One of the great discoveries of the nineteenth century was a discovery about the past - the existence of a highly sophisticated mathematical astronomy among the ancient Babylonians. Otto Neugebauer tells the story in The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, pp. 103-105 (full references are given below). The discoverers were three Jesuit priests. The first, Johann Nepomuk Strassmaier, an Assyriologist, worked in the British Museum for nearly twenty years, patiently and tirelessly copying into his notebooks the contents of unpublished clay tablets from Babylon. Among these were many with astronomical contents, which Strassmaier was unable to comprehend. He invoked the help...