A New Discovery of a Component of Greek Astrology in Babylonian Tablets: The 'Terms'

Alexander Jones and John M. Steele's 2011 paper for the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University, publishes and analyzes two cuneiform astrological tablets in the British Museum (BM 36326 and BM 36628 with joins) that carry the astrological doctrine of the Terms, the same five-fold division of each zodiac sign among the planets this atlas records as the Egyptian terms. Jones held the ISAW faculty position that hosts the paper and is a historian of Greco-Egyptian astronomical papyri; Steele, at Brown University, is a specialist in Babylonian astronomy and mathematics. Working directly from the cuneiform tablets, they argue the Terms doctrine actually originated in Babylonia, and that the Egyptian attribution ancient astrologers gave it, the same Nechepso and Petosiris legend this atlas's own historical-origin fact records, displaced the true Babylonian history over the course of the Hellenistic period. It sits at the top of this atlas's reliability scale: a specialist academic paper built on primary tablet editions by the two scholars best placed to read them, published through a research institute's own open access series. Use it to state how the Terms doctrine actually originated and how its Egyptian label came to be attached; the Egyptian attribution itself, as ancient astrologers believed and stated it, remains correctly sourced to Vettius Valens and Claudius Ptolemy, the primary voices who transmitted that belief.