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Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2000 14:50:33 -0400
To: classics@u.washington.edu
From: James Pfundstein <jmpfund@bgnet.bgsu.edu>
Subject: Re: Greek and Indian Philosophy
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>It's true that old saying, you learn something new everyday. Forgive 
>my ignorance, I've never even heard of an Enuma Elish until today!
>
>Now I'm wondering, is there any geometrical constructs or arithmetic 
>in the Enuma Elish?  Does anyone construct or derive abstracted 
>geometric or numeric notions and conclusions about the nature and 
>workings of reality in its corpus? 
>
>I'm still just testing the tensile strength of this limb. 
>
>Sotiris Sotiropoulos
>


Babylonian culture is big on mathematics and astronomy but not, it 
seems, geometry, a typically Greek method of astronomical 
calculation. For a full treatment of Babylonian math & astronomy see 
chs. 2 & 5 (respectively) of Neugebauer's _The Exact Sciences in 
Antiquity_.

There is also Dicks' _Early Greek Astronomy to Aristotle_, but 
unfortunately he is rather narrow-minded about accepting a 
significant amount of influence on Greece from points east, even when 
it's stone obvious (as Al Kriman might say), e.g. the constellations 
Leo and Taurus.

The big moment in Babylonian astronomy, though, is rather late in the 
history of Babylonian culture-- contemporary with Hellenistic Greece. 
Much later than the _Enuma Elish_, it seems, and by this time it's 
really an open question who is influencing whom.

JM("Mathematicus")P

.