4,000-Year-Old Babylonian Tablets Finally Deciphered to Reveal Gloomy Predictions

Four clay tablets discovered a century ago have been translated, and based on the predictions of the ancient Mesopotamian diviners, there are numerous instances of catastrophe yet to befall the Earth .

Knewz.com has learned that the artifacts which were discovered in modern-day Iraq , speak to the deaths of rulers and the collapse of civilizations.

These prognoses are based on the Moon ’s movement – specifically lunar eclipses – and to arrive at their conclusions, the Earth’s only natural satellite had to be studied at night.

These early astrologers watched the movement of the Earth’s shadow, how it fell across the Moon, and how long it remained that way.

To them, these so-described “events in the sky” were “the gods” way of warning their subjects of the travesties set to befall the planet .

The text refers to “a king” who “will die” and the “destruction of Elam” which was then a part of Mesopotamia or current-day Iran.

The text goes on to say: “An eclipse becomes obscured from its center all at once [and] clear all at once.”

“An eclipse begins in the south and then clears: the downfall of Subartu and Akkad,” it said, speaking of the demise of two other regions in the area at the time.

The cuneiform refers to pestilence, saying: “There will be an attack on the land by a locust swarm.”

The prediction also spoke of a calamity that would extend to livestock, saying: “There will be losses of cattle” and noted further that “a large army will fall.”

Andrew George, an emeritus professor of Babylonian at the University of London , and Junko Taniguchi, an independent researcher who contributed to the revelations in the ensuing paper published in the University of Chicago Press Journals , wrote of the texts:

“As products of the middle and late Old Babylonian periods they represent the oldest examples of compendia of lunar- eclipse omens yet discovered and thus provide important new information about celestial divination among the peoples of southern Mesopotamia in the early second millennium BCE.”

George went on to say: “The origins of some of the omens may have lain in actual experience—observation of portent followed by catastrophe.”

But a theme that prevailed in the research and other such discoveries was that people of the era believed that “events in the sky were coded signs placed there by the gods as warnings about the future prospects of those on Earth.”

Testifying to the level of attention such predictions enjoyed, the paper noted:

“If the prediction associated with a given omen was threatening, for example, ‘a king will die,’ then an oracular inquiry by extispicy [inspecting the entrails of animals ] was conducted to determine whether the king was in real danger.”

If said animal entrails supported the astrology-based predictions , ancient Babylonians believed that certain rituals could be practiced to remove these omens and by extension, avert catastrophe.