The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture

Abstract

is author of several books and articles on the Babylonian approach to celestial phenomena.In the preface of the book under review, she writes, 'The primary goal of the study is to locate and define interconnections among the various and diverse parts of the Mesopotamian scribal traditions of celestial science.'The main body of the book consists of a prologue, seven chapters, and an epilogue.The prologue [1-13] explains the book's title, which is derived from a Babylonian idea that the stars are like a writing that expresses messages from the gods.Chapter 1, 'The Historiography of Mesopotamian Science' [14-43], deals with the many, disputed meanings of the term 'science' and states for the purposes of this book, Science. . . is not viewed as emerging from a magical-religious culture, but as fully integrated with it.In the face of the cuneiform evidence, the dichotomy between such hypothetical cultures is artificial and ahistorical.Appropriately, then, chapter 2 [44-97] is called 'Celestial Divination in Context'.It is an introduction to the different kinds of divination used in Babylonia, with particular emphasis on omens derived from the sky.In chapter 3, 'Personal Celestial Divination: The Babylonian Horoscopes ' [98-120], the author turns to a group of texts well known to her.She describes these texts in detail, referring to her book of 1998 and to the various other sources for celestial omens.Chapter 4, 'Sources for Horoscopes in Astronomical Texts' , tries to find where the compilers of the horoscopes could have looked for the information they included.It is most likely that the

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