"This splendid work of scholarship . . . sums up with economy and power all that the written record so far deciphered has to tell about the ancient and complementary civilizations of Babylon and Assyria." Edward B. Garside, New York Times Book Review
Ancient Mesopotamia the area now called Iraq has received less attention than ancient Egypt and other long-extinct and more spectacular civilizations. But numerous small clay tablets buried in the desert soil for thousands of years make it possible for us to know more about the people of ancient Mesopotamia than any other land in the...

This volume presents an edition of first-millennium BC Babylonian cuneiform texts that comprise Chapters 64 and 65 of the compendium of celestial omen texts dealing with the appearance and movements of the planet Jupiter. All are accompanied by an English translation. David Pingree has again provided an extensive introduction and astronomical commentary, in which he discusses the astronomical plausibility of the phenomena that are described in the omens. The textual material and its astronomical interpretation throws light on the extent of the Babylonian scholars' knowledge of astronomy and...

This third fascicle of Babylonian Planetary Omens contains the edition of all cuneiform texts dealing with the planet Venus known to us. Most of these tablets are kept in the British Museum; the large number of unpublished texts were transliterated and the previously published texts were checked and collated from the originals. The texts are accompanied by translations, and each group of texts is commented upon by David Pingree from the point of view of the text history and astronomical significance. A general introduction, also by David Pingree, analyzes the descriptions of Venus that occur...