MUL.APIN: a Babylonian compendium of the sky
The MUL.APIN tablet preserves Babylonian knowledge of the sky. The surviving copy’s date does not tell us when that tradition began.
What MUL.APIN records
The British Museum's catalogue describes tablet 1 of MUL.APIN, museum number 86378, as a Late Babylonian astronomical treatise with a production date between 1000 and 500 BCE. It includes star lists, risings and settings, and the constellations along the moon's path. British Museum ↗
A witness, not an origin
The research record is careful: the textual tradition may predate this witness. A production date for one tablet is the date of that copy. Any claim about when the compendium was first assembled needs separate evidence.
Observation beside divination
The same tradition served observation and omen interpretation. The record asks that the catalogue structure and the divinatory uses remain analytically separable. Describing what the text records about the sky is different from describing what people did with it.
How many years to chart the sky?
What observations would an ancient compiler need to produce a list of risings and settings? Work out how many years of watching that implies before you estimate the tradition's age.