The first published volume of the late-Babylonian astronomical diaries, edited by A. J. Sachs and H. Hunger, presents a body of sources of the utmost significance both to the history of Mesopotamian culture in its late periods (Neo-Babylonian, Persian, Hellenistic) and to the history of ancient astronomy in general. This corpus, numbering somewhat over 1200 texts, represents a coherent branch of Babylonian astronomy, now termed "non-mathematical," and is characterized by the systematic daily observation of lunar and planetary phenomena as well as the use of the knowledge of periodicities to occasionally predict phenomena in the event of cloudy weather. This astronomy is to be differentiated from that of the late mathematical astronomical cuneiform texts (ephemerides) and their related procedure texts, in which highly refined computational methods were applied to lunar and planetary phenomena. This review summarizes the general astronomical content of the diary texts, discusses some problems concerning the terminology used for observation and prediction, and considers the relationship between the observation of astronomical phenomena in the diaries and the tradition of Babylonian celestial divination.
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