Sky and Telescope - January 2018 - 71

SE A L: W. H. WA RD, THE SE AL CY LINDERS OF WESTER N ASIA (CA R NEGIE INSTIT U TE, 1910); R A M: HE V ELIUS

BULL WITH SEVEN SISTERS Probably carved around 800 BC, this
Neo-Assyrian seal made explicit the connections between agriculture
and the heavens for Mesopotamian cultures. Here, a plowman drives a
single beast to make a furrow. Above the Bull shine the Sun, Moon, and
Pleiades. In front is the Ear of Grain, the Roman Spica.

classical astro-mythographers Hyginus and Manilius relate the
story that Venus and Cupid, when confronted on the banks of
the Euphrates (the very venue of the story suggests a Mesopotamian origin!) by the monster Typhon, escaped by diving into
the river and changing into a pair of ﬁsh, the zodiacal Pisces.

The Origin of the Ram

The Cycle of Animals

Finally, there's the problem of Aries, the Ram, the one constellation of the Graeco-Roman zodiac that doesn't have an
obvious Sumero-Babylonian forerunner. MUL.APIN calls these
stars (probably referring particularly to the asterism of AlphaBeta-Gamma Arietis) lúHun-gá, "Hired Laborer." This may
be taken to mean "Plowman," because the Mesopotamians
ﬁgured a celestial Plow occupying the stars of our Triangulum
plus Gamma Andromedae just to the north of this ﬁgure. This
Plow was pulled by the Bull (Taurus) just to its east to cut the
Furrow of the heavens (the ecliptic), with the Plowman guiding it. That scene is shown on a Neo-Assyrian cylinder seal of
about 800 BC. The seal's design also shows the Pleiades in their
correct position above the Bull's back, and the Ear of Grain -
our Spica - directly in front of the Bull.
But all this doesn't explain why the Greeks had a Ram in
the stretch of the zodiac where the Mesopotamians earlier
had a Plowman. However, MUL.APIN itself provides a possible
explanation: It identiﬁes the celestial Hired Laborer with the
shepherd-god Dumuzi. Accepting this interpretation of the
Hired Laborer as the shepherd-god Dumuzi, the Greek zodiacal
Ram can be read as the Leader of the Flock of Dumuzi.
This identiﬁcation of Dumuzi with the stars of the Plowman isn't as arbitrary as it might seem: Preceding Dumuzi
(lúHun-gá) "In the Path of the Moon" is Anunı¯tum, an epithet
for the fertility goddess Inanna/Ishtar, spouse of Dumuzi, who
therefore occupied the stars of the Northern Fish of Pisces.
Moreover, the association of the stars of the Northern Fish
with Inanna/Ishtar was no accident, because the part of the
zodiac that stands 180° from Virgo is Nin-mah, which, it will
be recalled, was another epithet for Inanna/Ishtar (as other
tables in MUL.APIN show, the Mesopotamians were very alert
to which constellations rose and set opposite each other).
The association of the stars of Pisces with Inanna/Ishtar,
prototype of the Greek Aphrodite and Roman Venus, was
remembered in Graeco-Roman astrology because Pisces was
the hypsomata, "House," of the planet Venus. Moreover, both

So how and when did the constellations of the zodiac come
from Mesopotamia to Greece? The "how" is easier to answer
than the "when." For thousands of years, trade had been
going from southern Mesopotamia up the Tigris and Euphrates rivers north into southeastern Anatolia (modern Turkey)
and west to Syria and the Mediterranean. From Syria, the
trade went south to Egypt and west to the Greek islands.
This trade carried not only goods but also the culture of the
Sumerians and Babylonians. A fragmentary list of Mesopotamian star and constellation names that dates to roughly
1375 BC was found at Tell el-Amarna in central Egypt. But
the Mesopotamian constellations were probably known in
Egypt long before this, because features of Sumerian culture
- particularly in art and architecture - appeared in Egypt
before 3000 BC and presumably the Sumerian constellations
had come with them.
Constellation ﬁgures are easier to follow on their march
from Babylonia to Greece than constellation names because
most of the traders and travellers were not literate. Thus the
constellation ﬁgures can be thought of as tracers of the ﬂow
of civilization in ancient times. For example, the image of the
Mesopotamian Water-Pourer appears in the early 2nd millennium BC in the art of both southeastern Anatolia and Syria.
By the mid-2nd millennium Babylonian star-ﬁgures like the
Water-Pourer, the Goat-Fish, the Serpent-Wrestler, and the
Dragon-Drawn Wagon had become part of general Eastern
Mediterranean culture. Therefore they were part of the fabric
from which the Greek poets of the early 1st millennium BC
wove their myths and epics.
¢ CRAIG CROSSEN is a freelance writer, editor, and traveler
who calls Minnesota home base. He co-authored Sky Vistas
(2004) and has published several articles on the structure of the
Milky Way Galaxy in Sky & Telescope and elsewhere. Presently
he is completing books on the origins of the Classical constellations and on the history of archaeology in Iraq.
sk yandtelescope.com * JA N UA RY 2 018

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/

Sky and Telescope - January 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky and Telescope - January 2018