Dodecatemoria

[5][10] Cuneiform tablets from Babylon, possibly originating under the period of the Achaemenid Empire (539–331), describe the system of multiplying by 12 to find the dodecatemorion associated with a degree.

[9][6][11] The Babylonian system was apparently adopted by the Greeks, who frequently attributed astrological knowledge to Chaldeans or Egyptians.

[6] Abraham Ibn Ezra, a Hebrew scholar writing in the twelfth century AD, described two systems.

In one system, attributed to Egyptian scientists and gentiles, a sign of 30° is subdivided into 12 sections of 2.5°, corresponding to a sequence of the seven heavenly bodies, with repetitions.

In this text, body parts are listed alongside degree numbers 2, 5, 7, 10, etc., corresponding to increments of 2.5° rounded down.

[3] The data used for the Babylonian computation of dodecatemoria, inverted and re-sorted, result in a scheme known as Kalendertexte (or Calendar Text), also used by Mesopotamian astrologers in the first millennium BC.

[5][10] When sorted by day—as the data apparently are on tablets from Babylon, Borsippa, and Uruk c. 5th–4th centuries BC—the result describes a progression of 277° per day.