Count Babylonian

An illuminating, millennia-spanning history of the impact mathematics has had on the world, and the fascinating people who have mastered its inherent power, from Babylonian tax officials to the Apollo astronauts to the eccentric professor who invented the infrastructure of the online world

How could ancient astronomers accurately calculate celestial phenomena on the scale of several centuries? The Table of Kings is a simple list of rulers with the duration of their reigns, which allowed Ptolemy, an Alexandrian astronomer, to have a count of the years that had passed since the Babylonian king Nabonassar (8th century BC). Initially used for astronomy, this table captivated historians and chronology specialists from Antiquity.