Ancient Babylonians linked astronomical phenomena to pestilence, the death of kings and the destruction of empires

“There will be an attack on the land by a locust swarm,” one omen reads. “A large army will fall,” says another. “A king will die,” a third predicts.

Ancient Babylonians made these dark prophecies based on celestial divination, linking the alignment of the stars, planets and moon to major earthly events like pestilence and destruction, according to scholars who recently made breakthroughs in translating cuneiform tablets housed at the British Museum in London.

The four tablets analyzed in the new study date to the middle and late Old Babylonian periods (circa 1894 to 1595 B.C.E.), some 4,000 years ago. They are the “oldest examples of compendia of lunar-eclipse omens yet discovered.

The tablets most likely come from Sippar, an ancient city southwest of modern-day Baghdad that flourished during the Babylonian Empire.