FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE

ANTROPOLOGICHESKIJ FORUM
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Antropologicheskij forum, 2017, no. 32

 

ON THE SEMANTIC UNITY OF ASSYRIAN MENOLOGIES AND LATE BABYLONIAN HOROSCOPES

Vladimir Emelianov

St Petersburg State University
11 Universitetskaya Emb., St Petersburg, Russia
banshur69()gmail.com

Abstract: This article compares two groups of texts: Neo-Assyrian menologies (monthly predictions) and zodiacal horoscopes of the Late Babylonian period. The semantic relationships of both with the myths and rituals of the Sumerian and Babylonian cultic calendar are established. It was found that after the fourth century BC, Babylonian horoscopes became more arbitrary. The data of cuneiform texts are compared with data of modern psychophysiology and chronopsychology (X. Gonda and her group). It is assumed that the scribes of eighth to fourth centuries BC reported to the circle of healers and astrologers about dependence of diseases of people born in different seasons on their temperament and condition of the nervous system. Now we can say that the rational core of Babylonian astrology for modern man lies in the fact that the sources of the various changes in psychophysical condition are deemed not to constellations, but geoclimatic periods of the year in which these constellations appear. The Babylonians believed that the characteristics of physical and mental development of a person born in a particular period of the year coincide with the sensations and symptoms that overtake all people at the same time. Whether this hypothesis is right or wrong is the problem which modern science has yet to discover.

Keywords: Huzirina, Uruk, menologies, horoscopes, chronopsychology.

To cite: Emelianov V., 'Assiriyskie menologii i pozdnevavilonskie goroskopy: edinstvo semantiki' [On the Semantic Unity of Assyrian Menologies and Late Babylonian Horoscopes], Antropologicheskij forum, 2017, no. 32, pp. 142–168.

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/032/emelyanov.pdf