This book, a revised version of the author's 1994 PhD thesis written at the University of Birmingham under the supervision of Wilfred G. Lambert, provides a comprehensive treatment of a learned Late Babylonian calendar treatise from the Hellenistic period. The treatise's goal is to reinterpret rituals performed throughout the cultic year in Babylon (and a few nearby cities) as attempts to protect the city against Elamite and Subarian invasions predicted by astrological omens. Fusing past, present, and future, the treatise draws on the rich literary-historical tradition related to the conquest of Babylon by the Elamite king Kutir-Naḫḫunte in c.1155 bc and the subsequent defeat of the Elamites by Nebuchadnezzar I, and correlates political events with divine battles narrated in religious texts such as the Babylonian Epic of Creation.

The treatise, of which 169 lines are fully or partially preserved, is known from three fragmentary manuscripts, all housed in the “Babylon Collection” of the British Museum. Two of them, A and C, have colophons indicating that they were copied, probably around 170 bc, by members of the Mušēzib family, which played an important role in the stewardship of Babylon's Esagil temple. MS B, whose colophon is lost, may have been copied even later. Portions of MS B have been known since L.W. King published them in his Seven Tablets of Creation from 1902, and partial translations and editions of the treatise were provided by B. Landsberger in 1923 and J. Koch in 2004 and 2006. But Reynolds's book, the first study to take into account all the manuscripts as well as several recently made joins, is infinitely more meticulous than all previous assessments of the text.

The book comprises three parts. An introduction presents the treatise's content, structure, and goals, studies the various themes it covers – ritual, astronomy-astrology, mythology, and sacred topography – investigates the exegetical techniques employed, and provides a painstaking analysis of the three extant manuscripts, their language and orthography, and their scribes. The introduction is followed by an edition of the treatise, given first in composite form and then by means of a manuscript score. An extensive commentary of nearly 200 pages concludes the study, which is supplemented by cuneiform copies (by the author and W.G. Lambert), a bibliography, and various indexes.

The book's greatest strength is the thoroughness with which the author examines the treatise philologically. Rarely has a composition in Akkadian been explored so comprehensively. Reynolds draws on her intimate knowledge of numerous related texts of different genres and situates her research in a vast secondary literature. She produces some fascinating insights, for example into the significance of the erotic rituals somewhat misleadingly known to modern scholars as “Babylonian love lyrics”, or the continuation of a syncretic Babylon-Nippur theology in Late Babylonian times. With a text so fragmentary and at the same time so difficult, one cannot fail to have occasional disagreements with the interpretations the author offers, but by and large, her judgements seem sound. Reynolds's refutation, for example, of J. Koch's suggestion that some of the celestial phenomena mentioned in the treatise can be dated precisely to 299/298 bc is convincing.

A certain weakness of the book is the significant amount of repetition found throughout, and especially in the introduction. Many statements appear several times: the remark on p. 22, for example, about an incantation recited by the mašmaššu-exorcist possibly being an “illustration” (a somewhat unclear claim) is repeated almost verbatim on p. 24. A better organization of the book, and a willingness to present more of the data in tabular format, would have improved the reading experience. And while enormously attentive to detail, the author might have done a little more to situate the treatise in a broader historical-literary context, asking, for example, to what extent it reflects the tenets of a newly emerging Babylonian “priestly literature”, as recently outlined by M. Jursa and C. Debourse in WZKM 107, 2017, 77–98.

The text edition, despite its many merits, has some small deficiencies as well. One is that no photos of the manuscripts are provided – one has to consult the British Museum's online database or earlier articles by Koch for such photographic documentation. Moreover, columns v and vi of MS C, which are inscribed with additional texts – a Ninurta hymn focusing on the composite nature of the god's divine body and a description of a temple ritual related to the “Love lyrics” – are not included in the hand copies of the tablet, and while the temple ritual is at least presented in the form of a transliteration and translation (pp. 216–7), the text of the Ninurta hymn is not given at all. It is true that the author has edited the hymn in previous publications (most recently in “A divine body: new joins in the Sippar Collection”, in H.D. Baker et al. (eds), Your Praise is Sweet: A Memorial Volume for Jeremy Black from Students, Colleagues and Friends (London, 2010), 291–302), but an updated treatment of it in the book would still have been welcome. After all, both Ninurta mythology and the cultic activities related to the “Love lyrics” are important components of the calendar treatise. There is also no index of the names and words found in the treatise.

These criticisms, however, concern inconveniences rather than serious flaws. They should not detract from the fact that Reynolds's study is an impressive achievement, a worthy product of the small but illustrious “Lambert School”. The book displays a philological acumen reminiscent of Andrew George's masterful Babylonian Topographical Texts (Leuven, 1992) and will be a vital resource for anyone interested in the religious, scholarly, and scientific traditions of Late Babylonian Mesopotamia for years to come.