In the Path of the Moon: Babylonian Celestial Divination and Its Legacy (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9789004183896)

Celestial divination, in the form of omens from lunar, planetary, astral, and meteorological phenomena, was central to Mesopotamian cuneiform scholarship and science from the late second millennium BCE into the Hellenistic period. Beyond the boundaries of ancient Mesopotamia, the ideas, texts, and traditions of Babylonian celestial divination are traceable in Hellenistic sciences and philosophies. This collection of essays investigates features of Babylonian celestial divination with special focus on those aspects that influenced later Greco-Roman astronomy, astrology, and theories of signs. A multi-faceted collection of philological, historical, and philosophical investigations, In the Path of the Moon offers Assyriologists, Classicists, and historians of ancient science a wide-ranging series of studies unified around the theme of Babylonian celestial divination's legacy.

"The collected essays in this volume, successive steps in an ordered path, constitute an invaluable contribution to a better understanding of Babylonian divination."
Lorenzo Verderame, "Sapienza" Università di Roma

"The reader interested in the multifaceted presentation of the problems related to the explanation of Babylonian celestial divination and well equipped with the knowledge of Akkadian will certainly be rewarded by the study of Rochberg's latest publication."
Henryk Drawnel, SDB

Author: Francesca Rochberg
ISBN-10: 9004183892
ISBN-13: 9789004183896
Publisher: Brill
Language: English
Published: 05/11/2010
Pages: 472
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 2.00lbs
Size: 9.70h x 6.50w x 1.20d

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 08/01/2010 pg. 10