This story was excerpted and adapted from the author’s recent book, A Scheme of Heaven: The History of Astrology and the Search for our Destiny in Data. Copyright (c) 2020 by Alexander Boxer. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. The location was perfect for a new capital city. There were, of course, the standard prophecies that a great metropolis was destined to arise there. Even more persuasive, perhaps, were the reports that of all the districts along the Tigris River, the…
