Solar Omens of Enuma Anu Enlil: Tablets 23 (24)-29 (30).

• Author: Hunger, Hermann
• Position: Review

By WILFRED H. VAN SOLDT. Uitgaven van het Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, vol. 73. Leiden: NEDERLANDS HISTORISCH-ARCHAEOLOGISCH INSTITUUT TE ISTANBUL, 1995. Pp. [xi] + 151 + 15 plates. HFl 58 (paper).

For a long time, the collection of celestial omens (Enuma Anu Enlil) was available only in Ch. Virolleaud's incomplete edition dating from the beginning of this century. Although E. Weidner had prepared the way for a new edition by his articles on the organization of the collection, it was not before 1975 that such an edition was begun, when E. Reiner and D. Pingree inaugurated the series "Babylonian Planetary Omens" with the famous "Venus Tablet", numbered 63 in one of the catalogues of Enuma Anu Enlil. This was followed by another fascicle in the same series in 1981 (a third one is in print). F. Rochberg edited the lunar eclipse section (tablets 15-22) in 1988. W. van Soldt's edition of the solar omens continues where Rochberg's book ends. He does not include the section on solar eclipses; according to the preface, this will be edited later by Rochberg. The author explicitly limits himself to a text edition and does not try to comment on the astronomical phenomena occurring in the protases of the omens. He does, of course, comment on the reading and understanding of the text itself.

Tablet 23 (24) deals with the appearance of the sun at sunrise at the beginning of the month; all the apodoses contain eclipses of the sun. Tablet 24 (25) mostly concerns what is called "disk" (samsatu). This is not always the disk of the sun itself, but at least in some cases must be a parhelion. "Disks" are also mentioned in connection with the moon. The following tablets contain omens from the appearance of the sun in relation to clouds and other atmospheric phenomena. The last topic, on tablets 28 (29) and 29 (30), is that of phenomena...