A proto-Normal Star almanac dating to the reign of Artaxerxes III: BM 65156 (Q2307667)

The author initially explains the goal-year method. In Seleucid Babylonian astronomy it was known that planetary synodic phenomena (e.g., first and last appearance) as well as the passage close to a set of ``Normal Stars'' repeated themselves with fixed periods, which could be used for the production of a ``Normal Star Almanac'' predicting synodic phenomena and Normal Star passages for a given year. The best period for the two kinds of phenomena might differ (for Mars, 79 years for synodic phenomena, 47 for passages), and the period may not be an exact number of years a defect that could be repaired by adding or subtracting a small number of days. The technique was fully developed in the early Seleucid era (starting 312 BC), and known from a large number of conserved texts. Some evidence exists that it was used in earlier times. The present article analyzes the text BM 65156, a large fragment of a tablet, first published by Hermann Hunger but with a few crucial new readings due to the author, shown in a new edition. The text lists synodic phenomena and Normal Star passages for several planets for a ``year 12''; the comparison with modern computed values for these allows the author to identify the year as the 12th year of Artaxerxes III (347/6 BC), and two of the planets as Mars and Mercury (a few lines suggest Jupiter as a third, but this is uncertain). The absence of weather phenomena already suggests that the text is predictive, not observational, and this is confirmed by the comparison with the modern calculation and with a ``diary'' (an observational text) for the same year: the passages of planets past Normal Stars are all ca. 13 days off, as they should be if a goal-year period of 47 years is used without correction (the part containing the synodic phenomena will have been on the almost completely illegible obverse, and thus cannot be controlled). For Mercury, where a goal-year period of 46 years is close to perfect (only a correction of \(-1\) day for the Normal Star passages is needed), the text agrees with the modern calculation after emendation of a writing error. There can thus be little doubt that the text was prepared by using the goal-year technique, but that it had not yet been perfected as it was half a century later; the format also differs from that of Seleucid Normal Star Almanacs whence the proto-Normal Star Almanac of the title.