From the reviews: "This monumental work will henceforth be the standard interpretation of ancient mathematical astronomy. It is easy to point out its many virtues: comprehensiveness and common sense are two of the most important. Neugebauer has studied profoundly every relevant text in Akkadian, Egyptian, Greek, and Latin, no matter how fragmentary; [...] With the combination of mathematical rigor and a sober sense of the true nature of the evidence, he has penetrated the astronomical and the historical significance of his material. [...] His work has been and will remain the most admired model for those working with mathematical and astronomical texts. D. Pingree in Bibliotheca Orientalis, 1977 "... a work that is a landmark, not only for the history of science, but for the history of scholarship. HAMA [History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy] places the history of ancient Astronomy on a entirely new foundation. We shall not soon see its equal. N.M. Swerdlow in Historia Mathematica, 1979

From the reviews: "This monumental work will henceforth be the standard interpretation of ancient mathematical astronomy. It is easy to point out its many virtues: comprehensiveness and common sense are two of the most important. Neugebauer has studied profoundly every relevant text in Akkadian, Egyptian, Greek, and Latin, no matter how fragmentary; [...] With the combination of mathematical rigor and a sober sense of the true nature of the evidence, he has penetrated the astronomical and the historical significance of his material. [...] His work has been and will remain the most admired model for those working with mathematical and astronomical texts. D. Pingree in Bibliotheca Orientalis, 1977 "... a work that is a landmark, not only for the history of science, but for the history of scholarship. HAMA [History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy] places the history of ancient Astronomy on a entirely new foundation. We shall not soon see its equal. N.M. Swerdlow in Historia Mathematica, 1979

From the reviews: "This monumental work will henceforth be the standard interpretation of ancient mathematical astronomy. It is easy to point out its many virtues: comprehensiveness and common sense are two of the most important. Neugebauer has studied profoundly every relevant text in Akkadian, Egyptian, Greek, and Latin, no matter how fragmentary; [...] With the combination of mathematical rigor and a sober sense of the true nature of the evidence, he has penetrated the astronomical and the historical significance of his material. [...] His work has been and will remain the most admired model for those working with mathematical and astronomical texts. D. Pingree in Bibliotheca Orientalis, 1977 "... a work that is a landmark, not only for the history of science, but for the history of scholarship. HAMA [History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy] places the history of ancient Astronomy on a entirely new foundation. We shall not soon see its equal. N.M. Swerdlow in Historia Mathematica, 1979

The collection of papers assembled here on a variety of topics in ancient and medieval astronomy was originally suggested by Noel Swerdlow of the University of Chicago. He was also instrumental in making a selection* which would, in general, be on the same level as my book The Exact Sciences in Antiquity. It may also provide a general background for my more technical History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy and for my edition of Astronomi cal Cuneiform Texts. Several of these republished articles were written because I wanted to put to rest well-entrenched historical myths which could not withstand close scrutiny of the sources. Examples are the supposed astronomical origin of the Egyptian calendar (see [9]), the discovery of precession by the Babylonians [16], and the "simplification" of the Ptolemaic system in Copernicus' De Revolutionibus [40]. In all of my work I have striven to present as accurately as I could what the original sources reveal (which is often very different from the received view). Thus, in [32] discussion of the technical terminology illuminates the meaning of an ancient passage which has been frequently misused to support modern theories about ancient heliocentrism; in [33] an almost isolated instance reveals how Greek world-maps really looked; and in [43] the Alexandrian Easter computus, held in awe by many historians, is shown from Ethiopic sources to be based on very simple procedures.

Birth of astronomy -- Celestial sphere -- Some applications of spherics -- Calendars and time reckoning -- Solar theory -- Fixed stars -- Planetary theory -- Frequently used tables -- Appendix : patterns for models.