Abstract

During the first millennium BCE, Babylonian Astral science experienced several transformations, each accompanied by the emergence of new textual genres. A novel feature of these texts is that different aspects of astral science such as observation, prediction and procedural knowledge were increasingly dealt with in separate texts. This specialization led to the composition of procedure Textprocedure texts, especially in the field of mathematical astronomy. The aim of this contribution is to explore some aspects of specialization and textual segmentation in Babylonian astral science, with a focus on the Procedure texts of mathematical astronomy.