Trustees of the British MuseumA Babylonian cuneiform tablet with mysterious omens, held at the British Museum.
A series of nearly 4,000-year-old Babylonian tablets have long held eerie warnings that went undeciphered. But now, archaeologists have revealed what these ominous messages say, including dire pronouncements like, “When the Moon fully slips into Earth’s shadow, a king shall die.”
Four of these ancient clay tablets sat at the British Museum for more than a century. Until now, however, their messages were unknown. It is only thanks to archaeologists Andrew George and Junko Taniguchi that these approximately 60 chilling predictions have become clear.
The Ancient Predictions Recently Deciphered On Babylonian Tablets
Trustees of the British MuseumWhen omens like these were delivered to the king, he would order cleansing rituals, animal sacrifices, or even the appointment of a temporary substitute king who would bear the brunt of the coming tragedy and then be killed before the original king would retake the throne.
In a new report published in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies, researchers George and Taniguchi detailed the translation of 61 omens written across four clay tablets. Based on archaeological evidence, these tablets were likely inscribed in the ancient city of Sippar in what is now Iraq, sometime during the 17th and 18th centuries B.C.E., more than a millennium before the Babylonians built their famous Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
These tablets were added to the British Museum’s collection between 1892 and 1914, but this is the first time the cuneiform has been translated in its entirety and linked to astronomical predictions and omens.
Babylonian astronomers had a known fascination with the Moon, tracking it and the planets as they traveled across the night sky. They believed that these celestial bodies were controlled by the gods — and that their movements could foretell the future.
Trustees of the British MuseumA cuneiform tablet with a lunar eclipse table.
“The observation of celestial portents was a serious business for the body politic,” George and Taniguchi explain in the study. “In the later periods there is ample evidence to show that astrological observation was part of an elaborate method of protecting the king and regulating his behavior in conformity with the wishes of the gods.”
These mysterious omens highlight the complexity of the ancient Babylonians’ belief system. Advisors to the Babylonian kings were the ones in charge of watching the night sky and inscribing these predictions, which would influence the king’s rule.
Looking at them now, these omens are both highly fascinating and highly mysterious.
What These Ancient Babylonian Tablets Warned Of
One prophecy inscribed on the tablets predicts a harsh environmental disaster, saying: “In spring a locust swarm will arise and strike the crops/my land’s crops. There will be a dearth of flood.”
Another reads: “There will be rain and floodwater and Adad will devastate the threshing floors. There will occur an attack by an Elamite army, a Gutian army, on the land. It will destroy a land that revolts. The land will perish.”
Trustees of the British MuseumAround 61 omens were translated during this study.
This is not the only omen that speaks of a revolt, either. Another warns that an enemy will “demolish cities, city walls, my city walls, the walls of our city” during a revolt. Yet another prophecy states that “a king’s brother will seize the throne in a revolt.”
Other warnings are more specific, such as one that reads: “A dog will go mad and nobody whom it bites, whether male or female, will survive.” It’s also likely that many of these prophecies were based on oral lore that had been passed down, such as one that references “constant devastation by the [storm] god.”
In any case, these predictions were of great importance to the Babylonian kings and their advisors, who believed that “events in the sky were coded signs placed there by the gods as warnings about the future prospects of those on earth,” according to George and Taniguchi. “Those who advised the king kept watch on the night sky and would match their observations with the academic corpus of celestial-omen texts.”
While not every omen was taken at face value, Babylonian kings would sometimes test their validity through other rituals or even appoint, according to NASA, “substitute kings” to “bear the brunt of the gods’ ‘wrath’ to protect the real ruler from harm.” This shows just how seriously these predictions were taken by the ancient Babylonian rulers.
As researchers continue to work on translating this ancient cuneiform, more revelations like this will surely come to light. In all, these translated tablets offer a unique insight into one of antiquity’s most famous kingdoms.