Amongst the ruins of ancient Nineveh in Iraq were 30,000 fragments of baked clay, the remnants of thousands of tablets surviving from the library of the Babylonian king Ashurbanipal. The cuneiform writing on them included an original story of the Flood, in the narrative of Gilgamesh – and also a record of appearances of the planet Venus in the sky over 21 years.

The library dates back to the 7th century BC – around the time when the first brochs were being built in Orkney – but the Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa is thought to be a copy of much earlier material going back to around 1700 BC, when the Neolithic in Orkney was drawing to a close.

The exact date of the original observations is not clear. But, as Dave Craig demonstrates, modern (and free) Stellarium software has the power to tackle the challenge by matching up the positions in the tablet with NASA data.

Dave Craig’s paper on Maeshowe’s solstice alignment can be found in the 2023 issue of Orkney Archaeological Review.