The Babylonian tablets’ omens may be set in stone but a researcher who deciphered them has revealed why the predictions are up for debate
Four tablets discovered over 100 years ago have been deciphered, revealing worrying predictions for the future.
Researchers have delved into the inscriptions on four clay tablets discovered over a century ago in an area now known as Iraq.
The tablets ‘represent the oldest examples’ of omens about what can happen during a lunar eclipse – when the Earth’s shadow falls upon the surface of the moon – and the predictions are pretty scary.
The four clay tablets are predicted as being around 4,000 years old from the Babylonian Empire – the city of Babylon in an area which was known as Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Syria and Iran).
They were discovered over a hundred years ago and between 1892 and 1914 ended up in a collection at the British Museum, however, it’s only now they’ve been deciphered and their contents published.
The tablets’ writing features detailing of certain astronomical events – what date and time eclipses took place and the movement of shadows on Earth – with many people living in Babylonia and Mesopotamia at the time believing ‘events in the sky were coded signs placed there by the gods as warnings about the future prospects of those on earth’, lead researchers Andrew George and Junko Taniguchi’s article titled ‘Old Babylonian Lunar-Eclipse Omen Tablets in the British Museum’ published in The University of Chicago Press states.
And the omens offer some eerie predictions for the future.
The four tablets were discovered over 100 years ago. (The British Museum)
One reads: “An eclipse becomes obscured from its center all at once [and] clear all at once: a king will die, destruction of Elam [south-west of modern day Iran].”
“An eclipse begins in the south and then clears: downfall of Subartu and Akkad,” another states.
A third says: “An eclipse in the evening watch: it signifies pestilence.”
Pestilence being a deadly, widespread disease which kills off the masses.
Another few omens talk about there being an ‘attack on the land by a locust swarm’ alongside ‘losses of cattle,’ The Post reports. *Gulps*
George told Live Science some of the predictions could’ve been formed off ‘actual experience’ when the observation of lunar eclipses in the past was then ‘followed by catastrophe’.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom so don’t go panic buying loo roll again just yet.
Thankfully, the omens may be literally set in stone, but there’s some wiggle room on whether they’ll actually come true. (The British Museum)
Thankfully, omens weren’t fully relied on in predicting the future, so whether or not the tablet’s prophecies have come – or will come – true is up for debate.
George and Taniguchi stated: “If the prediction associated with a given omen was threatening, for example, ‘a king will die’, then an oracular enquiry by extispicy [inspecting the entrails of animals] was conducted to determine whether the king was in real danger.”
What’s more, just because an omen was predicted, doesn’t mean the future can’t be changed, with those alive in the Babylonian period believing if you perform certain rituals you can change the path of fate.