The GreekgeographerStrabo of Amaseia, in Geography 16.1–.6, writes: "In Babylon a settlement is set apart for the local philosophers, the Chaldaeans, as they are called, who are concerned mostly with astronomy; but some of these, who are not approved of by the others, profess to be writers of horoscopes. There are also several tribes of the Chaldaean astronomers. For example, some are called Orcheni , others Borsippeni , and several others by different names, as though divided into different sects which hold to various dogmas about the same subjects. And the mathematicians make mention of some of these men; as, for example, Kidenas, Nabourianos and Soudines".
The following is an excerpt of a century of scholarship discussed in the sources referenced below. The meaning of tersitu is not known definitively. Already Franz Xaver Kugler proposed that tersitu can be interpreted as "table" here; in another context it seems to mean something like "tool", but in yet anotherthe word refers to a blue enamel paste. P. Schnabel, in a series of papers, interpreted the phrase as an assignment of authorship. Based on this, he argued that Naburimannu developed the Babylonian System A of calculating solar system ephemerides, and that Kidinnu later developed Babylonian System B. Otto E. Neugebauer has remained reserved to this conclusion and disputed Schnabel's further inferences about Naburimannu's life and work. The mathematician B.L. van der Waerden later concluded that System A was developed during the reign of Darius I. System A, which uses step functions, appears to be somewhat more primitive than System B, which uses zigzaglinear functions, although System A is more consistent than System B. While it thus appears that System A preceded System B, both systems remained in use at least until the 1st century BC. The earliest preserved System A clay tablets calculate an ephemeris for the planetMercury from 424–401 BC. The oldest preserved lunar tablets date from 306 BC in the Hellenistic period. If Naburimannu was the originator of System A, then we can on that basis place him in Babylonia sometime between the Persian and Macedonian conquests.
