This dissertation focuses on a unique corpus of cuneiform tablets from southern Babylonia written during the Seleucid period (roughly 3rd- 2nd c. BCE) that preserve a large table of astrological information fixed to the zodiac. In order to better understand the way in which these tablets were written, read, and used I employed a wide range of comparative textual data. In addition, I used theoretical frameworks concerned with literacy, epistemology and the organization of knowledge to understand how the format, a relatively unique layout for this content, affected the transmission of the text. These tablets were written in Hellenistic Uruk and Babylon, some of them were edited by Ernst Weidner in his Gestirn-Darstellungen auf babylonischen Tontafeln. They contain a large astrological spreadsheet spanning multiple tablets which has a rigid schematic structure based on the movement of the sun. The spreadsheet is divided into twelve separate tables each governed by the location of the sun in the zodiac, and then further divided into twelve columns. This organizational scheme served two purposes. First, it produced a simple arithmetic extension of the zodiac, essentially squaring the twelve signs, resulting in 144 unique columns. Second, each column represents a physical location of the sun in the sky. This combination of arithmetical and physical locations belies the abstract and concrete nature of textual formats which can both derive from conceptual frameworks but also reflect realia. The contents of the table are pulled from a wide collection of traditional Mesopotamian scholarly genres. Materials used in medical treatments, omens derived from celestial occurences, cultic observances for local gods, and personal advice for daily behavior all are found within the rows of the tables. As with all forms of textual layout there is an underlying conceptual structure for the placement of each of these individual pieces of content. This dissertation seeks to understand the source texts and processes by which the scribes excerpted and organized this content into the unique structure of these tables.
Monroe, Martin W.,
"Advice from the Stars: The Micro-zodiac in Seleucid Babylonia"
(2016).
Egyptology and Assyriology Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0KD1W9N
