Babylonian astrology

In Babylon as well as in Assyria as a direct offshoot of Babylonian culture, astrology takes its place in the official cult as one of the two chief means at the disposal of the priests (who were called bare or "inspectors") for ascertaining the will and intention of the gods, the other being through the inspection of the liver of the sacrificial animal

Of the planets five were recognized—Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mercury and Mars—to name them in the order in which they appear in the older cuneiform literature; in later texts Mercury and Saturn change places.

These five planets were identified with the gods of the Babylonian pantheon as follows:

Jupiter with Marduk,

Venus with the goddess Ishtar,

Saturn with Ninurta (Ninib),

Mercury with Nabu (Nebo),

Mars with Nergal.

The movements of the Sun, Moon and five planets were regarded as representing the activity of the five gods in question, together with the moon-god Sin and the Sun-god Shamash, in preparing the occurrences on earth. If, therefore, one could correctly read and interpret the activity of these powers, one knew what the gods were aiming to bring about.

Babylonian astrology was the first organized system of astrology, arising in the second millennium B.C. There is some speculation that astrology of some form or other appeared in the Sumerian period in the 3rd millennium BC but no ancient written evidence is available to support this hypothesis. By the 16th century B.C. its beginnings as a simple omen-based astrology had begun to take shape in the astrological writings of the time, most important of these being the Enuma Anu Enlil, whose contents consisted of 70 tablets of 7,000 recorded mundane (i.e., public, common) phenomena (e.g., famine or victory in war) and whatever celestial occurrences happened to be present at the time of the event. However texts from this time also refer to an oral tradition - the origin and content of which we can only speculate upon. At this time Babylonian astrology was solely mundane, and prior to the 7th century B.C. the practitioners' understanding of astronomy was very rudimentary.