PLANISPHERE

The year is 650 B.C. The place, Nineveh (modern day Mosul, Iraq), the capital city of the great Neo-Assyrian Empire. An astronomer stands under the starry night sky, clay tablet in one hand, wedge in the other. He is working under the regency of King Ashurbanipal, a special man that will go down in history as a truly great one. The courts of Assyria, as with Babylonia, are occupied by priests and scribes who are versed in medicine, magic, astronomy, divination, literature, and other such areas of knowledge; our astronomer is one such man. He begins to record what he sees in the night sky.

King Ashurbanipal mastered this knowledge himself and was quite the academic. So much so, he assembled one of the world’s greatest libraries. The scribes were commissioned to collect texts from all over the empire and the library held over 30,000 clay tablets, among them, the planisphere above (click to enlarge). 14.1cm in diameter and 3.2cm thick, it shows how the night sky of Nineveh looked on January 3-4, 650 B.C. On it are depicted various stars and constellations, including those today known as Gemini (top rectangular shape), Pleiades, and Pegasus (the two triangles on the bottom right). Think about that. The same sky you see at night (unless you’re in London), is in many ways the unchanged sky that astronomer looked at when he made this record. This got me thinking about continuity when it comes to ourselves…

Almost like a polaroid more than 2,500 years old, this tablet places us back there in Nineveh, and our night sky is the one thing that is virtually unchanged in all this time. Do we have such things in our lives that are constants, acting as connections between our past and present, between who we were and who we are today? Maybe you still live in the town in which you were born, maybe even the same house, or maybe listen to music you did as a child. Maybe you have family heirlooms or know stories of your ancestors that you carry with you. Much to my surprise I recently discovered one of my grandfathers was a dancer in his youth, particularly enjoying the waltz and tango. In that moment there was a bridge between us, my love of dance and his (tango in particular!) provided a sense of continuity across continents, culture, time, and distance; a continued sense of self beyond the scope of ‘me’. The deeper question is, of course, what provides continuity of self? What is it about you that is the same in your 5-year old, 15-year old and 50-year old self? Something to think about. These days when so many of us are living apart from our original familial and cultural contexts, from our night skies, it might be worth contemplating these links again, and perhaps finding in them a new appreciation. Who knows, maybe we will build our own libraries like Ashurbanipal to house our personal treasures.  

(c) Belinda É. Samari

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