The Babylonians considered the corpus of celestial omens, called Enuma
Anu Enlil, the culmination of scholarship. A modern edition of this
series of 70 tablets was initiated by Erica Reiner in cooperation with
David Pingree in 1975. Since then tablets 63 (Venus; 1975), 50-51 (fixed
stars; 1981) and 12-22 (lunar eclipses; 1988, by F. Rochberg-Halton)
have been published.
The present volume brings an edition of
tablets 22-29, devoted to the sun and dealing with a variety of
phenomena, such as its sighting in clouds of particular shapes and
colours and in a halo, the appearance of "disks" (parhelion, paraselene
etc.), the sun's radiance and colours, unexpected appearances and early
risings, athmospheric phenomena at sunrise and sunset, conjunction with
planets and stars, and features called "glow" and coloured "webs".
The
edition follows the pattern of earlier volumes, providing introductions,
transliterations, translations and short notes for each tablet, together
with colophons, ancient commentaries (on parts of all tablets), excerpts
(of tablets 24-26), and unplaced fragments. The original tablets (from
Assur, Babylon and Nineveh) have been collated and new sources are
offered in 15 photographs. Indexes list all words, names and texts.