Researchers have deciphered texts from four ancient Mesopotamian tablets that are around 4,000 years old and belong to ancient people of Mesopotamia. Perhaps surprisingly, the messages predict doom and doom rather than future peace or harmony. The results were recently published in the journal Journal of Cuneiform Studies and reported by Live Science.
The tablets were discovered more than 100 years ago in what is now Iraq. Researchers believe they originated in Sippar, an ancient Babylonian city near modern-day Baghdad. Although the texts have recently been translated, the tablets are kept in the British Museum. According to study authors Andrew George and Junko Taniguchi, the tablets “represent the oldest collection of lunar eclipse omens yet discovered.”
The people of Mesopotamia believed that “events in the sky” were messages from the gods. They analyzed eclipses, shadow movements, and the length of day and night to determine what events might be on the horizon.
Apparently the sky did not hold any good news. The tablets prophesy that “a king will die” and that a region known as Elam (now Iran) will be “destroyed” if “they are simultaneously hidden from the center of an eclipse.” [and] The stones also predicted the “collapse” of two other regions, Subartu and Akkad, “if an eclipse begins in the south and then clears.”
Other prophecies foretold that “a great army would fall” and that “swarms of locusts would attack the land” as well as “cattle losses.”
Although many of these reports were based on theories rather than hard evidence, George noted that “some of the omens may have their origins in actual experiences”: “the observation of omens followed by disaster.” More likely, though, these events were coincidences of cataclysmic events occurring around the timing of an eclipse or other significant event.
George told Live Science These tablets were likely used by the king's advisors to predict the future. “Those advising the king would observe the night sky and match their observations with academic celestial omen texts,” according to the study.