The recent war on Iraq was not just a war on a people but a war on a rich and vast heritage. The land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, known in ancient times as Mesopotamia, has witnessed the emergence of the earliest of civilizations such as the Sumerians, Assyrians, Akkadians, as well as the Babylonians, and is therefore considered to be the cradle of Western civilization.

These early civilizations have contributed to the modern world in various ways; the first studies in science and mathematics can be traced back to these civilizations, as well as the development of the first system of writing. These cultures also developed an irrigation and sanitation system, monumental architecture, state-sponsored warfare, civil laws, domestication of livestock, metal working, plows, pottery and wheeled vehicles.

The study of Astronomy (which is concerned with the observation of the motions of celestial bodies, and the reduction of these observations to mathematical order) is said to have been instigated by the Chaldeans in Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium B.C where it was blended with religious elements and practiced in the temples. One particularly important observation made by the Chaldeans was the ability to predict with a certain degree of accuracy, the perceptible motion of the planets including periods of apparent retrograde (backwards) motion, helical rising and setting and conjunction with principal stars. They also calculated the times of Earth's Moon's "new" phase as well as lunar and solar eclipses orbit (The Electronic Journal of the Astronomical Society of the Atlantic).

During the reign of the Babylonians, the study of astronomy and astrology (which is the study of the effects of the movements of celestial bodies on human affairs) was limited to the society’s upper class (the priests) as education was restricted to this class by the society’s strict caste system. As time went by and the priests began to move further away from the pure science of astronomy into the more vernacular astrology, they began to lose the clarity of their earlier work. The priests used this knowledge as a means of practicing their religion.

Astronomy began to take the form of pure science during the reign of the Babylonians during the period between the destruction of Nineveh in 607 B.C. and 1 B.C. The Babylonians calculated their months according to the lunar cycle, but since the seasons were ruled by the solar calendar, they formed a luni-solar calendar which was made up of 12 months with an extra 13^th month that was added occasionally to keep the years consistent. The construction of this calendar was very important for agricultural purposes, especially in the flood plain agriculture of Mesopotamia, as was the ability to predict floods by astronomical means.

Some of the contributions made by the Babylonian astronomers to this science include the division of the circle into 360 degrees. Babylonians divided each day into 12 divisions each known as a ‘kaspu’. The solar kaspu is the distance traveled by the sun in a two hour period that corresponds to 30 degrees. Just as it is done today, the Babylonians used the arc of one degree as a unit of angular space. They advanced this system to divide time into units that correspond to 4 minutes of our time, which is approximately the path taken by Earth in one day of its annual rotation around the sun. The division of our current day into 60 minutes, with each minute composed of 60 seconds is based on the Babylonian sexagesmal (base 60) system that divided the day into 12 hours. This was replaced later on by the Egyptian system that divided the day into 24 hours. There are also some existing records that show that the Babylonians also used a seven-day week system.

The Babylonians were able to predict eclipses and they started their studies in this field on March 19, 721 B.C. In modern theories, the eclipse records of both the Chaldeans and Babylonians are used in the study of long- term variations in the lunar orbit (The Electronic Journal of the Astronomical Society of the Atlantic).

Around 3500 B.C, Mesopotamia was the center of the Sumerian civilization. The Sumerians began the use of a sexagesimal system which is a number system using a base 60. This system was used for recording financial transactions. The Akkadians, who invaded the

region around 2300 B.C., were less sophisticated than the Sumerians. They invented a tool known as the abacus which was used for counting and developed a rather clumsy method of arithmetic that included addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. By the year 2100 B.C, the Sumerians were back in control of the region following a revolt against the Acadians.

In the year 2000 B.C the Babylonians invaded Mesopotamia. They used the sexagesimal system developed by the Sumerians and Acadians, but developed it by making it a positional system; a place-value system without a zero place value. This development of the number system is one of their greatest achievements in mathematics. A modern day counting method derived from this system would be the division of hours of the day into 60 hours, with each minute being divided into 60 seconds.

Another important achievement made by the Babylonians was their construction of tables. They compiled tables of square and cube roots and used them to solve equations. In 1854 two tablets were found at Senkerah which show the squares of numbers up to 59 and the cubes of numbers up to 32. The Babylonians learned to solve linear and quadratic algebraic equations and they used mathematics to broaden their knowledge of astronomy.

The First Forms of Writing

The disclosure of the secrets of these amazing civilizations would not have been possible if it had not been for the extensive documentations by these early scholars of their findings. Thousands of clay tablets with such recordings have been discovered throughout Ancient Mesopotamia. These tablets represent the first known examples of writing.

The Sumerians developed a method of writing using a stylus which was a wedge-shaped instrument made out of reed. They wrote on wet clay tablets with the stylus which gave cuneiform (wedge shaped) symbols. The tablets were then left in the sun to dry or baked in kilns. The Babylonians later adopted this cuneiform style of writing from the Sumerians.

Clay tablet with cuneiform writing. The diagram on the lower two thirds of the tablet is a map of the world, showing the ocean surrounding all land and the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers running through the middle.

A select few young Sumerian boys (usually sons of the very wealthy) were educated in an edubba, or a tablet house which is a Sumerian school where they were taught reading, writing, and arithmetic. When they graduated 12 years later they became a scribe (writer) which was a prestigious position among Sumerians.

The Sumerians also developed a method of leaving one’s signature on a clay tablet by using cylinder seals. These cylinder seals were carved out of stone and when rolled across a wet clay tablet would leave an impression which was used as a means of identifying oneself.

The destruction and looting of artefacts which occurred after the war on Iraq has led to the loss of hundreds of these tablets, several of which have not even been translated yet. This is a huge loss for humanity, one only surpassed by the loss of the lives and well-being of the Iraqi people.

Sources:

• ABC. Birthplace of Civilization at Risk in New Gulf War.

• Abrams, Stacey, 1991: Astronomy In Ancient Mesopotamia. The Electronic Journal of the Astronomical Society of the Atlantic -Vol. 3, No. 2.

• Astro Energetics, 1999. A Brief History of Astronomy and Astrology.

• Farrell, Colleen, 2002: The Earliest Known Origins of Astrology.

• O'Connor, J J, and Robertson, E F, 2000: An overview of Babylonian mathematics.

Aisha El-Awady is an IslamOnline.net staff-writer.  She has a bachelor’s degree in medicine from Cairo University and is currently working as instructor of Parasitology in the Faculty of Medicine.  She may be contacted at aawady@islam-online.net   

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