{
  "author": "ChronologiaOS editorial guides",
  "date": "2026-10-09",
  "department": "Astronomy & Calendars",
  "department_id": "SKY",
  "epistemic_label": "Source guide",
  "epistemic_status": "SOURCE_GUIDE",
  "period": "1000\u2013500 BCE",
  "place": "Mesopotamia",
  "public_sources": [
    {
      "publisher": "British Museum",
      "title": "MUL.APIN tablet 1, museum no. 86378",
      "type": "Museum object record",
      "url": "https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1899-0610-108"
    }
  ],
  "publication_state": "PUBLIC",
  "read_time": "3 min read",
  "sections": [
    {
      "body": "The British Museum's catalogue describes tablet 1 of MUL.APIN, museum number 86378, as a Late Babylonian astronomical treatise with a production date between 1000 and 500 BCE. It includes star lists, risings and settings, and the constellations along the moon's path.",
      "heading": "Start with the tablet",
      "source": 0
    },
    {
      "body": "The research record is careful: the textual tradition may predate this witness. A production date for one tablet is the date of that copy. Any claim about when the compendium was first assembled needs separate evidence.",
      "heading": "A witness, not an origin"
    },
    {
      "body": "The same tradition served observation and omen interpretation. The record asks that the catalogue structure and the divinatory uses remain analytically separable. Describing what the text records about the sky is different from describing what people did with it.",
      "heading": "Observation beside divination"
    },
    {
      "body": "What observations would an ancient compiler need to produce a list of risings and settings? Work out how many years of watching that implies before you estimate the tradition's age.",
      "heading": "A question to carry forward"
    }
  ],
  "short_title": "How do you catalogue the sky in clay?",
  "slug": "mul-apin-a-babylonian-compendium-of-the-sky",
  "summary": "Read the British Museum's record for the first tablet of MUL.APIN, a Late Babylonian astronomical treatise, and see how a copy's date differs from a tradition's age.",
  "tags": [
    "MUL.APIN",
    "Babylonian astronomy",
    "Star lists",
    "Clay tablets"
  ],
  "title": "MUL.APIN: a Babylonian compendium of the sky."
}