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The Omens of Venus and The Bizarre Origins of Astronomy
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When Anu, Enlil and Enki, the great gods
had established in their firm plans
the great cosmic structures and the barge of Sîn,
when they had established that the crescent moon
should grow and give birth to the month…
Twenty-seven centuries ago, in the city of Nineveh, King Ashurbanipal built a library.
There were other libraries before this, and there were others after. Yet for a time the Library of Ashurbanipal was the largest in the world. Within its walls were stored thirty thousand clay tablets, recording the laws, the history, and the stories of the Assyrian Empire.
But, as is oft the fate of libraries, it eventually burned. In 612 BC, two decades after the king had died and his empire had fallen into chaos, Nineveh fell to the combined armies of Babylonia, Medes, and Scythia. They looted and burned the city, destroying its palaces, its temples, and its libraries.
Nineveh itself never reclaimed its former glory. For a while it had been the biggest city on the…
