Babylonian Planetary Omens volumes 1–4

[james_m]

these books look really interesting.. they are coming out of Enuma anu enlil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enuma_anu_enlil

i am curious to know if anyone has explored this any.. the price of the books are steep - few hundred dollars a pop.. any feedback welcome..

here is a link to a peek at volume 4 that apparently focuses on omens connected to jupiter.
http://www.brill.com/babylonian-planetary-omens-part-four

here is another interesting connected link, if you have followed along this far!
http://www.smoe.org/arcana/diss1.html

[Philip Graves]

Here are the full publication details for those wishing to investigate further:

Reiner, Erica, in collaboration with Pingree, David ‘Bibliotheca Mesopotamia Volume Two, Fascicle One: Babylonian Planetary Omens Part One: Enuma Anu Enlil Tablet 63: the Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa’ Undena Publications, Malibu, 1975

Reiner, Erica, in collaboration with Pingree, David ‘Bibliotheca Mesopotamia Volume Two, Fascicle Two: Babylonian Planetary Omens Part Two: Enuma Anu Enlil Tablets 50-51’ Undena Publications, Malibu, 1981

Reiner, Erica, in collaboration with Pingree, David ‘Babylonian Planetary Omens Part Three’ Styx Publications, Groningen, the Netherlands, 1998

Reiner, Erica, in collaboration with Pingree, David ‘Babylonian Planetary Omens Part Four’ Styx / Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, the Netherlands, 2005

Sadly, Reiner and Pingree passed away in close succession towards the end of 2005. As a result, no further fascicules have appeared.

Also relevant:

Van Soldt, Wilfred H. ‘Solar Omens of Enuma Anu Enlil: Tablets 23 (24) – 29 (30)’ Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut, Te Istanbul, 1995

Rochberg, Francesca "The Solar Eclipses of Enūma Anu Enlil: Šamaš Tablets 31-36" (Leiden: NINO) - NOT YET PUBLISHED

And to the best of my knowledge, the original texts and transcriptions (without translation) are found in:

Virolleaud, Charles, ed. ‘L’Astrologie Chaldéenne: le Livre Intitulé “Enuma (Anu) ilu Bêl”’ Texte Cunéiforme, Sin – Librairie Paul Geuthner, 68, rue Mazzarine, Paris, 1908, bound with [… Texte Cunéiforme, Shamash]; [… Texte Cunéiforme, Ishtar] and [… Texte Cunéiforme, Adad];

Virolleaud, Charles, ed. ‘L’Astrologie Chaldéenne: le Livre Intitulé “Enuma (Anu) il Bêl”’ Transcription – Librairie Paul Geuthner, 68, rue Mazzarine, Paris, 1909;

Virolleaud, Charles, ed. ‘L’Astrologie Chaldéenne: le Livre Intitulé “Enuma Anu ilu Bêl”’ Supplément, Texte – Librairie Paul Geuthner, 68, rue Mazzarine, Paris, 1910;

Virolleaud, Charles, ed. ‘L’Astrologie Chaldéenne: le Livre Intitulé “Enuma (Anu) il Bêl”’ Supplément, Transcription – Librairie Paul Geuthner, 68, rue Mazzarine, Paris, 1910;

Virolleaud, Charles, ed. ‘L’Astrologie Chaldéenne: le Livre Intitulé “Enuma (Anu) il Bêl”’ Second Supplément, Transcription: 1ère Partie (Sin, Samas)’ – Librairie Paul Geuthner, 68, rue Mazzarine, Paris, 1911;

Virolleaud, Charles, ed. ‘L’Astrologie Chaldéenne: le Livre Intitulé “Enuma Anu ilu Bêl”’ Second Supplément, Texte Cunéiforme (1re Partie) (Sin, Shamash)’ – Librairie Paul Geuthner, 13, rue Jacob, Paris, 1912;

Virolleaud, Charles, ed. ‘L’Astrologie Chaldéenne: le Livre Intitulé “Enuma Anu ilu Bêl”’ Second Supplément, Texte Cunéiforme (2me Partie) (Ishtar, Adad)’ – Librairie Paul Geuthner, 13, rue Jacob, Paris, 1912;

Virolleaud, Charles, ed. ‘L’Astrologie Chaldéenne: le Livre Intitulé “Enuma (Anu) il Bêl”’ Second Supplément, Transcription: 2me Partie (Istar, Adad) – Librairie Paul Geuthner, 13, rue Jacob, Paris, 1912.

Thus, essentially, it is my impression that Pingree, Reiner and latterly Rochberg have been progressively translating the texts that were published in untranslated form back in the 1900s-10s. Originally, Virolleaud himself had plans for a comprehensive edition including translation, but apparently time, money and the war caught up with him, with the result that his translations (into French) never appeared.

If anyone has more accurate information on this, please do add it to the strand. I'm no expert on this subject, just fascinated by the literature.

[gavin]

Hi Philip, I have read through most of these volumes at one time or another. The only reasonably priced volume is BPO2 (Undena) which concerns the so-called Astrolabes and miscellaneous constellation omens.

There is a bit more of the EAE series (tablets 1-6) published in Italian:

Verdérame, Lorenzo
Le tavole I-VI della serie astrologica Enūma Anu Enlil / L. Verderame.
IMPRINT [Messina] : Di.Sc.A.M., 2002 [i.e. 2003]
DESCRIPT x, 268, [10] p. ; 24 cm.
SERIES Nisaba ; 2. Nisaba (Università di Messina. Dipartimento di scienze dell'antichità) ; 2.
ISBN/ISSN 8882680096

Beyond this there is also Felix Gossmann's 'Planetarium Babylonicum' which is a German compilation drawing on Virolleaud and other early works. It isn't easy to use as the index is written in Akkadian script and the German-Greek index is limited. To make matters worse it is published as part of Friedrich Delitzsch's 'Sumerisches Lexicon'. So it is difficult to obtain.
Hope this helps, Gavin

[gavin]

As for Virolleaud's works - yes they are composed of autograph texts and Akkadian transliteration (no indexes or translation). He has come in for a fair bit of criticism as he apparently combined different texts from various times and places into composite texts which he then rewrote in cuneiform! Gavin

[Philip Graves]

Gavin, thank you for the very interesting information! [Are you perchance Gavin White, author of the excellent '‘Babylonian Star-Lore: an Illustrated Guide to the Star-Lore and Constellations of Ancient Babylonia’?]

The books I listed (except for the yet-unpublished one by Francesca Rochberg) are all ones of which I have copies at home, thanks in no small part to my compulsion to collect and archive astrological literature; but I got hold of Virolleaud's edition only about three months ago, after a very long wait for second-hand copies (five years or more without a single set appearing); and when it came to understanding how exactly Virolleaud's edition relates to the later partial editions by Pingree, Reiner et al., the best I could manage to date was a partly-educated guess.

It is very interesting to me that you say Virolleaud's edition has been criticised on account of his manipulation of some of the original sources. He does not number the tablets in the way that the later partial editions do, rather arranging the texts in groups under four headings: Sin, Shamash, Ishtar and Adad. And the fact of his calling the overall collection "Enuma (Anu) ilu Bêl" instead of "Enuma Anu Enlil" was a source of further puzzlement to me.

Thanks for the notification regarding the Italian edition of Tablets 1-6. I was completely unaware of this, but will clearly have to get hold of a copy when I can afford to!

Volumes 1 and 2 of the Reiner / Pingree series tend to vary widely in price since they are only available second-hand. I bought the pair for $75 together from a bookseller on Abebooks about six years ago, although he failed to mention that one of the two had some internal previous-owner marks. Other booksellers are currently asking as much or more for just one of the two volumes. Unlike Vols. 3 and 4, they are permanently out of print, so sellers will try to charge what they think they can get, it seems.

It would be nice if eventually all the tablets were published and translated to a similarly high standard. Perhaps Francesca Rochberg will be taking care of this in the future?