The Babylonian astronomical diaries comprise a group of cuneiform texts which record natural events in time spans from months to a whole year.
The most important among these texts are astronomically relevant observations as well as meteorological observations which mainly relate to changes of wind or rain. In addition, monthly summaries state market prices of key commodities and particularly serious state events such as wars and famines.
The diaries systematically record these events in canonical form and thus enable us to theoretically evaluate the observations. The period we observed ranges from the 6th century BCE to 60 BCE. This group of texts is the only ancient text corpus comprising systematical daily observations over a long period of time. The texts may rightly be considered to mark the empirical peak of ancient astronomy.
Hunger, Hermann and Abraham Sachs (eds.). Astronomical diaries and related texts from Babylonia. Volume I: Diaries from 652 B.C. to 262 B.C. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1988.
Hunger, Hermann and Abraham Sachs (eds.). Astronomical diaries and related texts from Babylonia. Volume II: Diaries from 261 B.C. to 165 B.C. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1989.
Hunger, Hermann and Abraham Sachs (eds.). Astronomical diaries and related texts from Babylonia. Volume III: Diaries from 164 B.C. to 61 B.C. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1996.