MUL.APIN

MUL.APIN () is the conventional title given to a Babylonian compendium that deals with many diverse aspects of Babylonian astronomy and astrology.

It is in the tradition of earlier star catalogues, the so-called Three Stars Each lists, but represents an expanded version based on more accurate observation, likely compiled around 1000 BC. The text lists the names of 66 stars and constellations and further gives a number of indications, such as rising, setting and culmination dates, that help to map out the basic structure of the Babylonian star map.

The text is preserved in a 7th-century BC copy on a pair of tablets, named for their incipit, corresponding to the first constellation of the year, ^MULAPIN "The Plough", identified with Triangulum plus Gamma Andromedae.

The earliest copy of the text so far discovered was made in 686 BC; however the majority of scholars now believe that the text was originally compiled around 1000 BC. The latest copies of Mul-Apin are currently dated to around 300 BC.

Astrophysicist Bradley Schaefer claims that the observations reported in these tablets were made in the region of Assur at around the year 1370 BC.

The text runs to two tablets and possibly a third auxiliary tablet, and is organised as follows:

The first tablet is the most important resource for any potential reconstruction of the Babylonian star map as its various sections locate the constellations in relation to each other and to the calendar. Tablet 1 has six main sections:

Even though the Babylonians used a luni-solar calendar, which added an occasional thirteenth month to the calendar, MUL.APIN, like most texts of Babylonian astrology, uses an ‘ideal’ year composed of 12 ‘ideal’ months each of which was composed of an ‘ideal’ 30 days. In this scheme the equinoxes were set on the 15th day of the first and seventh month, and the solstices on the 15th day of the fourth and tenth month.

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