From Discovery News
Oldest-Known Astrologer's Board Discovered
The 2,000 year-old ivory fragments feature engravings of signs of the
zodiac.
Tue Jan 17, 2012 10:15 AM ET
Content provided by Owen Jarus, LiveScience
A research team has discovered what may be the oldest astrologer's board,
engraved with zodiac signs and used to determine a person's horoscope.
Dating back more than 2,000 years, the board was
discovered in Croatia, in a cave overlooking the Adriatic Sea. The surviving
portion of the board consists of 30 ivory fragments engraved with
signs of the
zodiac. Researchers spent years digging them up and putting them back
together. Inscribed in a Greco-Roman style, they include images of Cancer,
Gemini and Pisces.
The board fragments were discovered next to a phallic-shaped stalagmite amid
thousands of pieces of ancient Hellenistic (Greek style) drinking vessels.
An ancient astrologer, trying to determine a
person's horoscope, could have used the board to show the position of the
planets, sun and moon at the time the person was born.
"What he would show the client would be where each
planet is, where the sun is, where the moon is and what are the points on the
zodiac that were rising and setting on the horizon at the moment of birth," said
Alexander Jones, a professor at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
at New York University. [
See
Photos of Astrologer's Board]
"This is probably older than any other known example," Jones said. "It's also
older than any of the written-down horoscopes that we have from the Greco-Roman
world," he said, adding, "we have a lot of horoscopes that are written down as a
kind of document on papyrus or on a wall but none of them as old as this."
Jones and StašoForenbaher, a researcher with the
Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb, reported the discovery in the
most recent edition of the
Journal
for the History of Astronomy.
A 'King Tut experience'
In 1999, the team was digging near the entrance of the Croatian cave, a site
well known to archaeologists and people at the nearby hamlet of Nakovana who
simply called it "Spila," which means "the cave," Forenbaher told
LiveScience.
But what nobody knew at the time was that the cave
had a section that had been sealed off more than 2,000 years ago. Forenbaher's
girlfriend (now his wife) burrowed through the debris, discovering a wide low
passageway that continued in the dark for nearly 33 feet (10 meters). Forenbaher
described going through the passageway as "the unique King
Tut experience, coming to a place where nobody has been for a couple of
thousand years."
Stepping into the cavern "there was a very thin limestone crust on the
surface that was cracking under your feet when you went in, which meant that
nobody walked there in a very, very, long time," Forenbaher said.
The team would later determine that it had been sealed off in the first
century B.C., possibly in response to a military campaign waged against the
local people by the Romans.
When the archaeologists investigated they found the phallic-shaped
stalagmite, numerous drinking vessels that had been deposited over hundreds of
years, and something else. "In the course of that excavation these very tiny
bits and pieces of ivory came up," said Forenbaher, "we didn't even realize what
we had at the time."
The team went to work. "What followed was years of putting them together,
finding more bits and pieces, and figuring out what they were," Forenbaher said.
In the end they found themselves staring at the remains of the oldest-known
astrologer's board.
How did the board wind up in the cave?
Archaeologists are not certain how the board came to the cave or where it was
originally made. Astrology originated in Babylon far back in antiquity, with the
Babylonians developing their own form of horoscopes around 2,400 years ago.
Then around 2,100 years ago, astrology
spread to the eastern Mediterranean, becoming popular in Egypt, which at the
time was under the control of a dynasty of Greek kings.
"It gets modified very much into what we think of as the Greek style of
astrology, which is essentially the modern style of astrology," Jones said. "The
Greek style is the foundation of astrology that goes through the Middle Ages and
into modern Europe, modern India (and) so on."
Radiocarbon dating shows that the ivory used to create the zodiac images
dates back around 2,200 years ago, shortly before the appearance of this new
form of astrology.
Researchers are not certain where the board was made although Egypt is a
possibility. The ivory itself likely came from an elephant that was killed or
otherwise died around that time, they suspect. Being a valuable item, the ivory
would have been stored for several decades, or even a century, before it was
used to construct the zodiac. These signs would then have been attached to a
flat (possibly wooden) surface to create the board, which may have included
other elements that didn't survive.
At some point it may have been put on a ship heading
through the
Adriatic Sea, an important route for commerce that the cave overlooks. The
people who lived in Croatia at the time were called Illyrians. Although ancient
writers tended to have a low opinion of them, archaeological evidence suggests
that they interacted with nearby Greek colonies and were very much a part of the
Mediterranean world.
It's possible that an astrologer from one of the Greek colonies came to the
cave to give a prediction. A consultation held in the flickering light of the
cavern would have been a powerful experience, although perhaps not very
convenient for the astrologer.
"It doesn't sound like a very practical place for
doing the homework for the horoscope like calculating planetary positions,"
Jones said.
Another possibility is that the Illyrians traded for or stole the astrology
board from someone, not fully understanding what it was used for. The board,
along with the drinking vessels, would then have been placed as an offering to a
deity worshiped in the cave whose identity is unknown.
"There is definitely a possibility that this
astrologer's board showed up as an offering together with other special things
that were either bought or plundered from a passing ship," Forenbaher said. He
pointed out that the drinking vessels found in the cave were carefully chosen.
They were foreign-made, and only a few examples of cruder amphora
storage vessels were found with them.
"It almost seems that somebody was bringing out wine there, pouring it and
then tossing the amphora away because they [the amphora] were not good enough
for the gods, they were not good enough to be deposited in the sanctuary,"
Forenbaher said.
The phallic-shaped
stalagmite, which may have grown on the spot naturally, appears to have been
a center for these offerings and for rituals performed in the cavern. Forenbaher
cautioned that all stalagmites look phallic to some degree and it's difficult to
determine what meaning it had to the people in the cave. "It certainly meant
something important," he said.
"This is a place where things that were valued
locally, were deposited to some kind of supernatural
power, to some transcendental entity or whatever [it was]."
