Hemerology

Definition

Hemerology (Greek 'day-science') is the Assyriological term for Mesopotamian auspicious-day calendars — texts that assign favourable or unfavourable activities to specific calendar days. The canonical series is Iqqur īpuš ('he has destroyed (and) he has built'), edited by Labat 1965. The series organizes omens by month plus activity and covers both celestial events (eclipses by month) and electional permissions or prohibitions for human actions; hemerology excerpts also appear embedded among celestial observations in the Reports-to-Assyrian-Kings corpus.

In Tradition

In the Mesopotamian divinatory tradition hemerology functioned as the everyday electional companion to the larger celestial-omen series: where Enuma Anu Enlil read the sky for the king and the kingdom, hemerology supplied the per-day guidance for individual activities — court attendance, marriage, sowing seed, taking office, making food-offerings. The genre overlaps Iqqur Īpuš month-activity electional but focuses on single-day rather than whole-month guidance.

In Practice

When you consult a hemerology you locate the target day within the current month and read the assigned auspiciousness for the activity in question. The Neo-Assyrian scholar-report corpus preserves worked examples: Adad-šumu-uṣur's Iyyar hemerology (Report 162) reads 'The 10th day: at court, favourable; The 12th day: in the street, favourable; The 15th day: perfect seed; The 16th day: joy of heart' (Hunger trans.). The technique is electional rather than predictive — it tells you when to do or avoid something, not what will happen unconditionally. Modern Western practice does not work the Mesopotamian hemerologies directly, but the genre is the historical ancestor of the broader electional astrology tradition.

Historical Origin

The hemerology genre is attested in the Mesopotamian cuneiform tradition from the second millennium BCE; Iqqur īpuš is the canonical series, edited by Labat 1965. Hunger's *Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings* (SAA 8) and *Astrological Reports* (Part 3) document hemerology excerpts embedded in Neo-Assyrian scholar-reports (Reports 162, 164, 231-234, 38, 269, 371, 378). Koch-Westenholz's *Mesopotamian Astrology* gives the scholarly overview and cross-references Iqqur īpuš §§71-72 (lunar eclipses in months I-II) and §§100-101 (earthquakes).

Etymology

Origin: Greek. Meaning: ἡμερολογία (hēmerologia), from ἡμέρα (hēmera, 'day') + -λογία (-logia, 'account, study'). Literally 'day-account' or 'day-science.'.

Further Reading

• Hermann Hunger, Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings
• Ulla Koch-Westenholz, Mesopotamian Astrology
• Francesca Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing