Enuma Anu Enlil

Definition

Enuma Anu Enlil is the master cuneiform collection of Babylonian celestial omens — sky signs read as messages from the gods. It takes its name from its opening words, "When Anu and Enlil…". In the first millennium BCE it was organised into tablets by which god each sign belonged to: Sin (Moon omens, Tablets 1-22), Šamaš (Sun, 23-29/30), Adad (weather, 31-49), and Ištar (stars and planets, 50-70, with some variation). Every omen follows one fixed shape: an "if X, then Y" pairing of an observation with its predicted outcome.

In Tradition

Scholars treat Enuma Anu Enlil as the foundational handbook of celestial divination. It was the series that qualified a court astrologer — the ṭupšar Enūma Anu Enlil, literally "scribe of Enuma Anu Enlil" — to read what the Moon, Sun, planets, and weather meant for the king. Francesca Rochberg describes it as the canonical body of texts kept in the royal library at Nineveh, the heart of the Neo-Assyrian Sargonid court.

In Practice

An ancient specialist used the series by matching something seen in the sky to the "if" clause that described it, then reading off the "then" clause as the portent. Those portents always concerned the king, the state, or the realm — never a private person. Today the series survives only in pieces, and modern readers reach it through partial scholarly editions: Rochberg-Halton (1988a) for lunar-eclipse omens, Reiner-Pingree (1975, 1981, 1998) for planetary and Venus omens, Al-Rawi & George (1991/1992) for Tablet 14, and van Soldt (1995) for solar omens. The most approachable overview is Koch-Westenholz (1995, pp. 74-92).

Historical Origin

The earliest material goes back to the Old Babylonian period, which already had structured lunar-eclipse omen tablets. The series was assembled across the second millennium BCE and reached its canonical form in the Neo-Assyrian period — the 7th century BCE, in the royal library at Nineveh under the kings Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal. Scribes were still copying it in the Achaemenid and Hellenistic eras, and the professional title "ṭupšar Enūma Anu Enlil" is attested as late as the 2nd century BCE.

Further Reading

• Francesca Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture
• Hermann Hunger & David Pingree, Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia
• Ulla Koch-Westenholz, Mesopotamian Astrology