>>Thank you for joining me in the History of Science Collections of the University of
Oklahoma Libraries. Let's look at a story from the vault that throws light on the origin
of mathematical astronomy in ancient Mesopotamia.
This object looks and feels like any block of old red sandstone one might find in the
hillsides of Oklahoma. It's actually the oldest object in the History of Science Collections
-- not nearly as old as a sandstone rock, not nearly as old as a dinosaur bone in the
Sam Noble Natural History Museum, but we can date it to more than 3,000 years ago, to 1300
BCE.
This is a cuneiform brick. Cuneiform means wedge-like in Latin. Scribes marked these
wedge-like signs by pressing with a reed.
The ancient Mesopotamian tradition of mathematical astronomy is recorded in cuneiform script
like this.
For the origin of this particular brick, we need to look in the westernmost region of
Iran, directly north of the Persian Gulf.
This brick comes from modern-day Choga Zanbil, not far from where Ahwaz and Shushtar appear
on this mid-20th-century globe.
The temple tower, or ziggurat, of Choga Zanbil is now a World Heritage site. It is the best-preserved
ziggurat of antiquity.
From the ziggurats of ancient Mesopotamia, scribes like the one who recorded this dedication
created the science of mathematical astronomy, predicting the positions of the planets centuries
into the future.
The ziggurat at Choga Zanbil was faced with baked bricks, some inscribed with dedicatory
inscriptions, written in ancient Elamite like this one.
This script is a dedication from the Elamite king, beginning: "I, Untash Napirisha, son
of Humbanumena..."
Without the Babylonian contributions, later Greek astronomy, such as we find in Hipparchos
and Ptolemy, would have been inconceivable. The Mesopotamian astronomers were the original
source of quantitative methods in ancient mathematical astronomy.
Mesopotamian astronomy was transmitted to Greek, Roman, Sanskrit, Chinese and Islamic
cultures in different ways and to varying degrees.
In early Greek science, there was nothing comparable to the Mesopotamian achievement
in astronomy, until cultural interchange between Mesopotamia and Greece increased after Alexander
the Great.
By the time of this tablet, the Mesopotamian scribes had developed a system of mathematics
based on place-value, far more powerful than the numerical systems of the Egyptians and
later Romans.
By the time of this tablet, they were familiar with the square root of 2, and with what we
call the Pythagorean Theorem. Given the lengths of two sides of a right triangle, the scribes
could generate the length of the missing side at will.
Equipped with a sophisticated mathematics, the scribes were prepared to develop an equally
sophisticated quantitative astronomy.
During the time of this tablet, the scribes collected countless observations of the moon
and planets, searching them for omens that might correlate with agricultural prices,
civic health, and affairs of state.
Eventually the scribes designated the 12 signs of the Zodiac; perfected the luni-solar calendar;
accurately determined planetary periods; predicted lunar and solar eclipses; and calculated important
events in planetary cycles, including retrograde motion.
Wherever else one encounters mathematical astronomy in the ancient world, one can detect
the influence of scribes who worked in ziggurats like the one at Chogil Zanbil and who wrote
in cuneiform script on bricks like this one.
Science is a story. What stories do you want to hear and tell about ancient Mesopotamian
astronomy?