Get ready to travel back in time because researchers have just uncovered something truly remarkable from the ancient world. Imagine holding a piece of history that can predict the future—or at least, that’s what the ancient Babylonians believed. We’re talking about 4,000-year-old clay tablets that have recently been fully deciphered, and the contents are nothing short of fascinating.
These tablets, found over a century ago in what is now modern-day Iraq, have been sitting in the British Museum since the late 1800s. But it’s only now that experts have been able to fully translate and understand them. And what they discovered is that these ancient artifacts are essentially guides to predicting future disasters based on astronomical events, particularly lunar eclipses.
The Babylonians were incredibly focused on the cosmos, especially the moon, which they believed held the key to predicting everything from natural disasters to the fate of kings and nations. The newly deciphered tablets contain 61 ominous predictions spread across four clay tablets. These include warnings like “a king will die” and “a nation will fall,” which were taken very seriously back in the day.
The tablets come from the ancient city of Sippar, a significant hub during the Babylonian Empire, and date back to the Old Babylonian period, roughly between 1894 and 1595 BC. The predictions were often tied to specific celestial events, like eclipses. For instance, one of the omens warned of locust swarms that would devastate crops, while another foretold of attacks by foreign armies if certain eclipse patterns were observed.
So how did the Babylonians come up with these predictions? They believed that the gods communicated through the sky, placing signs there as warnings for those on earth. By carefully observing the night sky, especially during eclipses, they believed they could decode these divine messages.
They would note the time of night, the date, and the movement of shadows during an eclipse to make their predictions. It was a bit like how some people today might use tarot cards or horoscopes to predict the future—only in this case, the predictions were tied to the heavens.
One particularly striking example from the tablets reads: “If an eclipse becomes obscured from its center all at once [and] clear all at once: a king will die, destruction of Elam.” This is just one of many examples where the Babylonians believed that the eclipse was a direct indicator of political upheaval or disaster.
But these predictions weren’t just taken at face value. If an eclipse omen indicated something as serious as the death of a king, the Babylonians would take extra steps to confirm the threat. They would perform rituals, such as examining the entrails of animals, to see if the gods were indeed warning them of impending doom. And if the signs were bad, they would even go as far as appointing “substitute kings” to take the brunt of the gods’ wrath, sparing the real ruler from harm.
One historical figure who seemed to fulfill one of these ominous predictions was King Hammurabi, the famous Babylonian ruler. He died in 1750 BC, and while his descendants ruled for another 155 years, his death marked the beginning of the Babylonian Empire’s decline—just as the omens had warned.
