* Astronomy

Four transits of Venus occurred during the Babylonian Era, and the times of mid-transit in UT are as follows

1641 BC May 20 at 19:48 Universal Time

1520 BC November 20 at 01:17

1512 BC November 18 at 14:23

1406 BC May 23 at 07:18

Could any of these be seen? In the British journal 'Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society' for November 1882 (vol. XLIII page 41) you can find a curious article written by Rev. S.J. Johnson that asks whether the ancient Assyrians had observed the Venus Transit. He said that an article in the journal Nature published a few years earlier, and written by the well-known Oriental scholar Rev. Sayce, mentioned a broken Assyrian cuneiform tablet. The tablet was about Venus, and a translated sentence on the tablet had breaks in it which seemed to indicate that such a transit had been seen. "the planet Venus --- it passed across ---- the Sun --- across the face of the Sun" .The data of the tablet was apparently before the 16th Century B.C.. So, what was this mysterious tablet mentioned by Sayce, and had it really been translated correctly? The implication is that sometime before ca 1500 'something' involving Venus and the Sun at close quarters did occur from Babylonia. If it was perhaps one of the four transits in the list above, this would be one of the earliest astronomical phenomena ever recorded by humans that survived to the present time! Since it is impossible to tell from the articles exactly which cuneiform tablet the inscription appeared upon, we cannot subject this tablet to a modern translation to see if it's message stands up.

The Venus Tables of Ammizaduga were discovered in 1850 in Nineveh by Sir Henry Layard in excavations of the library of Asurbanipal. The translations were published a few years later by Sir Henry Rawlinson and George Smith as "Tables of the movements of the planet Venus and their influences". One of the large tablets called K.160 contains 14 observations of Venus and For example, in section 1 we read "If on the 21st of Ab, Venus disappears in the east, remains absent in the sky for two months and 11 days, and in the month of Arahsamna on the 2nd day, there will be rains in the land ;desolation will be wrought". None of these tablets have any inscription suggesting a transit. The tablets indicate that the Babylonians knew that every 8 solar years ( 8 x 365.24 = 2921.92 days) Venus reappears in the exact same place in the sky ( 5 x 583.9d = 2919.5 days). Because this also equals 99 lunar months (99 x 29.5 = 2920.5d) Venus returns to the same place in the sky at the same lunar month (and phase) too, but the return happens 2 1/2 days later each time (2921.92 - 2919.5 = 2.42d) . After 150.8 years the return is exact (2.42 x 150.8 = 365.24).
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