Ancient tablet has been completely translated and has some terrifying predictions for humanity

An ancient tablet has been completely translated and it has some pretty terrifying predictions for humanity.

And no, I’m not talking about some rogue iPad-like device belonging to Baba Vanga or an old document from the creator of The Simpsons laying out predictions for the future.

But rather some 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablets added to the British Museum’s collection decades ago. Despite being found over 100 years ago in what is now Iraq, the artefacts have only just now been completely translated.

The text is spread across four clay tablets and contains a whopping 61 predictions.

Its authors used the likes of time of night, movement of shadows and the date and duration of eclipses to predict omens.

After decades of having them, the tablets have finally been translated. (The Trustees of the British Museum)

One omen stated that if ‘an eclipse becomes obscured from its centre all at once [and] clear all at once: a king will die, destruction of Elam’.

Centred in what is now Iran, Elam was an area in Mesopotamia.

Another omen on these ancient tablets says if: “An eclipse begins in the south and then clears: downfall of Subartu and Akkad.” These were both regions in Mesopotamia at the time.

Then there’s an omen that if there’s ‘an eclipse in the evening watch’, it signifies ‘pestilence’. That essentially means a fatal epidemic disease, lovely.

Some more not so nice omens include: “In spring a locust swarm will arise and strike the crops/my land’s crops. There will be a dearth of food.”

And the cheery: “As for a land that revolts, the enemy will demolish cities, city walls, my city walls, the walls of our city.”

The tablets are thousands of years old. (The Trustees of the British Museum)

It seems it's not great for royalty either with: “A king who is famous will perish; his son who has not been nominated/appointed to kingship, will seize the kingship/throne and there will be war.

“The land will become depopulated; his cities will turn into a desolation, and his land will diminish.”

Andrew George, an emeritus professor of Babylonian at the University of London, told Live Science: “The origins of some of the omens may have lain in actual experience - observation of portent followed by catastrophe.”

Although, he does reckon it’s most likely these dark omens were determined through a theoretical system linking the characteristics of eclipses to various omens.

There are some positives though, because even if these omens were pretty harrowing, people still believed they could be avoided as George and his team wrote that rituals could be performed to annul them.