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Books by John Steele

This volume of collected essays, the first of its kind in any language, investigates the Astronom... more This volume of collected essays, the first of its kind in any language, investigates the Astronomical Diaries from ancient Babylon, a collection of almost 1000 clay tablets which, over a period of some five hundred years (6th century to 1st century BCE), record observations of selected astronomical phenomena as well as the economy and history of Mesopotamia and surrounding regions. The volume asks who the scholars were, what motivated them to ‘keep watch in Babylon’ and how their approach changed in the course of the collection’s long history. Contributors come from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including Assyriology, Classics, ancient history, the history of science and the history of religion.

"Clock time", with all its benets and anxieties, is often viewed as a "modern" phenomenon, but an... more "Clock time", with all its benets and anxieties, is often viewed as a "modern" phenomenon, but ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures also had tools for marking and measuring time within the day and wrestled with challenges of daily time management. This book brings together for the rst time perspectives on the interplay between short-term timekeeping technologies and their social contexts in ancient Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and Rome. Its contributions denaturalize modern-day concepts of clocks, hours, and temporal frameworks; describe some of the timekeeping solutions used in antiquity; and illuminate the diverse factors that afected how individuals and communities structured their time.

This volume explores how scholars wrote, preserved, circulated, and read knowledge in ancient Mes... more This volume explores how scholars wrote, preserved, circulated, and read knowledge in ancient Mesopotamia. It offers an exercise in micro-history that provides a case study for attempting to understand the relationship between scholars and scholarship during this time of great innovation.

The papers in this collection focus on tablets written in the city of Uruk in southern Babylonia. These archives come from two different scholarly contexts. One is a private residence inhabited during successive phases by two families of priests who were experts in ritual and medicine. The other is the most important temple in Uruk during the late Achemenid and Hellenistic periods. The contributors undertake detailed studies of this material to explore the scholarly practices of individuals, the connection between different scholarly genres, and the exchange of knowledge between scholars in the city and scholars in other parts of Babylonia and the Greek world.

In addition, this collection examines the archives in which the texts were found and the scribes who owned or wrote them. It also considers the interconnections between different genres of knowledge and the range of activities of individual scribes. In doing so, it answers questions of interest not only for the study of Babylonian scholarship but also for the study of ancient Mesopotamian textual culture more generally, and for the study of traditions of written knowledge in the ancient world.

Philadelphia: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 107/2 (2017) , 2018

Berlin Studies of the Ancient World 44, 2017

This open-access volume can be downloaded for free at http://dx.doi.org/10.17171/3-44

This book explores facets of Otto Neugebauer's career, his impact on the history and practice of ... more This book explores facets of Otto Neugebauer's career, his impact on the history and practice of mathematics, and the ways in which his legacy has been preserved or transformed in recent decades, looking ahead to the directions in which the study of the history of science will head in the twenty-first century. Neugebauer, more than any other scholar of recent times, shaped the way we perceive premodern science. Through his scholarship and influence on students and collaborators, he inculcated both an approach to historical research on ancient and medieval mathematics and astronomy through precise mathematical and philological study of texts, and a vision of these sciences as systems of knowledge and method that spread outward from the ancient Near Eastern civilizations, crossing cultural boundaries and circulating over a tremendous geographical expanse of the Old World from the Atlantic to India.

Papers by John Steele

Studies in the Ancient Exact Sciences in Honor of Lis Brack-Bernsen , 2018

The Scaffolding of Our Thoughts: Essays on Assyriology and the History of Science in Honor of Francesca Rochberg , 2018

The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 1: Antiquity , 2018

Philadelphia: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 107/2 (2017) , 2018

Berlin Studies of the Ancient World 44, 2017

This open-access volume can be downloaded for free at http://dx.doi.org/10.17171/3-44

Studies in the Ancient Exact Sciences in Honor of Lis Brack-Bernsen , 2018

The Scaffolding of Our Thoughts: Essays on Assyriology and the History of Science in Honor of Francesca Rochberg , 2018

The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 1: Antiquity , 2018

Scholars and Scholarship in Late Babylonian Uruk , 2019

Scholars and Scholarship in Late Babylonian Uruk, 2019

Journal for the History of Astronomy, 2019

Keeping Watch in Babylon, 2019

From the early ninth century until about eight centuries later, the Middle East witnessed a serie... more From the early ninth century until about eight centuries later, the Middle East witnessed a series of both simple and systematic astronomical observations for the purpose of testing contemporary astronomical tables and deriving the fundamental solar, lunar, and planetary parameters. Of them, the extensive observations of lunar eclipses available before 1000 AD for testing the ephemeredes computed from the astronomical tables are in a relatively sharp contrast to the twelve lunar observations that are pertained to the four extant accounts of the measurements of the basic parameters of Ptolemaic lunar model. The last of them are Taqī al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Ma‘rūf’s (1526–1585) trio of lunar eclipses observed from Istanbul, Cairo, and Thessalonica in 1576–1577 and documented in chapter 2 of book 5 of his famous work, Sidrat muntaha al-afkar fī malakūt al-falak al-dawwār (The Lotus Tree in the Seventh Heaven of Reflection). In this article, we provide a detailed analysis of the accuracy of his solar (1577–1579) and lunar observations.

Journal of Cuneiform Studies 67 (2015), 187–215

in D. Bawanypeck and A. Imhausen (eds.), Traditions of Written Knowledge in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, Alter Orient und Altes Testament 403 (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2014), 123–151

Archive for History of Exact Sciences 69 (2015), 343–362

in W. Orchiston, D. Green, and R. Strom (eds.), New Insights from Recent Studies in Historical Astronomy: Following in the Footsteps of F. Richard Stephenson (New York: Springer, 2015), 47–51

Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 16 (2013), 250-260

Mesopotamia and China have long traditions of astronomy and celestial divination, and share some ... more Mesopotamia and China have long traditions of astronomy and celestial divination, and share some similarities in their approach to these subjects. Some scholars have therefore argued for the transmission of certain aspects of Mesopotamian astronomy to China. In this paper, I compare four aspects of ancient astronomy in these cultures in order to assess whether there is any evidence for transmission. I conclude that the similarities between Chinese and Mesopotamian astronomy are only superficial and there is no evidence for the transmission of Mesopotamian astronomy to China.

in J. Haubold, G. B. Lanfranchi, R. Rollinger and J. M. Steele (eds.), The World of Berossos (Harrassowitz, 2013), 99-113.

NABU 2012/3 (2012), no. 54, 71–72

Janos EVERLING, enkidu@t-online.hu, BUDAPEST, HUNGARY 54) Remarks on the sources for the lunar ... more Janos EVERLING, <enkidu@t-online.hu>, BUDAPEST, HUNGARY 54) Remarks on the sources for the lunar latitude section of Atypical Astronomical Cuneiform Text E -The atypical astronomical cuneiform text BM 41004, known as "Atypical Text E", contains four sections: Section 1 (Obv. 1-22) which presents a scheme for calculating lunar latitude, Section 2 (Obv. 23-26) which concerns planetary conjunctions, Section 3 (Rev. 1-17) which presents planetary periods, and Section 4 (Rev. 18-23) which deals with lunar motion, eclipses and latitude. In their edition of the text, 1 Neugebauer and Sachs noted three duplicates to Section 1: LBAT 1502 Rev. IIʹ′ 10ʹ′-11ʹ′ duplicating Atypical Text E Obv. 1-3, LBAT 1501 Rev. IIʹ′ 1ʹ′-6ʹ′ duplicating Atypical To these examples I add BM 36874 (= 80-6-17, 614), 2 a small fragment measuring about 5½ cm by 5 cm from the left edge of a tablet, which duplicates part of Atypical Text E Obv. 4-6.

Brill, Intersections 80, 2022

The Allure of the Ancient investigates how the ancient Middle East was imagined and appropriated ... more The Allure of the Ancient investigates how the ancient Middle East was imagined and appropriated for artistic, scholarly, and political purposes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Bringing together scholars of the ancient and early modern worlds, the volume approaches reception history from an interdisciplinary perspective, asking how early modern artists and scholars interpreted ancient Middle Eastern civilizations—such as Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia—and how their interpretations were shaped by early modern contexts and concerns.
The volume’s chapters cross disciplinary boundaries in their explorations of art, philosophy, science, and literature, as well as geographical boundaries, spanning from Europe to the Caribbean to Latin America.
Contributors include Elisa Boeri, Mark Darlow, Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, Florian Ebeling, Margaret Geoga, Diane Greco Josefowicz, Andrea L. Middleton, Julia Prest, Felipe Rojas Silva, Maryam Sanjabi, Michael Seymour, John Steele, and Daniel Stolzenberg.