Letters from Priests to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, Steven W. Cole and Peter Machinist, Helsinki University Press 1998, State Archives of Assyria Vol. XIII, 221 pp.

While the correspondence collected and edited by Steven Cole and Peter Machinist concerns the management of religious matters in Mesopotamia under the Assyrian emperors, inasmuch as religious rituals frequently involved the planetary deities, this material forms essential background to the study of Mesopotamian astronomy and astrology. For example, one instruction concerns Nabû (Mercury) and Ishtar (Venus): ‘There is [a ritual]. In [the month of…], on the 16^th day, in the even[ing, Ištar] will g[o] through the great gate [and] descend into the cana[l…]. There is a ritual [he will perform]. She will then come up from the canal, go under the gate of the temple of Nabû, and take a seat in the shrine’s gate’ (135, p 104).