The Sources
This Venus tablet is part of Enuma anu enlil ("In the days of Anu and Enlil"), a long text dealing with Babylonian astrology, which mostly consists of omens interpreting celestial phenomena.
The earliest copy of this tablet to be published, a 7th century BC cuneiform, part of the British Museum collections, was recovered from the library at Nineveh. It was first published in 1870 by Henry Creswicke Rawlinson and George Smith as Enuma Anu Enlil Tablet 63, in "Tablet of Movements of the Planet Venus and their Influences" (The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, volume III).
As many as 20 copies of this text are currently on record, many of them fragmentary, falling into 6 groups. The oldest of these copies is believed to be Source "B", found at Kish in 1924. It was copied from a tablet written at Babylon while Sargon II was King of Assyria between 720 and 704 BCE.
Read more about this topic: Venus Tablet Of Ammisaduqa
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