{"id":24120,"date":"2024-08-22T12:20:46","date_gmt":"2024-08-22T16:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?p=24120"},"modified":"2024-08-22T12:20:46","modified_gmt":"2024-08-22T16:20:46","slug":"study-translates-some-disturbing-predictions-from-ancient-babylonian-text","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/08\/study-translates-some-disturbing-predictions-from-ancient-babylonian-text","title":{"rendered":"Study Translates Some Disturbing Predictions From Ancient Babylonian Text"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_24123\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-24123\" style=\"width: 1200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2024\/08\/babylonian-cuniform_credit-Adobe-Stock-The-trustees-of-the-British-Museum.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-24123\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2024\/08\/babylonian-cuniform_credit-Adobe-Stock-The-trustees-of-the-British-Museum.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-24123\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Adobe Stock | The trustees of the British Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A study released in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.journals.uchicago.edu\/doi\/10.1086\/730483\"><em>Journal of Cuneiform Studies<\/em><\/a> has revealed the complete decipherment of four ancient Babylonian tablets, and it\u2019s not comforting. Study author Andrew George and his partner, Junko Taniguchi, worked on the project, deciphering the writing on four clay tablets believed to be about 4,000 years old. The tablets were discovered over 100 years ago in what is now Iraq, most likely from the city of Sippar, but this is the first time they have ever been fully translated. The tablets contain prophecies obtained from observations of the moon\u2019s movements, particularly of lunar eclipses. The tablets \u201crepresent the oldest examples of compendia of lunar-eclipse omens yet discovered\u201d according to George and Taniguchi. The tablets date from a flourishing time of the Babylonian Empire\u2019s reign.<\/p>\n<p>The tablets contain some 60 omens. According to one prediction, when \u201can eclipse becomes obscured from its center all at once [and] clear all at once: a king will die, destruction of Elam.\u201d Elam refers to a region in what is now Iran. Other predictions include \u201can eclipse begins in the south and then clears: downfall of Subartu and Akkad,\u201d and \u201c An eclipse in the evening watch: it signifies pestilence.\u201d Subartu and Akkad were both regions of ancient Mesopotamia. George told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/archaeology\/a-king-will-die-4-000-year-old-lunar-eclipse-omen-tablets-finally-deciphered\"><em>Live Science<\/em><\/a> that some of the predictions may have come from personal experience. \u201cThe origins of some of the omens may have lain in actual experience \u2014 observation of portent followed by catastrophe,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe predictions are interesting for the light they shed on the psychology of rulership,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/news\/world\/doom-and-gloom-ancient-eclipse-tablets-full-ominous-texts-deciphered\/ar-AA1oOa7w?ocid=BingNewsSerp\">said<\/a> George. \u201cThe omens chiefly predict disasters such as assassination, usurpation, revolt, rebellion, defeat in war, loss of territory, plague, famine, drought, crop failure, locust attack, etcetera. It was evidently exactly these things that Babylonian kings were most anxious about. [The tablets] are important from the point of view of the evolution of humankind&#8217;s intellectual inquiry and religious beliefs.\u201d According to George and Taniguchi, the Babylonians didn\u2019t solely rely on the moon for omens. \u201cIf the prediction associated with a given omen was threatening, for example, &#8216;a king will die,&#8217; then an oracular enquiry by extispicy [inspecting the entrails of animals] was conducted to determine whether the king was in real danger.\u201d The people also believed that certain rituals could be performed to counteract the evil forces behind a bad omen. Sometimes, a substitute king would be appointed to take on the gods\u2019 wrath so that the real king would be spared.<\/p>\n<p>George said deciphering the tablets was one more step towards understanding human history. \u201cWhat cuneiform scholars do is decipher ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets in order to recover knowledge about the most ancient civilizations of the Near East. Every decipherment adds to our understanding of these civilizations and helps us to learn about human history.\u201d He stated that despite there being 500,000 such tablets in museums, only about 20 percent have been fully deciphered. \u201cMost are uncatalogued,\u201d he said. \u201cSo Assyriologists are pioneers, still engaged in the primary business of translating the sources and reconstructing the cultural and intellectual legacy of the Babylonians, Assyrians and Sumerians.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A study released in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies has revealed the complete decipherment of four ancient Babylonian tablets, and it\u2019s not comforting. Study author Andrew George and his partner, Junko Taniguchi, worked on the project, deciphering the writing on four clay tablets believed to be about 4,000 years old. The tablets were discovered over&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":627,"featured_media":24123,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[534,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-end-of-the-world","category-faith"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Study Translates Some Disturbing Predictions From Ancient Babylonian Text<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/08\/study-translates-some-disturbing-predictions-from-ancient-babylonian-text\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Study Translates Some Disturbing Predictions From Ancient Babylonian Text\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A study released in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies has revealed the complete decipherment of four ancient Babylonian tablets, and it\u2019s not comforting. Study author Andrew George and his partner, Junko Taniguchi, worked on the project, deciphering the writing on four clay tablets believed to be about 4,000 years old. The tablets were discovered over&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/08\/study-translates-some-disturbing-predictions-from-ancient-babylonian-text\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-08-22T16:20:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2024\/08\/babylonian-cuniform_credit-Adobe-Stock-The-trustees-of-the-British-Museum.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"900\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Cecilia Buchanan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Study Translates Some Disturbing Predictions From Ancient Babylonian Text","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/08\/study-translates-some-disturbing-predictions-from-ancient-babylonian-text","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Study Translates Some Disturbing Predictions From Ancient Babylonian Text","og_description":"A study released in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies has revealed the complete decipherment of four ancient Babylonian tablets, and it\u2019s not comforting. Study author Andrew George and his partner, Junko Taniguchi, worked on the project, deciphering the writing on four clay tablets believed to be about 4,000 years old. The tablets were discovered over&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/08\/study-translates-some-disturbing-predictions-from-ancient-babylonian-text","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2024-08-22T16:20:46+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1200,"height":900,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2024\/08\/babylonian-cuniform_credit-Adobe-Stock-The-trustees-of-the-British-Museum.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Cecilia Buchanan","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/08\/study-translates-some-disturbing-predictions-from-ancient-babylonian-text","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2024\/08\/study-translates-some-disturbing-predictions-from-ancient-babylonian-text","name":"Study Translates Some Disturbing Predictions From Ancient Babylonian 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