The clay tablets feature text written in cuneiform, an ancient script generally considered to be the oldest known writing system, and represent the oldest known lunar eclipse omens from any part of the world, study author Andrew George told Newsweek.

Researchers finally deciphered a set of 4,000-year-old Babylonian tablets — and the messages aren’t about bright hopes for the future but are nearly all death, doom and gloom.

For the Ancient Babylonians, astrological divination was a tool of serious statecraft. The mercurial gods were believed to place coded signs in the heavens above that foretold the fate of kings, their families, and the lands they ruled over.