The MUL.APIN star catalogue and its transmission history

Record summary

MUL.APIN is a first-millennium BCE Mesopotamian scholarly series listing stars, constellations, calendrical risings, and practical or divinatory material. Modern studies in the period examined its earlier components, copying history, and relationship to observational astronomy. It is useful for comparing cataloguing, seasonal timekeeping, and the transmission of technical knowledge across Assyrian and Babylonian scholarly communities. The text is composite and preserved in multiple copies, so its date, geographic origins, and the meaning of individual star identifications cannot be reduced to one fixed “original” version.