Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa

This Venus tablet is part of Enuma Anu Enlil ("In the days of Anu and Enlil"), a long text dealing with Babylonian astrology, which mostly consists of omens in the form of celestial phenomena.

The earliest copy of this tablet to be published, a 7th-century BC cuneiform, part of the British Museum collections, was recovered from the library at Nineveh. It was first published in 1870 by Henry Creswicke Rawlinson and George Smith as Enuma Anu Enlil Tablet 63, in "Tablet of Movements of the Planet Venus and their Influences" (The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, volume III).

As many as 20 copies of this text are currently on record, many of them fragmentary, falling into 6 groups.[3] The oldest of these copies is believed to be Source "B", found at Kish in 1924. It was copied from a tablet written at Babylon while Sargon II was King of Assyria between 720 and 704 BC.[4]

Several dates for the original omens, as contained in the tablet, were proposed early in the 20th century. The following dates, corresponding to the High, Middle, Low and Ultra-Low Chronologies, were inferred for the beginning of the Venus positions: 1702 BC, 1646/1638 BC, 1582 BC and 1550 BC, respectively.

The tablet's significance for corroborating Babylonian chronology was first recognised by Franz Xaver Kugler in 1912, when he succeeded in identifying the enigmatic "Year of the Golden Throne" ("Venus" tablet K.160) as potentially the 8th year of the reign of Ammisaduqa, based on one of his year names.[5] Since then, this 7th-century BC copy has been variously interpreted to support several chronologies in the 2nd millennium BC.[6]

Many uncertainties remain about the interpretation of the record of astronomical positions of Venus, as preserved in these surviving tablets.[7] Some copying corruptions are probable. Problems of atmospheric refraction were addressed by Vahe Gurzadyan in a 2003 publication.[8] The entry for some years, notably 13 and 21 are not physically possible and are considered in error. Also, the tables used to calculate the heliacal rising of Venus assume a rate at which the earth is slowing, a rate which is not certain, causing "clock-time errors".[9]

David F. Lappin maintains that the best solution is 1483 BC for the positions, writing: "In summary, the 1483 BC Venus solution is among the better fits, with acceptable Venus data, and a superior match with attested 30-day months of Ammizaduga."[10] David Rohl's New Chronology asserts that the best match on dates would be 1419 BC.[11]

• Babylonian astronomy
• Chronology of the ancient Near East
• Short chronology

• H. Gasche, J. A. Armstrong, S. W. Cole, and V. G. Gurzadyan, Dating the Fall of Babylon: A Reappraisal of Second-Millennium Chronology, Mesopotamian History and Environment Series 2, Memoirs 4, Chicago: The Oriental Institute; Ghent: The University of Ghent, 1998
• V.G.Gurzadyan and D.A.Warburton, Akkadica, vol. 126, p. 195-197, 2005 arXiv:physics/0607137
• V.G.Gurzadyan, Astronomy and the Fall of Babylon, Sky & Telescope, vol. 100, no.1 (July), pp. 40–45, 2000 arXiv:physics/0311114
• Huber, Peter J.; Sachs, Abraham (1982), Astronomical dating of Babylon I and Ur III, Undena Publications, Bibcode:1982adbi.book.....H, ISBN 978-0-89003-045-5
• Stephen Langdon and John Knight Fotheringham, The Venus Tablets of Ammizaduga, University Press, 1928
• Reiner, Erica; Pingree, David (1975), Babylonian Planetary Omens. Part 1. The Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa, Malibu: Getty Research Institute, ISBN 0-89003-010-3. The "fundamental edition", superseding Langdon et al. 1928 (Walker 1984).
• Mitchell, Wayne A., “Ancient Astronomical Observations and Near Eastern Chronology”, Journal of the Ancient Chronology Forum, vol. 3, pp. 7–26, 1990
• Walker, C. B. F. (1984), "Notes on the Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa", Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 36 (1): 64–66, doi:10.2307/1360011, JSTOR 1360011, S2CID 164022588

• Venus tablet at British Museum
• Bibliography, in context of Mesopotamian astronomy