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SUMMARY:Foresight in Ancient Mesopotamia - Professor Francesca Rochberg\, 
 University of California\, Berkeley
DTSTART:20130308T173000Z
DTEND:20130308T183000Z
UID:TALK40001@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Janet Gibson
DESCRIPTION:Abstract\n\nImages uncovered from splendid palaces at Nineveh 
 and Nimrud\, coupled with\nvivid accounts in the Bible where Assyria was r
 eviled by the prophet\nIsaiah\, give us something of the face Assyria pres
 ented to the outside\nworld.  A more behind the scenes look at the interna
 l workings of this\nfirst of all empires\, however\, takes us to the syste
 matic institutional\nimplementation of foresight by Assyrian kings.  State
  sponsored divination\nby the stars and by the liver of a sacrificial shee
 p were the techniques\nemployed by kings to know the future and gauge thei
 r chances of success. \n \nAncient Assyrian kings were invested in the art
  of anticipating the future\nin the realms of politics and economics\, muc
 h as we ourselves are invested\nin projecting and preparing for the future
  in our modern realms of\nbusiness\, government\, and science. From cuneif
 orm tablets produced by the\ndiviners of the 7th century BC Assyrian court
 \, we are afforded an intimate\nlook at the Assyrian Empire\, and gain ins
 ight into the context\, practice\,\nand purpose of Assyro-Babylonian divin
 ation and its role in the earliest\nand most fully documented cultivation 
 of foresight.\n\nBiography\n\n\nFrancesca Rochberg is Catherine and Willia
 m L. Magistretti Distinguished\nProfessor of Near Eastern Studies in the D
 epartment of Near Eastern\nStudies\, the Office for the History of Science
  and Technology\, and the\nGraduate Group in Ancient History and Mediterra
 nean Archaeology at the\nUniversity of California\, Berkeley. She was Rese
 arch Professor at the\nInstitut für Assyriologie und Hethitologie\, Ludwi
 g-Maximilian Universität\,\nMünchen in 2010\, and is currently a Senior 
 Fellow of the Institute for the\nStudy of the Ancient World at NYU. She ha
 s also been a Guggenheim Fellow\,\na Visiting Fellow at Magdalen College\,
  Oxford\, and a member of the\nInstitute for Advanced Study\, Princeton. I
 n 1982 she was the recipient of\na John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fell
 owship\, and in 2008 was elected\nto membership in the American Philosophi
 cal Society\n\nShe has published and lectured widely on Babylonian celesti
 al sciences and\nproduced editions of cuneiform texts that set Babylonian 
 science in\nvarious contexts\, from cultural to cognitive history. Her res
 earch on\nancient Mesopotamian and Greco-Roman traditions in astronomy and
  astrology\nhas introduced the evidence of ancient cuneiform science into 
 the\nphilosophy of science through investigations of empiricism\, predicti
 on\,\nlogic\, and reasoning.\n\nShe is the author of Aspects of Babylonian
  Celestial Divination: The Lunar\nEclipse Tablets of Enuma Anu Enlil\, Arc
 hiv für Orientforschung Beiheft 22\n(Ferdinand Berger und Söhne\, 1988)\
 , Babylonian Horoscopes\, Transactions of\nthe American Philosophical Soci
 ety\, Vol.88\, Pt.1 (American Philosophical\nSociety\, 1998)\, The Heavenl
 y Writing: Divination\, Horoscopy and Astronomy\nin Mesopotamian Culture (
 Cambridge University Press\, 2004 and 2007)\, and\nIn the Path of the Moon
 : Babylonian Celestial Divination and Its Legacy\,\nStudies in Ancient Mag
 ic and Divination (E.J. Brill\, 2010). Babylonian\nHoroscopes won the 1999
  John Frederick Lewis Award from the American\nPhilosophical Society.
LOCATION:LMH\, Lady Mitchell Hall
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