213
NASA is no different from the nameless scribes of Babylon: all have recourse to the
mapping facility offered by the constellations, however arbitrary and culturallysituated they are.
Before the Greek astronomers from Hipparchos to Ptolemy, between the second
century BCE and the second century CE, developed a coordinate system for placing
stars on the celestial globe (Dilke, 1987), these constellations provided the usual
means of situating anything in the night sky. In the third century BCE Aratos wrote
a poem which described the stars in a pre-coordinate fashion. It is clear from him
that the imaginary mythological or zoological figures, which formed the constellations, also provided rough-and-ready means of navigating one’s way across the sky:
Let the left shoulder of Andromeda be a sign for the northern Fish, for it is very near to it.
Both of her feet indicate her bridegroom, Perseus, as they move always on his shoulders. He
is taller than others in the north. His right hand is stretched out towards the seat of his
mother-in-law’s throne, and as if pursuing on foot he lengthens his stride, running in the
world of his father Zeus. Near his left knee altogether are the Pleiades. Not much space at
all holds them all, and they are faint to observe.
(Aratos, Phaenomena 246–256; trans. Hannah)
But mapping is one thing, and a complex thing at that (see further on this example
Hannah, 2020a). Knowing why people map is another. Why did the Babylonians
and Greeks—since this is the tradition we still work in—populate the sky with these
particular figures?
The earliest records suggest the night-sky was mapped initially for practical purposes, such as navigation (even in the Egyptian afterlife) or the timing of agricultural activities (e.g. Hesiod, Works and Days). This process is made complicated
because of the apparent movement of some of the celestial bodies. The band of sky
which the sun itself appears to move across in the course of a year encompasses
stars which were gradually parcelled out from around 3000 BCE by the
Mesopotamian peoples into what was eventually called the zodiac by the Greeks,
because of the animate forms into which they configured the stars (a bull, a lion, a
scorpion, etc.). This zodiacal band of stars was regarded as special because it was
seen to be populated not only by the light-giving sun and moon but also by those
stars which were not fixed in place relative to others, but which moved or wandered—the planets, as the Greeks called them, from their word for ‘wanderers’.
These special stars, or planets, were deified by these societies, and regarded as having power over human events and eventually, under the Babylonians, Egyptians and
Greeks, over individual human lives (Barton, 1994; Jones, 1999; Neugebauer & Van
Hoesen, 1959; Rochberg, 1998, 2004, 2010).
1
Having set aside the wandering stars, which included the sun and moon, and
other occasionally periodic oddities like comets and meteors, the ancients were left
with a vast number of dots in the sky, which remained in the same position relative
to one another. Of course, these so-called ‘fixed’ stars have their own proper motion,
1 Note, however, the caveat expressed by Rochberg (1998): 1–3 regarding the dissimilarities
between Babylonian and Greco-Egyptian ‘horoscopes’, with the former deserving to be classified
more as ‘astronomical’ than ‘astrological’ in light of the absence of prognostications.
The Stars in Ancient Greece
NASA is no different from the nameless scribes of Babylon: all have recourse to the
mapping facility offered by the constellations, however arbitrary and culturallysituated they are.
Before the Greek astronomers from Hipparchos to Ptolemy, between the second
century BCE and the second century CE, developed a coordinate system for placing
stars on the celestial globe (Dilke, 1987), these constellations provided the usual
means of situating anything in the night sky. In the third century BCE Aratos wrote
a poem which described the stars in a pre-coordinate fashion. It is clear from him
that the imaginary mythological or zoological figures, which formed the constellations, also provided rough-and-ready means of navigating one’s way across the sky:
Let the left shoulder of Andromeda be a sign for the northern Fish, for it is very near to it.
Both of her feet indicate her bridegroom, Perseus, as they move always on his shoulders. He
is taller than others in the north. His right hand is stretched out towards the seat of his
mother-in-law’s throne, and as if pursuing on foot he lengthens his stride, running in the
world of his father Zeus. Near his left knee altogether are the Pleiades. Not much space at
all holds them all, and they are faint to observe.
(Aratos, Phaenomena 246–256; trans. Hannah)
But mapping is one thing, and a complex thing at that (see further on this example
Hannah, 2020a). Knowing why people map is another. Why did the Babylonians
and Greeks—since this is the tradition we still work in—populate the sky with these
particular figures?
The earliest records suggest the night-sky was mapped initially for practical purposes, such as navigation (even in the Egyptian afterlife) or the timing of agricultural activities (e.g. Hesiod, Works and Days). This process is made complicated
because of the apparent movement of some of the celestial bodies. The band of sky
which the sun itself appears to move across in the course of a year encompasses
stars which were gradually parcelled out from around 3000 BCE by the
Mesopotamian peoples into what was eventually called the zodiac by the Greeks,
because of the animate forms into which they configured the stars (a bull, a lion, a
scorpion, etc.). This zodiacal band of stars was regarded as special because it was
seen to be populated not only by the light-giving sun and moon but also by those
stars which were not fixed in place relative to others, but which moved or wandered—the planets, as the Greeks called them, from their word for ‘wanderers’.
These special stars, or planets, were deified by these societies, and regarded as having power over human events and eventually, under the Babylonians, Egyptians and
Greeks, over individual human lives (Barton, 1994; Jones, 1999; Neugebauer & Van
Hoesen, 1959; Rochberg, 1998, 2004, 2010).
1
Having set aside the wandering stars, which included the sun and moon, and
other occasionally periodic oddities like comets and meteors, the ancients were left
with a vast number of dots in the sky, which remained in the same position relative
to one another. Of course, these so-called ‘fixed’ stars have their own proper motion,
1 Note, however, the caveat expressed by Rochberg (1998): 1–3 regarding the dissimilarities
between Babylonian and Greco-Egyptian ‘horoscopes’, with the former deserving to be classified
more as ‘astronomical’ than ‘astrological’ in light of the absence of prognostications.
The Stars in Ancient Greece