About 130 astronomical procedure texts are known from Babylon and Uruk, the two most important Mesopotamian centres of scientific activity in the Late Babylonian period (500 BC - 100 AD). These clay tablets, inscribed with Babylonian cuneiform, contain calculation rules for the preparation of astronomical tables for the moon and planets. This interdisciplinary research project intends to examine the astronomical precedure texts from a philological, astronomical, and epistemological perspective using modern analytical methods. In addition, the 250 or so surviving tabular texts associated with the procedure texts will be re-edited and re-analyzed in order to deepen the technical understanding of Late Babylonian mathematical astronomy.

Late Babylonian astronomical procedure texts and tabular texts are the oldest evidence of mathematical astronomy. Then again, Late Babylonian astronomy forms the last and probably the most remarkable phase of intensive and varied occupation of the Mesoptamian people with celestial phenomena. This is evidenced by an extensive textual corpus, which is conventionally divided into three areas, astrology (omina and horoscopes), observational astronomy (star lists, Saros texts, astronomical diaries, goal year texts, almanacs, etc.), and mathemetical astronomy (procedure texts, synodic tables, and auxiliary tables). About 85 procedure texts, 200 synodic tables, and 40 auxiliary tables have been published to date. In the meantime, the number of unpublished procedure texts and synodic tables has increased to approx. 130 and 210 respectively.

This research project includes six objectives, which are focused on philology (1-3), astronomy (4), and history of science (5-6). First, critical editions and translations of about 45 unpublished procedure texts and about 10 tabular texts will be prepared. The already published texts will be revised philologically. New translation methodologies developed from recent close investigations into ancient Babylonian mathematics will be used to ensure that particular attention is paid to Babylonian terminology.

Second, the procedure texts will be examined terninologically in order to clarify lexicographical issues. In the last twenty years considerable progress has been made in editing the astrological and observational astronomical cuneiform literature, and prospects are good that existing terminological problems can now be resolved.

A comprehensive study of procedure texts as a text corpus does not yet exist. Therefore, third, a typology of procedure texts and their individual procedures will be developed according to content and formal and functional criteria. From a reciprocal analysis of linguistic and astronomical phenomena a multi-layered coverage of the corpus of procedure texts will emerge, which will serve as the basis for further research.

Fourth, the technical understanding of Babylonian astronomy will be deepened. Although the calculation systems in their final stage are largely understood, there are many problematic places in the procedure texts and tabular texts as well as aspects of calculation procedures that will require explanation.

The final two objectives are related to a new level of research into the Mesopotamian knowledge culture, in that methodology and purpose will be expanded by modern approaches from the history of science and humanities. Fifth, scientific theoretical aspects such as mathematization, abstraction, and theory formation will be worked out. The terminological and typological analyses should provide information on how astronomical calculations methodas were mathematically represented in procedure texts and to what extent and in what way these representations contain abstract knowledge. Sixth, astronomical procedure texts and tabular texts will be recorded as the product of a group of professionals and in this context their relationship to other text genres of the Mesopotamian knowledge culture will be determined.

There are close connections between the stated objectives: only after terminology and typology have been clarified can these astronomical, epistemological, and other aspects be examined.