http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== ANCIENT ASTRONOMICAL RECORDINGS REGARDING THE PLANET VENUS Ev Cochrane For whatever reason, the planet Venus was worshipped by ancient peoples the world over from a very early time. Thus it is that Venus figures prominently in the earliest myths, art, and religious literature of most ancient cultures. A survey of this material reveals hundreds of anomalies in the ancient descriptions of Venus' appearance and behavior. It is described as a bearded star, a dragon-like star, a star with a tail, a witch-star, etc.(1) Ancient myths relate that Venus once fell from the sky as a comet-like object or as a witch-like being.(2) Very early representations of the planet (or the planet- goddess Inanna) depict it as a comet or in otherwise impossible positions vis a vis other astronomical bodies.(3) How are we to understand this ancient testimony? Inasmuch as such traditions are known at all, it is to various specialists in one field or another. The descriptions of Venus in ancient Babylon, for example, are rarely compared with those of other cultures, and thus the various anomalies in the ancient traditions have thus far remained unnoticed and unappreciated by the scholarly world as a whole. Inasmuch as any serious attempt has been made to understand the ancient descriptions of Venus, it has typically been from the vantage point offered by the current, mundane appearance/behavior of the planet. Confronted with repeated references to Venus' horns in the Babylonian astronomical texts, for example, early archaeoastronomers supposed that the ancient Babylonians must have observed the phases of Venus. This interpretation prompted a vigorous debate between several of the greatest figures in cuneiform decipherment.(4) An entirely different interpretation was offered by Immanuel Velikovsky in 1950. Velikovsky suggested that the widespread traditions of disaster associated with a comet-like Venus should be understood as not-so-veiled references to real events. Indeed, Velikovsky maintained that Venus only recently participated in a series of spectacular cataclysms, the most violent of which was around 1450 BC. Since the publication of Worlds in Collision, various scholars have offered the Ammizaduqa tablets as proof against Velikovsky's thesis. Perhaps the most serious attempt to make this case was Peter Huber's discussion in 1977, entitled "Early Cuneiform Evidence for the Existence of the Planet Venus." (5) It is against this backdrop that I long ago became familiar with the controversy surrounding the ancient observations of Venus. And despite the fact that I do not subscribe to the particular chronology of Velikovsky, the fact is that the researches of Talbott and myself were originally inspired by the writings of Velikovsky, and like him we have been forced to the conclusion that Venus only recently settled into its current orbit. Thus it is that the ancient astronomical records of the Babylonians and other peoples have come to play a significant role in our own research as well. If it could be shown that the planet Venus was moving on an irregular orbit in these texts, this would offer support for our thesis that Venus was moving upon a radically different orbit in prehistoric times. What then are the Venus-tablets of Ammizaduqa? These texts take their name from the next to last king of the first dynasty of Babylon. By all accounts, these are the oldest astronomical texts in the world and thus they have long demanded the attention of scholars. Originally found during the excavation of Ninevah, apparently part of King Assurbanipal's great library (destroyed in 612 BCE), the so-called Venus tablets of Ammizaduqa are known from twenty or so different extant copies. (6) The existing tablets are held to date from c. 8-700 BCE, but are regarded as copies of much older documents. According to the various authorities who have investigated these texts--Kugler, Langdon, Fotheringham, Schiaparelli, van Waerden, etc.--the tablets consist of observations from the reign of Ammizaduqa (c. 1900-1500 BC depending on which chronology is preferred) to which omens and sundry other information were subsequently added. Although these tablets were first discovered in the 1850's, it was the subsequent (1912) discovery by Franz Kugler that one line mentioned the eighth year of Ammizaduqa that brought these tablets to the forefront of scientific consciousness. If these texts dated to the time of Ammizaduqa, it was reasoned, and if it was possible to retrocalculate the positions of Venus as set forth in the tablets, then at last modern historians had their yardstick by which to establish on a firm basis the chronology of the ancient world. Or so it was thought. As we will see, despite dozens of attempts by some of the leading names in the field, no secure chronology has emerged as a result of such retrocalculations. The reason is very simple: The data as described in these tablets do not accord with modern values for the period of Venus.(7) Lost in the debate over the chronological significance of these early observations is the question why Venus would have been the subject of such intense scrutiny in the first half of the second millennium, much less why it was associated with typically dire omens? On this subject, Abraham Sachs, the dean of Babylonian cuneiform texts, offers nary a clue: "The list of Venus dates, to which omen predictions were secondarily appended, was copied and recopied for many centuries, and, in fact, we have it only in the form of much later copies made in the eighth and later centuries BC (and with partly corrupt details) embedded in one of the tablets of a standard collection of astronomical and meteorological omens. How, when, and why omen predictions--...--were attached to the Venus dates are questions that we cannot begin to answer in the present state of our knowledge." ("Babylonian observational astronomy," Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A, 276, 1974, pp. 43-44). Sachs elsewhere added: "It is astonishing to find that somebody or other, for the whole of King Ammisaduqa's 21-year reign at so early a period, observed and recorded the Venus dates. Who was this observer? Did he have some reason to observe only Venus, or is it by chance that we do not have preserved his record of the dates of the other planets visible to the naked eye? Why just the reign of King Ammisaduqa? We have, alas, no answers to any of these questions either." (Ibid., p. 44). As the various omens attached to the Venus-intervals confirm, the ancient Babylonians believed that Venus was capable of having an adverse influence on the affairs of men. The much older Sumerian hymns surrounding the planet- goddess Inanna present a similar picture. There the planet-goddess was invoked as follows: "You make the heavens tremble and the earth quake.... You flash like lightning over the highlands; you throw your firebrands across the earth." (8) Yet another hymn describes the planet-goddess as follows: "Like a dragon you have deposited venom on the land... Oh foremost one, you are Inanna of heaven and earth! Raining the fanned fire down upon the nation.. . Devastatrix of the lands...At the sound of you the lands bow down." (9) As puzzling as these ancient Babylonian beliefs appear to the modern mind, strikingly similar views prevailed in the New World. There, too, the Maya and Aztecs regarded the planet Venus as an agent of disaster and impending doom. An early chronicler, Fray Sahugan, offered the following portrait of the native's anxiety at the appearance of Venus: "And when it [Venus] newly emerged, much fear came over them: all were frightened. Everywhere the outlets and openings of [houses] were closed up. It was said that perchance [the light] might bring a cause of sickness, something evil when it came to emerge." (General History of the Things of New Spain, 1950-1970, book 7, chapter 3). Brundage summarized the Mesoamerican conception of Venus as follows: "It is curious that the Mesoamerican peoples thought of the Morning Star so consistently as malign. He was to them, whether they were Aztecs or Mayan, the very father of calamity. The dates of his heliacal rising were forecast so that the dooms ahead could be adequately read and prepared for." (The Phoenix of the Western World, 1982, p. 177) The obsession of the various Mesoamerican peoples with the observation and recording of Venus' movements is legendary. An Augustinian monk at the time of the Spanish conquest wrote as follows: "So accurately did they keep the record of the days when it appeared and disappeared that they never made a mistake." (Quoted from A. Aveni, "Venus and the Maya, " American Scientist 67, p. 274). Of Venus, the Mexican friar Motolina observed that the Mexicans "knew on what day it would appear again in the east after it had lost itself or disappeared in the west...; they counted the days by this star and yielded reverence and offered sacrifices to it." (Quoted in A. Aveni, "Venus and the Maya," American Scientist 67, p. 274.) Various aspects of Mesoamerican culture appear to trace to their obsession with worshipping Venus. Here Brundage wrote as follows: "The true role of the planet Venus in the development of the Mesoamerican cultures is not understood. It might not be far wrong to look upon the Mesoamerican's great skill in numeration as a child of that planet and to state that their intellectual life pulsed to its periods. Certainly a significant portion of their mythology involved that planet." (B. Brundage, The Phoenix of the Western World, 1981, p, 173.) Despite the fact that Venus has no obvious relationship to the seasons, the ancient Maya developed a most sophisticated calender which was designed to track the planet's movements across the sky. Certainly one of the greatest achievements of the Maya, this calender could only have been developed after many generations of careful observation and reflects a profound knowledge of the planet's behavior. On the Venus-calender employed by the Maya, Aveni commented as follows: "All astronomical calenders are derived from celestial observations, and a calender as accurate as the one the Maya devised must have depended upon long term, precise observation." (Ibid., p. 279). Sir Eric Thompson, with reference to the incredible accuracy of the Venus calender as reflected in the Dresden Codex, observes: "Bearing in mind the variability of the planet's synodical revolution and the hindrances to accurate observation caused by cloudy weather in the rainy season and morning mists in the dry season, the accuracy attained is almost unbelievable. It was based on boundless patience and undoubted cooperation of astronomers of different places and different generations." ("Maya Astronomy," Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A. 276, 1974, p. 87). But what was the original impetus for the development of this unique calender? The answer appears to be that the calender was designed in order to anticipate the dire consequences associated with the various phases of Venus. Here Aveni writes as follows: "Its function was likely the same as well--to serve as a warning table for the apparitions of Venus." (A. Aveni, Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico, 1980, p. 184). Here once again is the very same--to the modern mind-- irrational belief that we found in Babylon: Why would the greatest astronomers of the New World, accustomed to observing the planet Venus for countless generations, ascribe to it a malignant influence? If Venus has always moved upon its currently peaceful, perfectly orderly orbit, what is there to fear? What disasters could possibly be related to this star? And why Venus, rather than the Sun or Moon, which are much brighter and have recognizable influences on the affairs of man? Certainly it is difficult to account for the origin of such bizarre conceptions in one culture, let alone in two different cultures separated by the Atlantic Ocean and several millennia. While the Dresden Codex traces the movements of Venus with great precision-- according to Thompson, it is accurate to within two hours over a period of 500 years--it has long been a source of puzzlement that the various intervals associated with Venus do not accord with their present values. Why this is so remains unclear. Stephen McCluskey summarized this situation as follows: "The Venus Almanac of the Codex Dresden employs an integral 584-day synodic period known as a Venus Round to produce an astronomical almanac for the planet, forecasting omens related to the 236-day period of visibility as the Morning Star, the 90-day period of invisibility, the 250-day period of visibility as the Evening Star, and the 8-day period of invisibility, after which the planet reappears in the east as the Morning Star. These intervals are only approximations to the true periods of visibility but for unknown reasons (either numerological, astronomical, or mythological) have been accepted as canonical." ("Maya Observations of Very Long Periods of Venus," JHA 14, 1983, p. 92). Of the values recorded in the Dresden Codex for the four intervals of Venus, Aveni wrote as follows: "It is puzzling that the 90-day interval in the table is so different from the true disappearance interval [about 50 days] and that the morning and evening star intervals are represented as being unequal. Were the Maya priests who drew up the table deliberately attempting to emphasize the ritualistic or astrological importance of the planet rather than the accurate astronomical observations which surely they must have made in composing the rest of the table?" (A. Aveni, Skywatchers in Ancient Mexico, 1980, p. 187.) Nor were these particular values peculiar to the Dresden codex, other Maya codices preserving the same four values. (See A. Aveni, Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico, 1980, p. 194). Various reasons have been proposed for why the Maya selected these values as canonical. Some have pointed to an attempt to record commensurations in the movements of Venus and the Moon (90 days=three lunar synodic months; 236 days= =8 lunar synodic months and 250 days= 8 and a half lunar synodic months. See the discussion in A. Aveni, "The Real Venus-Kukulcan in the Maya Inscriptions and Alignments," p. 315.) Other explanations have been offered as well, with no consensus emerging as of yet. To date, most attempts to understand the curious values assigned Venus by the Maya have focussed upon their fascination with numbers and the desire to develop commensurations between the various celestial bodies. No one, to the best of my knowledge, has considered the possibility that the canonical values assigned Venus might have reference to a different orbit of the planet itself. This possibility was first raised by William Douglas in 1982. Writing in Kronos, a Velikovsky-forum, Douglas called attention to the fact that the ancient Babylonians likewise recorded a 90-day disappearance interval for Venus during superior conjunction. This fact had also been noticed by Aveni, who wrote as follows: "It is curious that the Babylonians also counted a three-month disappearance interval." (Skywatchers in Ancient Mexico, 1980, p. 327). In his article in Kronos, Douglas compared the values obtained from the Dresden Codex with those from various sections of the Ammizaduqa tablets. Here are his results: 245 90 245 7 587 (Section II of Ammizaduqa) 240.2 90 249 7 586.66 (Section I of Ammizaduqa) 236 90 250 8 584 (Mayan canonical values) 263 50 263 8 584 (Current Values) [Column one refers to the value for Venus visibility as morning star. Column two is Venus' invisibility during superior conjunction. Column three is Venus' visibility as evening star. Column four is Venus' invisibility during inferior conjunction. Column five is the total of the four intervals.] Here Douglas draws attention to the remarkable similarity between the Maya values from the Dresden Codex and those from Section I of the Ammizaduqa tablets. Three of the values differ by less than one day, only the visibility as morning star differing by four days. In his article, Douglas suggests that these numbers represent objective values and apparently have reference to a former orbit of Venus. Significantly, a leading expert on the Venus-tablets of Ammizaduqa raised the same possibility in order to explain the various anomalies presented by those ancient records. Thus, John Weir, author of the book "Venus Tablets of Ammizaduqa", wrote as follows: "However, Solution 1702-1681 B.C., in common with all the solutions, has an observation classified as 'seemingly impossible'. While a revision of the sequence of lunar months would probably help to narrow the gap between the text and the computation, some other factor is required to explain it fully. This could be a modification in the shape of the Venus orbit. The periods of invisibility seem to be following a pattern which would be consistent with that assumption. If this is correct, the 'seemingly impossible' observation would be explained as the combined effect of the clock-time error on the lunar month sequence, and the orbital modification on the Venus observations." (J. Weir, "The Venus Tablets: A Fresh Approach," JHA 13, 1982, p. 46). Thus Douglas' intriguing hypothesis is by no means outside the realm of possibility. Weir's proposal, needless to say, has not found favor with other scholars of ancient astronomical lore. Most scholars would much prefer to explain away the anomalies in the ancient Babylonian records by referring them to errors in copying and faulty viewing conditions, unaware that similar anomalies exist in the Maya records. What then is our position with respect to these ancient records? >From the standpoint of Talbott and myself, it is certainly possible that Venus had already settled into its current orbit by the time of these earliest astronomical observations. It is equally likely, however, that the ancient's preoccupation with Venus and difficulty in recording its "real/modern" values reflects a situation in which the planet was still settling into its current orbit. Perhaps the most we can say with confidence is that the anomalies presented by the ancient records are consistent with the mytho-historical record pointing to radical changes in the orbit of Venus in relatively recent times. By themselves the ancient astronomical texts are probably too fragmentary to warrant this conclusion, although further analysis may decide the issue one way or another. Can we imagine any circumstances which would allow us to determine more precisely whether these ancient records describe Venus on a different orbit, or whether they merely represent an attempt on the part of ancient skywatchers to mark a commensuration between the movements of Venus and some other aspect of nature? Many thousands of cuneiform tablets currently lie rotting within museum cellars, each waiting for a translator to come along and rescue its contents from oblivion. Perhaps some of these texts will further clarify the mystery surrounding these ancient observations. Or perhaps new evidence will come to light which will allow us to understand the origin of the Mayan canonical values. If, as we suspect, these canonical values--like the sacred count of 260 days-- trace back to the Pre-Classic period (2000 B.C.-250 A.D.) and thus well into antiquity, the case for their objective nature gains in credibility. If the canonical values of the Maya are found to be of more recent origin, say the Post-Classic Period (900 A.D.-1521), the case for their objective nature is seriously undermined. Finally, and probably most likely of all, perhaps ancient observational records will surface from some other culture-- ancient China, for example--which will confirm or deny the objective nature of the 90-day disappearance interval associated with Venus during superior conjunction. If these ancient records pertaining to Venus aren't conclusive with regard to establishing the catastrophic thesis of Talbott and myself (or Velikovsky, for that matter), they nevertheless represent a fundamental challenge to the conventional interpretation of these texts. Here we would cite the following problems: (1) If the 90-day disappearance interval does not represent an objective value, how it possible to explain this coincidence in the records of peoples as astronomically proficient and culturally disparate as the Babylonians and Maya? (2) How is it possible to explain Venus' ominous reputation in both cultures? (3) If the Venus-tablets of Ammizaduqa date from the 18th century B.C.--which I would doubt--how is it possible to explain the fact that the Babylonians still hadn't figured out the true mean of the disappearance interval at the time of superior conjunction until well over a thousand years had elapsed? According to Neugebauer, the duration of invisibility "can be observed easily and quite accurately" (see the discussion in A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, Vol. 2, 1975, p. 832). Are we to believe then, that after over a thousand years of careful observation of Venus, the Babylonians still had no real idea of the "true" value for its disappearance interval? Ev Cochrane/Editor-Publisher of Aeon, A Journal of Myth and Science 2326 Knapp, Ames IA, 50014 ev at eai.com The views presented here are those of Ev Cochrane alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of EAI and Iowa State University. (However, it wouldn't surprise me if both attempt to claim responsibility in the years ahead).