Moon Computations in the Aramaic Astronomical Book

The Aramaic fragments of the Astronomical Book from Qumran were published by Milik in 1976, but since then they have attracted little scholarly attention. Their interpretation has been influenced by Milik’s understanding of the Aramaic text and Neugebauer’s explanation of the astronomical content. Both of them claimed that the fragments compute the illumination of the moon’s surface, the text, however tells the reader a different story: the calculation deals mainly with periods of moon visibility on the sky during the night and day. These calculations find their main inspiration in the Babylonian astrological series En ūma Anu Enlil.