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R: Pioneer Mesopotamian Constellation Studies
38: Ernst Weidner's Handbuch der babylonischen Astronomie
The assyriologist Ernst Weidner (1891-1976). He began publishing books and articles on Babylonian astronomy whilst still in his teens. He was a student of the assyriologist Felix Peiser. As a young assyriologist Ernst Weidner was strongly influenced Felix Peiser who was editor of the journal Orientalistische Literaturzeitung and used it as a platform for his Panbabylonist views. The very young Weidner was also a convinced Panbabylonist and an active supporter of the Panbabylonist ideas of Hugo Winckler and Alfred Jeremias. In 1923 he began his own periodical Archiv für Keilschriftforschung. With the issue of Volume 3 in 1926 the name of the periodical was changed to Archive für Orientforschung. (The periodical was published direct by Ernst Weidner as the editor.) Weidner remained its editor until his death. Both Ernst Weidner and Franz Kugler, the trenchant scholarly critic of Panbabylonism and the leading expert on Babylonian astronomy, were mutually combative and when Kugler died Weidner made only a brief mention of such in his periodical. Unlike Peiser's approach as editor of Orientalistische Literaturzeitung Weidner did not make Archive für Orientforschung a platform for Panbabylonist views. The journal published scholarly papers encompassing a wide outlook. In his periodical Weidner published, in the 1940s and 1950s, a series of valuable papers on the first 50 tablets comprising the omen series Enuma Anu Enlil.
Weidner's early announced plan to publish a comprehensive 3-volume study of Babylonian astronomy titled Handbuch der babylonischen Astronomie was abandoned after publication of Volume 1 in 1915. It was a study of Babylonian constellations and star names. Regrettably, it was published without pages 147-180 which had been printed for it. It is possible that the contents of these pages later appeared in journal articles. The book was reprinted 1976 but is now thoroughly dated and unreliable. The usefulness of Weidner's early publications on Babylonian uranography were limited by his trenchant Panbabylonist views and his readiness to assign dates for constellation and star list material to the third and fourth millennium BCE.
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