Babylonian tablets reveal kings installed royal doubles during eclipses, then executed them

Babylonian demon carvings from R.C. Thompson's 1903 translation of ancient incantations against evil spirits. Credit: Public Domain Image Archive

The British Museum has cracked a 4,000-year-old murder plot: Babylonian kings routinely sacrificed royal stand-ins to avoid eclipse prophecies.

From the museum's collection of 130,000 Mesopotamian clay tablets, four texts tell the story. The tablets, written in Old Babylonian between 1900-1600 BCE, contain humanity's earliest known eclipse omens — 61 terrifying predictions. According to Archaeology Magazine, these predictions weren't mere superstition but state doctrine.