Wayne Horowitz on the Nature of the Heavens in Ancient Mesopotamian Thought

Although the clear sky seems to us to be shaped like a dome, rather than a flat circle, there is no direct evidence that ancient Mesopotamians thought the visible heavens to be a dome. Akkadian kippatu are always flat, circular objects such as geometric circles or hoops, rather than three dimensional domes. Nonetheless, evidence for dome-shaped, or curved, heavens may be found in the ziqpu-star text BM 38693+, the blessing formula STT 340:12, and AO 6478, where the Path of Enlil is 364° long. All three imply that the Path of Enlil, at least, is a curved band that encircles the earth's surface (see p. 258). However, this does not prove that the surface of heaven is curved, since stars need not have necessarily traveled along the surface of the sky. 30 There is also no direct evidence for the shape of the high unseen heavens, although it is likely that these levels too were thought to be circles. A cryptic reference to the possible circular shape of the Heaven of Anu may be found in a šu.fla where the Heaven of Anu is identified with a nignakku 'censer' (Ebeling Handerhebung 14:16). Censers were flat, round objects. (Wayne Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography [Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1998], 264-65)