The need for these tables became pressing when hundreds of astronomical cuneiform tables in the British Museum became available for study, partly through the copies made in the 1880s and 1890s. All these texts originally came from some archive in Babylon which was discovered by Arabs in the middle of the 19th century. Most of the texts were written from about 330 B.C. to the first century A.D. Many of the texts are fragments of the original clay tables which have broken. In many cases, a fragment contains only parts of a few legible lines. Much of the information is of an astronomical character. It is evident that for investigations of these tablets the possibility of rapid scanning of accurately dated planetary positions is of primary importance.

These tables cover the period from the mid-17th to the 19th cent. when astronomical ephemerides were evolving most rapidly. These tables resemble those previously pub. by the APS: Tuckerman's "Planetary, Lunar, and Solar Positions, 601 B.C. to A.D. 1" and "A.D. 2 to A.D. 1649" and Goldstine's "New and Full Moon, 1001 B.C. to A.D. 1651." The tables contain features consistent with the almanacs and ephemerides pub. in this period: planetary positions are computed for 12 hours U.T. (noon); and the Julian day number is given for new and full moons. An analytical essay examines the theoretical and computational developments in almanac-making in the period that bridges between Kepler and Laplace.

These tables for A.D. 2 to A.D. 1649 are an extension, with some improvements, of earlier ones for 601 B.C. to A.D. 1. As before, they give the geocentric positions (tropic celestial longitudes & latitudes, i.e. with respect to the mean equinox of date), in units of 0 degrees.01 for the Sun & planets, & 0 degrees.1 for the Moon, at 16h Universal Time - 4 P.M. Greenwich Civil Time - 7 P.M. local mean time of 45 degrees East longitude (Babylon), on the indicated dates, all in the Julian calendar, hence for Julian dates 5n + 1/6 for the Moon, Mercury, & Venus, & 1-n + 1/6 for the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, & Saturn. The same adaptation of the theories of Leverrier, Gaillot, & Hansen, with modified elements by Schoch, was used as before, except as noted below. The chief change has been to improve the positions of Jupiter & Saturn. Tables.

In a series of studies, Ian Moyer explores the ancient history and modern historiography of relations between Egypt and Greece from the fifth century BCE to the early Roman empire. Beginning with Herodotus, he analyzes key encounters between Greeks and Egyptian priests, the bearers of Egypt's ancient traditions. Four moments unfold as rich micro-histories of cross-cultural interaction: Herodotus' interviews with priests at Thebes; Manetho's composition of an Egyptian history in Greek; the struggles of Egyptian priests on Delos; and a Greek physician's quest for magic in Egypt. In writing these histories, the author moves beyond Orientalizing representations of the Other and colonial metanarratives of the civilizing process to reveal interactions between Greeks and Egyptians as transactional processes in which the traditions, discourses and pragmatic interests of both sides shaped the outcome. The result is a dialogical history of cultural and intellectual exchanges between the great civilizations of Greece and Egypt.

Comparative insights on astronomy, divination, and medicine from ancient texts Scientific Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East presents a collection of articles by leading scholars on scientific practices in the ancient world, with emphasis on the fields of medicine, astronomy, astrology, and other forms of divination. The essays engage with a wide variety of textual sources in many different languages and scripts from Egypt and the Near East spanning more than a millennium, including some texts that are edited and discussed here for the first time. The contributors to this volume were tasked with approaching their texts not only as specialists, but also from a cross-cultural perspective, and the resulting body of work reveals new and exciting evidence for the transfer of scientific knowledge across cultural borders in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. This book will be of interest primarily to specialists in the history of medicine, science, divination, and magic, as well as to papyrologists, Egyptologists, and Assyriologists.