rved in Pari Arabe 2487, which was copied in Egypt in 149...:'. The fi t of the i a Kfuib a riir kaliim Hurmus al-mr,thallath bi-al-~1171<.ma Book of the ecrets of the Words of H ermes who i Tripled in \ i dom 19
• The preface e hoe bu J\,fa ' bar in di cu ing the fu t and the e ond H rm 30
- mt i the e and, a Chaldaean who i al ­ leged to have wrinen th Kiriib a riir kaliim Hunn us - and then proceed to give without proper id ntJifi ation, tll Bundahislm' horo cope of Gay6mart, except that Me ury i entered twi e in i e altamion Virgo 15°, and near the Sun at Arie 29° . and that the Lot of Fortune and the Lot of the Strange join the nine plane . The te r break ff after ewght page in the midst of a general di cu ion of njun tion of tum and Jupiter, another f<?rm of astrolog · in ented in S anian Iran.
The next b k in thi manu ript i a K iuib ft a~1kiim al-qiranat (Book Concerning the Jud me11t of the Co11ju11ctio11s) rud to ba e been written by Jama b the Wi e· 1 and to ha e been tran ribed in l 18 l from a mysteri­ ou rnanu ript brought to th \! eU-guard d citadel of al-Imam al-Na~'ir, Caliph from l l O till J 2_ . The work i a f: cimating a trological world hi tory based on th th o of oajun tion . of Saturn and Jupiter according to which a onjun tion at the b ginning of Arie \ hich occurs at interval of about 10 0 ,ears, indi. ate proplle · tran fe of onjunction from tri­ phcity to tripli it , hi h