Babylonian star catalogues

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Star list with distance information, Uruk (Iraq), 320-150 BC, the list gives each constellation, the number of stars and the distance information to the next constellation in ells.

Babylonian astronomy collated earlier observations and divinations into sets of Babylonian star catalogues, during and after the Kassite rule over Babylonia. These star catalogues, written in cuneiform script, contained lists of constellations, individual stars, and planets. The constellations were probably collected from various other sources. The earliest catalogue, Three Stars Each, mentions stars of Akkad, of Amurru, of Elam and others. Various sources have theorized a Sumerian origin for these Babylonian constellations,[1] but an Elamite origin has also been proposed.[2] A connection to the star symbology of Kassite kudurru border stones has also been claimed, but whether such kudurrus really represented constellations and astronomical information aside from the use of the symbols remains unclear.

Star catalogues after Three Stars Each include the MUL.APIN list named after the first Babylonian constellation MULAPIN, "the Plough", which is the current Triangulum constellation plus Gamma Andromedae. It lists, among others, 17 or 18 constellations in the zodiac. Later catalogues reduce the zodiacal set of constellations to 12, which were borrowed by the Egyptians and the Greeks, still surviving among the modern constellations.

  1. ^ History of the Constellations and Star Names — D.4: Sumerian constellations and star names? Archived 2015-09-07 at the Wayback Machine, by Gary D. Thompson
  2. ^ History of the Constellations and Star Names — D.5: Elamite lion-bull iconography as constellations? Archived 2012-11-14 at the Wayback Machine, by Gary D. Thompson