41. Ammizaduga times

The Venus Tablet of Ammizaduga is a curious Babylonian record tentatively dated to the 2nd millennium BC. The text registers many observations of Venus over a period of decades, which normally would suffice to date the tablet astronomically. However, never in historical times has there been an orbit of Venus that fits the recorded data.

The preserved copies of the tablet are not sports from a single cache of unknown provenance. The Venus Tablet belongs to the canonical series Enuma Anu Enlil, which was still being copied centuries later in Hellenistic times.