MUL.APIN 9
Hunger & Pingree An
Astronomical Compendium in Cuneiform
MUL.APIN
Tablet Nr. 86378
British Museum

MUL.APIN
Hunger & Pingree,
"MUL.APIN: An Astronomical Compendium in Cuneiform",
Archiv fuer Orientforschung, Beiheft 24, 1989,
Verlag Ferdinand Berger & Soehne; Horn, Austria-3580.

Below: Comments to that article
by Andis Kaulins

Other writers besides Papke on the MUL.APIN cuneiform tablets
have been van der Waarden and Hunger & Pingree (H & P).

Hunger and Pingree did not know of Werner Papke's The Stars of Babylon
published in that same year (1989), but do refer to his 1978 work
Werner Papke, "Die Keilschriftserie MUL.APIN",
Dokument wissenschaftlicher Astronomie im 3. Jahrtausend, Tuebingen, 1978.

HOW OLD IS THE ASTRONOMICAL SYSTEM
USE IN MUL.APIN ?

Hunger and Pingree themselves note that it was
van der Waarden who first proposed the theory
that the MUL.APIN applied to a time period circa 1000 BC,
(which Hunger and Pingree accept, contrary to Papke),

but then, based on Papke's observations
and some new one's of his own,
van der Waarden CHANGED his mind to a date of 2340 BC
and accepted Papke's conclusions later (1984).

The writings by B.L. van der Waarden are :
1) "Babylonian Astronomy II. The Thirty-Six Stars",
JNES 8 (1949) 6-26
JNES = Journal of Near Eastern Studies (Chicago).
2) "Babylonian Astronomy III. Astronomical Computations",
JNES 10 (1954), 20-34
3) "Die Anfaenge der Astronomie", Groningen (1966)
4) "Greek Astronomical Calendars I. The Parapegma ofEuctemon,"
AHES 29 (1984) 101-114.
(AHES = Archives for the History of the Exact Sciences)

Although the arguments of Hunger and Pingree are understandable,
"their" date of ca. 1000 BC for MUL.APIN astronomy
can be regarded as clearly erroneous and ca. one Sothic Year
of 1460 years removed from the correct date. Indeed, the evidence shows that later changes were made by scribes for later Babylonian tablet copies. The copied tablets are younger, their astronomy far older.

Even Hunger and Pingree themselves admit that "two" sets
of data seem to be combined in the known MUL.APIN tablets.

 Moreover, one of their arguments - that cuneiform texts in
2300 BC like this are not known - is not persuasive. It begs the
question - presuming the very thing to be proven.

More important is Papke's account that Kallisthenes,
an officer of Alexander the Great, had sent
astronomical data of the Babylonians back to his uncle Aristotle,
stating they were exactly 1903 years old.

Such an exact historical date is already quite remarkable,
probably pointing to some round number of calculation.
Alexander the Great's life  is today dated to 356-323 BC
(we here at LexiLine think there is an error here in chronology)
but even the mainstream date plus 1903 years of age
gives something close to 2300 BC. as the round number reference date
and in fact Papke argues that the cuneiform tablets go back ca. 2340 BC.

Indeed, as Hunger and Pingree correctly note: "the composition of some of the relevant texts can be dated to earlier periods...the sources for certain sections of MUL.APIN can be considered earlier than extant exemplars of MUL.APIN".

Papke handles these matters in his book,
Die Sterne von Babylon, in pages 237-276, pointing out that
the crucial error was initially made by Epping, Kugler, and
Fotheringham in their identification of KAK.SI.SA with Sirius
(an identification which van der Waarden first followed,
before changing his mind) - whereas the Seleucid texts state
explicitly that KAK.SI.SA and BAN are separated by 20 days
in rising - so that KAK.SI.SA can not originally have been Sirius.

As I have shown in previous pages on MUL.APIN [see MUL.APIN Corrected], KAK.SI.SA the lance runs from Alphard in Hydra (where it sticks into Hydra) to the shaft Monoceros, so that ALL other writers have been wrong thus far on this score. Only Alphard and Monoceros are reconcilable with all of the mentions of KAK.SI.SA on MUL.APIN and this for a date of ca. 2300 BC. Moreover, I show other proofs in previous pages - especially the addition of later lines by the scribes relating to KAK.SI.SA - indicating that the tablets were copied ca. 720 BC.

Go to MUL.APIN H and P 2
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