Cuneiform tablet recording observation of Halley's Comet

~1800 BCE·Old Babylonian·BM 41462

Not yet translated

This tablet is catalogued and photographed, but no published translation exists yet. Our translation engine works through the untranslated corpus every night, oldest first — this page will update the day its turn comes. If you are a specialist and can read it, we would love your help.

The world it comes from

Hammurabi, the Epic of Gilgamesh, mathematics.

Read the Old Babylonian chapter →

Scholarly note

Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: Observation of Haley's Comet, recorded in Cuneiform on a clay tablet between 22-28 September 164 BCE, Babylon, Iraq. British Museum, London. BM 41462

Attribution

Image: Gavin.collins — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Cuneiform tablet recording observation of Halley's Comet.JPG. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACuneiform_tablet_recording_observation_of_Halley's_Comet.JPG. Description: Observation of Haley's Comet, recorded in Cuneiform on a clay tablet between 22-28 September 164 BCE, Babylon, Iraq. British Museum, London. BM 41462.

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