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Neugebauer’s Astronomical Cuneiform Texts and Its Reception

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A Mathematician's Journeys

Part of the book series: Archimedes ((ARIM,volume 45))

Abstract

Neugebauer’s Astronomical Cuneiform Texts, published in 1955, defined the field of Babylonian astronomy for most of the second half of the twentieth century. Astronomical Cuneiform Texts, or ACT as it is generally referred to, contains editions of more than three hundred cuneiform tablets dealing with mathematical astronomy, each accompanied by a detailed commentary. In addition, the book contains a historical investigation of the date and provenance of the tablets, the scribes mentioned in colophons, and an extensive mathematical introduction to the lunar and planetary schemes found on the tablets. In his review of ACT, the Assyriologist A. Leo Oppenheim wrote that he “can only pay homage in a few trite phrases to the amount of devotion, patience, and scholarship which has gone into this difficult work, to which the author dedicated twenty years of his life”, and that the book “ushers in the second phase in the development of our understanding of Babylonian astronomy”. This paper begins by tracing the history of ACT from its conception in Copenhagen during the mid-1930s to its publication two decades later by which time Neugebauer had crossed the Atlantic and was well established at Brown University. The second part of the paper discusses the reception of ACT among historians of science and Assyriologists and its impact upon the study of Babylonian astronomy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Oppenheim 1958, 157.

  2. 2.

    See the chapter “Otto Neugebauer’s Visits to Copenhagen and His Connection to Denmark” by Brack-Bernsen in this volume.

  3. 3.

    Neugebauer 1934, viii.

  4. 4.

    Schaumberger 1935, 375–376. Neugebauer’s sketch is published as plate 17. It is not clear whether Neugebauer’s collation was based upon direct inspection of the tablet or (probably more likely) on a photograph.

  5. 5.

    Neugebauer 1936a.

  6. 6.

    See further the chapter “Otto Neugebauer’s Visits to Copenhagen and His Connection to Denmark” by Brack-Bernsen in this volume.

  7. 7.

    Neugebauer 1936b.

  8. 8.

    Neugebauer 1936c.

  9. 9.

    Neugebauer 1975, 432.

  10. 10.

    Neugebauer 1938, 30.

  11. 11.

    Neuenschwander 1993, 387.

  12. 12.

    I am unable to positively identify this man, although I think it is probable that it is Louis F. Hartman (note the single n at the end of the name), a biblical scholar and Assyriologist who collaborated with A. Leo Oppenheim on the publication of several cuneiform texts. A “Hartman” is also thanked for a collation of a Neo-Assyrian letter in the British Museum by Schott and Schaumberger 1941, 156.

  13. 13.

    Five articles in this series (including the manifesto as paper I) were published in Quellen und Studien. Four further papers, written in English under the title “Studies in Ancient Astronomy” but continuing the numbering of the German papers, were published in a memorial volume for George Sarton and in the journal Isis.

  14. 14.

    Eudemus ceased publication after one volume, despite Neugebauer’s later attempts to revive the journal. The first volume contains two papers on Babylonian astronomy, one by van der Waerden and the other by Pannekoek. It is clear from the inside front cover of this issue, however, that Neugebauer and his co-editor Raymond Clare Archibald, intended Eudemus to be the successor to Quellen und Studien and like its predecessor to publish both studies and sources. Five works (all by Neugebauer and his colleagues or his student) are listed as being planned for publication by the journal: The Anaphorikos of Hypsikles by M. Krause, V. De Falco and O. E. Neugebauer (published with a revised author order in the series Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenchaften in Göttingen in 1966), Egyptian Planetary Texts by Neugebauer (published by the American Philosophical Society in 1942), Mathematical Cuneiform Texts From American Collections (published as Mathematical Cuneiform Texts by Neugebauer and A. Sachs in the American Oriental Society Series in 1945), Studies in Greek Spherics by O. Schmidt (Schmidt’s Brown University PhD dissertation which remains unpublished to this day), as well as Astronomical Cuneiform Texts.

  15. 15.

    Neugebauer 1941, 24. This passage is followed by a table giving the length of daylight for each sign of the zodiac according to System A and System B. Neugebauer later showed that the Babylonian schemes were based upon a rising time scheme (Neugebauer 1953).

  16. 16.

    Neugebauer 1945, 10.

  17. 17.

    Neugebauer 1953.

  18. 18.

    Neugebauer 1955, 11.

  19. 19.

    See further below.

  20. 20.

    In Neugebauer’s terminology, System A is used for systems that calculate longitudes using step functions and System B is used for systems that calculate longitudes using zigzag functions.

  21. 21.

    Sachs 1948, 274.

  22. 22.

    Wiseman 1988, 363.

  23. 23.

    Sachs 1955, vi.

  24. 24.

    Sachs 1955, vii, Wiseman 1988, 363.

  25. 25.

    Oppenheim 1958, 157.

  26. 26.

    I exclude Sachs from this list as he can better be understood as a contributor, perhaps even an uncredited co-author, rather than a reader of ACT. For an overview of the scholarly background and publications of Schaumberger, Pannekoek and van der Waerden, see the chapter “Babylonian Astronomy 1880–1950: The Players and the Field” by Teije de Jong in this volume.

  27. 27.

    Pannekoek 1955, 282.

  28. 28.

    Pannekoek 1955, 283.

  29. 29.

    Pannekoek 1941.

  30. 30.

    Pannekoek 1918.

  31. 31.

    van der Waerden 1956, 372.

  32. 32.

    van der Waerden 1957, 1966.

  33. 33.

    Gelb 1964, xviii.

  34. 34.

    Reiner 2002.

  35. 35.

    Gelb 1958, 36.

  36. 36.

    Gelb 1958, 37.

  37. 37.

    Gelb 1958, 37.

  38. 38.

    Ossendrijver 2011.

  39. 39.

    Sloley 1955, 570.

  40. 40.

    Sloley 1955, 570.

  41. 41.

    Sloley 1955, 570.

  42. 42.

    Pyenson 1995.

  43. 43.

    Neugebauer 1951.

  44. 44.

    Sarton 1955, 166.

  45. 45.

    Sarton 1955, 167.

  46. 46.

    Sarton 1955, 166.

  47. 47.

    Sarton 1940, 398.

  48. 48.

    Sarton 1952, 72. Sarton continued by remaking that “I could not advise them, however, to build their course on the basis of Neugebauer’s book alone” since the book did not contain enough material on Greek science. Sarton was very critical of the title of The Exact Sciences in Antiquity because of its focus on Babylonian and Egyptian science and lack of discussion of Greek science: “That is too much like the play Hamlet with Hamlet left out”.

  49. 49.

    Sarton 1955, 169.

  50. 50.

    Sarton 1955, 171.

  51. 51.

    Sarton 1955, 171–172.

  52. 52.

    Sarton 1955, 172.

  53. 53.

    Sarton 1955, 171.

  54. 54.

    Sarton 1955, 170.

  55. 55.

    Kugler 1900; see also Aaboe 1955.

  56. 56.

    Nevertheless, Neugebauer may well have had some sympathy with Sarton’s basic point that what was worthwhile teaching are the steps along the road to modern science. In the introduction to A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, Neugebauer explained that he had omitted any discussion of astronomy in China because of his lack of knowledge of the subject. He remarked, however, that Chinese astronomy’s “influence upon the Islamic and Western development is probably not visible earlier than the creation of the Mongol states in Western Asia. Thus the damage done by omitting China is perhaps not to great and at any rate alleviated by ignorantia.” (Neugebauer 1975, 2). Neugebauer’s line here is not dissimilar to Sarton’s remark that although study of the “bypaths” of astronomy is interesting, they are not part of the main story of the history of astronomy, which should be the main business of a historian of science.

  57. 57.

    Neugebauer’s first graduate student at Brown, Olaf Schmidt, was granted his PhD through the Mathematics department.

  58. 58.

    Aaboe 1958.

  59. 59.

    Buja and Künsch 2008, 14.

  60. 60.

    Email Peter J. Huber to the author sent 3 November 2010. “MCT” refers to Neugebauer and Sachs’s Mathematical Cuneiform Texts (1945) and “vdW” to van der Waerden.

  61. 61.

    Aaboe 1958, 245.

  62. 62.

    Huber 1957.

  63. 63.

    Huber 1956.

  64. 64.

    Huber 1958.

  65. 65.

    Email Peter J. Huber to the author sent 3 November 2010.

  66. 66.

    Gelb 1964, xiii.

  67. 67.

    Gelb 1964, xvi.

  68. 68.

    Leichty 1964.

  69. 69.

    Hunger 1968.

  70. 70.

    The only exception was van der Waerden’s Die Anfänge der Astronomie, later published in English as The Birth of Astronomy, which deals with the whole of Babylonian astronomy. However, the work is marred by some unfounded speculations of Babylonian astral religion, which turned some readers away from this work.

  71. 71.

    For example in the preface to Tuckerman’s tables of planetary, lunar and solar positions, Neugebauer wrote of the Astronomical Diaries: “one can hardly expect that sources will become available of greater significance than the almost continuous records of the cuneiform texts for the last centuries before our era. … The exacting work of slowly restoring a huge archive of well over a thousand texts to its full usefulness for the astronomer as well as for the historian of astronomy and the historian of the Hellenistic age is being carried out in all its aspects, philologically, historically, and astronomically, by Professor A. Sachs.” (Tuckerman 1962, v).

  72. 72.

    Reiner and Pingree 1975, 3.

  73. 73.

    Hunger and Pingree 1989, 1.

  74. 74.

    Sachs and Hunger 1988, 8.

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  1. Department of Egyptology and Assyriology, Brown University, 1899, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    John M. Steele

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  1. Inst for Study of the Ancient World, New York University, New York, New York, USA

    Alexander Jones

  2. CNRS & Université Paris Diderot, Laboratoire SPHERE, Paris CX 05, France

    Christine Proust

  3. Brown University, Department of Egyptology and Assyriology, Providence, Rhode Island, USA

    John M. Steele

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Steele, J.M. (2016). Neugebauer’s Astronomical Cuneiform Texts and Its Reception. In: Jones, A., Proust, C., Steele, J. (eds) A Mathematician's Journeys. Archimedes, vol 45. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25865-2_10

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