Emily Chan
Thousands of years after their creation, the inscriptions on a set of four clay tablets have finally been deciphered in full.
The clay tablets were from the ancient Near Eastern civilization of Babylonia. They contain text written in cuneiform and represent the oldest omens about lunar eclipses in the world.
Cuneiform is a script that is considered to be the earliest known writing system. It was developed by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia, an ancient region located in modern-day Iraq and other nearby regions.
The script was initially created to write the Sumerian language but was later adapted for other tongues, such as Akkadian, another language of the Near East, which was spoken by Babylonians.
Previously, a researcher summarized the contents of the tablets in the 1980s, but they have never been thoroughly analyzed and translated until now.
The tablets are thought to date back to the early 2nd millennium B.C., putting them at around 4,000 years old.
They feature more than 60 omens regarding when and how lunar eclipses occur. Most of the omens were predictions of “doom and gloom.”
For example, one of the omens said that if “an eclipse becomes obscured from its center all at once [and] clear all at once: a king will die, destruction of Elam.”
Another omen read, “An eclipse in the evening watch: it signifies pestilence.” It’s possible that these omens were based on past experiences that actually happened or derived from common fears.
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