The Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa
Sixty years of Venus observations, recorded for omens and useful ever since.
- When
- Known to
- ± 100 years
- Era
- Bronze Age, Holocene
Babylonian scribes record the risings and settings of Venus across 21 years of a king's reign, in the belief that celestial motion carried messages about the state. The astrology was the point; the astronomy was a by-product. Because Venus's cycle is precisely known, the tablet is now used to anchor the chronology of the whole second millennium BCE — though it yields several possible absolute dates, which is why Mesopotamian chronology is still argued over in centuries.