Books by Mathieu Ossendrijver
Sources and Studies in the History of Mathematics, 2012
Edited Volumes by Mathieu Ossendrijver
JANEH 8 Issue 1-2 - Special Issue, 2021
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/JANEH/8/1-2/html
Double issue of JANEH with edited volume ... more https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/JANEH/8/1-2/html
Double issue of JANEH with edited volume comprising 11 papers about Babylonian and Egyptian priests and scholarship between ca. 600 BCE and 200 CE. They constitute the proceedings of the workshop “Scholars, Priests, and Temples: Babylonian and Egyptian Science in Context”, which was held at the Humboldt University Berlin, 12–14 May 2016, with support of the Excellence Cluster TOPOI. The workshop brought together Assyriologists and Egyptologists with expertise in Babylonian and Egyptian scholarship, priesthoods and temple institutions.
Berlin Studies of the Ancient World 44, 2017
This open-access volume can be downloaded for free at http://dx.doi.org/10.17171/3-44
Preprints by Mathieu Ossendrijver
Edition and commentary of the fragment BM 43069, probably from Babylon ca. 330-100 BCE with a sma... more Edition and commentary of the fragment BM 43069, probably from Babylon ca. 330-100 BCE with a small portion of a table of powers of 9.
Edition and discussion of the Late Babylonian tablet BM 47042+47064 with a previously unknown typ... more Edition and discussion of the Late Babylonian tablet BM 47042+47064 with a previously unknown type of Babylonian metrological table. Each entry of the table is concerned with dividing 1 mina of weight by a different number. Not only the final result but also the operational steps by which the division is achieved are presented in the table. They can be summarized as follows:
1) number N in absolute decimal notation,
2) conversion to floating sexagesimal n,
3) finding its reciprocal 1/n (using table of reciprocals),
4) conversion to absolute weight 1/N mina (using metrological conversion table).
To be published in an upcoming edition of Late Babylonian mathematical texts from the British Museum (DFG project "Late Babylonian Mathematical Practices")
Edition and discussion of the Late Babylonian tablet BM 46561 with a previously unknown type of B... more Edition and discussion of the Late Babylonian tablet BM 46561 with a previously unknown type of Babylonian metrological table. To be published in an upcoming edition of Late Babylonian mathematical texts from the British Museum (DFG project "Late Babylonian Mathematical Practices")
Book Reviews by Mathieu Ossendrijver
Bibliotheca Orientalis, 2022
This book originated as a doctoral thesis at the University of Birmingham under the supervision o... more This book originated as a doctoral thesis at the University of Birmingham under the supervision of the late Wilfred Lambert. It was completed in the 1990s and since then substantially expanded and revised for publication, resulting in a many-faceted and erudite 464-page study. The subject of study is a Late Babylonian scholarly composition referred to as "A Babylon Calendar Treatise". The book consists of four main sections: Introduction, Edition, Commentary, and Cuneiform Texts, of which the Introduction and the very detailed Commentary occupy more than 400 pages. The difficulties of interpreting this multilayered and strongly intertextual composition are indeed severe. In total 169 lines are at least partly preserved in three manuscripts from Hellenistic Babylon. There appear to be no parallels for its combination of calendrical, ritualistic, mythological, astronomical, astrological, historiographical, and commentarial elements. The basic structure of the composition is determined by the Babylonian calendar. There were at least 14 sections, each covering a month or a portion thereof, starting with Nisannu (month I) and ending with Addaru (month XII). The bad state of preservation adds to the difficulties of interpretation, perhaps more so than acknowledged by the author. The sections for Simānu, Ulūlu, Tašrītu, and Ṭebētu are relatively well preserved, but those for Nisannu, Ayyaru, Dûzu, Abu, and Addaru are badly damaged, and nothing or almost nothing remains of the sections for Araḫsamna, Kislīmu, and Šabāṭu. Some of the better preserved sections share the following four elements: 1) A report about the past enactment or omission of an apotropaic ritual. They include namburbû rituals, other substitution rituals, temple rituals, and lamentations. The reports are vague in the sense that they do not mention who performed the rituals and in which year or in whose reign they were performed, so that they are presumably fictive. 2) A statement identifying the catastrophic event averted by the ritual, such as an attack by Elam or Subartu, a change of rule in Babylon, or Marduk abandoning Babylon. 3) Statements about planets, stars, constellations, and celestial phenomena, some in the form of omens announcing the catastrophic event, thus triggering the enactment of the ritual. 4) Exegetical statements and glosses about the rituals, catastrophic events, and celestial phenomena, and statements linking them to events from Enūma Eliš involving Marduk, Ti'amāt, and Qingu. The reports about past enactments of rituals contrasts with proper ritual texts which are formulated as instructions in the present tense. According to the author, the composition therefore served a historiographical purpose, namely to "demonstrate the validity of rituals as apotropaic measures against invasion by enemies", so that it "can be described as a calendar treatise on the ritual aversion of foreign invasion" (p. 12). These may well be an apt descriptions, but the author does not explicitly substantiate them by systematically building upon the research presented throughout the book. The suggestion that the rituals can be viewed as simulations of the events which they aim to avert (e.g. p. 24) is one of many interesting observations about the composition that also warrants a more systematic treatment. The historiographical layers are discussed in great detail on pp. 80-101. The topic of the removal of Marduk's statue by Elam and its return to Babylon is traced back primarily to events during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I (pp. 82-92). Based on historical passages from the astronomical diaries and other sources the author argues for a date of composition in the second century BCE, when Babylon was under threat from the kingdom of Elymais, while downplaying the possibility that the composition reflects Babylonian experiences with Achaemenid rule (p. 98-101). The remainder of this review focusses on astronomical and astrological aspects, which the author discusses in the Introduction (pp. 30-50) and the Commentary (pp. 225-410). The text is infused with numerous references to stars, constellations, solstices and equinoxes, planets, synodic
Archiv für Orientforschung, 2022
Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 2018
Journal for the History of Astronomy, 2018
125 that, as the book has demonstrated, there is a very large archival record, which lets us know... more 125 that, as the book has demonstrated, there is a very large archival record, which lets us know "what he made, how he made it, whom he sold his products to, and also -very unusually for a seventeenth-century cosmographer -how he sold them" (p. 297). The book is enriched by appendices containing a number of systematic listings, including Coronelli's globes, maps and books, and 44 plates of varying quality but adequate for their purpose.
Journal for the History of Astronomy, 2012
Archiv für Orientforschung, 2011
Various by Mathieu Ossendrijver
Updated version (6 August 2023)
Babylonian tablets with astral science were also found at Sippar and Borsippa. They include MUL.A... more Babylonian tablets with astral science were also found at Sippar and Borsippa. They include MUL.APIN, ziqpu star lists and omen texts, but as far as known no mathematical astronomy or diaries and related texts. p. 10, Other libraries with astronomical texts: According to Clancier (2009), p. 68, at least one of the mentioned synodic tables, SpTU I 98, can be assigned to the library of Iqīša. On p. 402 ("Astronomie") Clancier suggests the same for the other table, SpTU IV 170.
Available as PDF or plain TXT: computer−generated list of all regular sexagesimal numbers with up... more Available as PDF or plain TXT: computer−generated list of all regular sexagesimal numbers with up to 30 digits in Babylonian floating notation.
Uploads
Books by Mathieu Ossendrijver
Edited Volumes by Mathieu Ossendrijver
Double issue of JANEH with edited volume comprising 11 papers about Babylonian and Egyptian priests and scholarship between ca. 600 BCE and 200 CE. They constitute the proceedings of the workshop “Scholars, Priests, and Temples: Babylonian and Egyptian Science in Context”, which was held at the Humboldt University Berlin, 12–14 May 2016, with support of the Excellence Cluster TOPOI. The workshop brought together Assyriologists and Egyptologists with expertise in Babylonian and Egyptian scholarship, priesthoods and temple institutions.
Preprints by Mathieu Ossendrijver
1) number N in absolute decimal notation,
2) conversion to floating sexagesimal n,
3) finding its reciprocal 1/n (using table of reciprocals),
4) conversion to absolute weight 1/N mina (using metrological conversion table).
To be published in an upcoming edition of Late Babylonian mathematical texts from the British Museum (DFG project "Late Babylonian Mathematical Practices")
Book Reviews by Mathieu Ossendrijver
Various by Mathieu Ossendrijver
Double issue of JANEH with edited volume comprising 11 papers about Babylonian and Egyptian priests and scholarship between ca. 600 BCE and 200 CE. They constitute the proceedings of the workshop “Scholars, Priests, and Temples: Babylonian and Egyptian Science in Context”, which was held at the Humboldt University Berlin, 12–14 May 2016, with support of the Excellence Cluster TOPOI. The workshop brought together Assyriologists and Egyptologists with expertise in Babylonian and Egyptian scholarship, priesthoods and temple institutions.
1) number N in absolute decimal notation,
2) conversion to floating sexagesimal n,
3) finding its reciprocal 1/n (using table of reciprocals),
4) conversion to absolute weight 1/N mina (using metrological conversion table).
To be published in an upcoming edition of Late Babylonian mathematical texts from the British Museum (DFG project "Late Babylonian Mathematical Practices")
compendium written no later than 140/139 BCE. It contains a rare combination of
procedures connected to mathematical astronomy, including a previously unknown
one for Mercury’s daily motion, and what appear to be astrological procedures. It is
argued that the fragment is an indirect join to BM 55555+55562 (ACT No. 210 = BMAPT
No. 95), a similar, undated compendium of planetary and lunar procedures, including
one mentioning a “year of the Sun,” for which a Greek origin has been proposed. BM
47886+47914 preserves a date of writing, with possible implications for the origin of
the “year of the Sun.”
Uruk is the only other site apart from Babylon where all major categories of Babylonian astral science are represented in cuneiform tablets. Although the number of tablets from Uruk with astral science is small compared to Babylon, they are especially relevant for reconstructing the context, development and transmission of astral science during the first Millennium BCE. This is because most tablets from Uruk were excavated scientifically, unlike those from Babylon. Hence we know, albeit to varying degrees of precision, at which locations and in which stratigraphical layers they were found - information that is essential for the present investigation. In Uruk, the full range of Babylonian astral science is best represented in the Late Seleucid library of the Rēš, temple of the skygod Anu. Since this library and the scholars associated with it have been the subject of detailed investigations, the focus is shifted here to libraries from the preceding Neo Babylonian, Achaemenid and Early Seleucid periods. Three libraries in Uruk that predate the Rēš have yielded tablets with astral science: the library of the Eanna temple, that of Anu-ikṣur and his family and that of Iqīšâ and his family, two private libraries located in the same house. While all three have been surveyed elsewhere in the literature, the present contribution attempts to trace the development and the transfer of Babylonian astral science in and between these libraries in more detail.
This article introduces a double issue comprising eleven papers about Babylonian and Egyptian priests and scholarship between ca. 600 BCE and 200 CE. They constitute the proceedings of the workshop “Scholars, Priests, and Temples: Babylonian and Egyptian Science in Context”, which was held at the Humboldt University Berlin, 12–14 May 2016, with support of the Excellence Cluster TOPOI. The workshop brought together Assyriologists and Egyptologists with expertise in Babylonian and Egyptian scholarship, priesthoods and temple institutions. All contributions have been revised and updated since then. The present contribution offers a brief introduction on previous research, cross-cultural interactions, economic aspects, royal patronage, and internal developments of Babylonian and Egyptian temple scholarship, followed by short summaries of the papers.
This paper addresses developments in the prediction of weather phenomena in Late Babylonian scholarly texts. Previously published and unpublished texts are analyzed and the underlying methods are compared with omen-based weather prognostication, developments in Babylonian astronomical prediction and reporting practices in the astronomical diaries. It is found that some texts combine long-term astronomical prediction with inferential methods for predicting weather phenomena. It is argued that these new methods for predicting weather phenomena are part of a larger Babylonian effort to predict and explain non-astronomical phenomena by relating them to predictable astronomical phenomena.
In ancient Mesopotamia, all five planets visible to the naked eye were known and studied, along with the Moon, the Sun, the stars, and other celestial phenomena. In all Mesopotamian sources concerning the Moon and the planets, be they textual or iconographical, the astronomical, astrological, and religious aspects are intertwined. The term “astral science” covers all forms of Mesopotamian scholarly engagement with celestial entities, including celestial divination and astrology. Modern research on Mesopotamian astral science began in the 19th century. Much research remains to be done, because important sources remain unpublished and new questions have been posed to published sources.
During the Neo-and Late Babylonian periods (ca. 650 BCE-50 CE), Babylonian scholars systematically recorded market rates along with astronomical, meteorological and historical data in the Astronomical Diaries and related texts. Within that same period of time they also formulated astrological procedures for predicting market rates. These procedures are analysed and compared here with market predictions made in earlier celestial divination and with implicit evidence for market predictions within the Astronomical Diaries and related texts themselves. In this connection the question of why market rates were included in the Astronomical Diaries is also addressed.