Babyloninians tracked Jupiter

[kbs2244]

These recent “discoveries” about the Babylonians reminded me of a short news story posted during the U S invasion of Iraq.

I do not recall where I read it and I have not been able to find it since.

The story goes that as some U S GIs were going house to house in Bagdad on a “clean up mission." They came across a locked from the inside courtyard gate. The small crowd of neighborhood people accompanying them said it was a very old “school.” They showed great respect for it.

One of the crowd offered to get one of the “teachers” to come to the gate. After some negations the GIs were allowed in and did a through, but respectful, search and no bad guys were found.

But one of the GIs was an armature astronomer and he recognized instruments and records that lead him to think something was going on. He got permission to talk with the teachers via a translator and found that the “teachers” were actually star gazers. It was a heredity profession. The only ones they taught were their own children and sometimes gifted ones from the neighborhood. They supported themselves with horoscopes. And they had been doing it for hundreds of generations.

They had observation records that went back to the city of Babylon. There was a correction in their base location that corresponded with their move from Babylon to Bagdad. These records were regularly referenced and had been copied and re-copied many times. But each time the originals had been kept. They had clay tablets recording star locations from thousands of years ago.

They went out every night and updated the positions.

The headline of the story was something like “The longest running scientific experiment.”

[kbs2244]

I have no idea.
I have lost any track of the story.
It is the kind of thing that has no military value and so is not even mentioned in a daily log of operations.
I can only hope there is a "school" in some dusty Bagdad neighborhood doing what it has always done.