The Ominous Role of Eclipses in Ancient Babylonia

In ancient Babylonia, ruling as a king was a position of great power and privilege. However, this status came with its own set of risks, particularly when celestial events like eclipses took place during a monarch’s reign. Such occurrences were seen as dire omens, foretelling potential upheavals such as revolts, military defeats, territorial losses, plagues, droughts, crop failures, locust swarms, or even the king’s demise. In the event that the latter was predicted, it was not uncommon for the king to go into hiding. In his absence, a substitute—often a prisoner or a simpleton—would be temporarily installed on the throne until the threat had diminished. To appease the gods, it was believed that a sacrifice was necessary; thus, upon the king’s return, the substitute would face execution.

The people of Mesopotamia during the second millennium B.C. held a deep belief in the prophetic significance of celestial phenomena. Eclipses were commonly interpreted as messages of wrath from the divine. Andrew George, an esteemed Assyriologist and emeritus professor at the University of London, stated, “The reading of omens was how the Babylonians made sense of the world.” Recently, Dr. George led a study published in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies, which detailed the deciphering of four ancient tablets inscribed with cuneiform script, currently housed in the British Museum since the late 1800s. These clay artifacts are believed to have originated from Sippar, a thriving city along the banks of the Euphrates River, in what is now modern Iraq, and date back to approximately 1894 B.C. to 1595 B.C.

These artifacts serve as a compendium of Babylonian astrologers’ observations regarding lunar eclipses, unveiling a series of ominous predictions concerning the deaths of kings and the potential downfall of civilizations. Dr. George explained, “The purpose of the omen texts was to figure out what the gods wanted to communicate, whether good or bad, so as to take action to avoid any trouble ahead.” The prevailing belief among the Babylonians was that earthly events mirrored those in the heavens; thus, a celestial eclipse signaled that a significant earthly figure, such as a king, would face a similar fate. Dr. George elaborated, “It is possible that this theory arose from the coincidence of an eclipse and a king’s death—an actual experience early in Mesopotamian history. However, it is also conceivable that the theory was developed entirely by analogy. We cannot know for certain.”

The Babylonians perceived portents in countless aspects of their environment, which led to numerous references in the tablets to the behavior of birds, the patterns formed by oil dropped into water, the rising smoke from incense, and encounters with various creatures such as snakes, pigs, cats, and scorpions. The newly translated tablets contain 61 predictions that range from warnings about natural calamities (for instance, “An inundation will come and reduce the amount of barley at the threshing floors”) to signs of unnatural chaos (“Lions will go on a rampage and cut off exit from a city”). Among the most poignant and heart-wrenching predictions describe the harrowing desperation experienced during times of famine, such as the grim statement: “People will trade their infant children for silver.”