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]
Jones and StaĊĦoForenbaher, 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.
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."
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.
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 doesn't sound like a very practical place for
doing the homework for the horoscope like calculating planetary positions,"
Jones said.
"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.
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]."
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