Sky and Telescope - May 2016 - 25

constellations may be older still: literally prehistoric.
In an earlier issue, I described the Sumero-Babylonian prototypes of the Greek "water" constellations
that ﬁ ll our southern sky in autumn (S&T: March 2015,
p. 36). Now let's look to the northern side of the sky.
While the ultimate origins of the "water" constellations
are lost in the prehistory of far-southern Mesopotamia
(in particular the city ruined of Eridu), the birth dates
of some of our northern constellations can be estimated
more accurately.
One of them, for instance, had to follow the invention
of the wheel.

Wagon of the North

THE DIPPER STARTS HERE Enlil, the god of the northern constellations, rides his celestial Wagon (Margidda, our Big Dipper), pulled by
a celestial griﬃn, probably Draco the Dragon. This is a drawing of the
impression from a cylinder seal of the Akkadian Period around 2300 BC.

W. H. WARD, THE SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA (CARNEGIE INSTITUTE, 1910)

The most conspicuous star pattern in the northern heavens is the Big Dipper, which marks the hindquarters
and surrealistically long tail of the classical Great Bear.
Originally, however, the Big Dipper itself seems to have
been the entire Bear, because in both the Iliad and the
Odyssey (approximately 8th century BC), Homer says the
Bear is also called the Wagon (in Greek, Hamaxa) - a
shape that's suggested by just the Dipper itself.
The Greek celestial Wagon is a direct borrowing from
ancient Mesopotamia, where it was called Margidda, the
"Long [i.e., four-wheeled] Wagon." But the word margidda is Sumerian, implying that the Dipper stars took
this identity before 2000 BC, when Sumerian ceased to
be a living language. This is conﬁrmed by its appearance
in Sumerian star-name lists written around 2000 BC and
by its mention in an old Sumerian myth called (by modern scholars) "Enki and the World Order," which seems
to have been composed around 2500 BC.
The Mesopotamians declared that the Wagon was circumpolar, but in a way that at ﬁrst seems unrealistically
exaggerated. A late (1st millennium BC) astrological

text calls it the "Axle of the Sky," and another states that
it "stands" the entire year. Were the skywatchers of the
time really so unobservant? Or does putting the celestial
pole in the middle of the scene correctly describe a larger
tableau? Indeed it does, as we shall see.
Babylonian and Assyrian astronomical texts of the
last two millennia BC associate the northern heavens
with the air- and weather-god Enlil, an older Sumerian
deity. This suggests a special relationship between
Enlil and the prominent celestial Wagon. And indeed,
cylinder-seal designs from as far back as the mid-3rd
millennium BC show Enlil standing in his wagon. The
wagon has a long, arched draft-pole in front, corresponding to the Dipper's handle. The drawing below is from a
cylinder seal of the Akkadian Period, around 2300 BC.
It shows Enlil, whip in hand, in his Wagon. It's being
pulled by a winged lion-griﬃn, its head down and its
gaping jaws spewing ﬂame or venom. Enlil's consort
Ninlil, the "goddess of the wind" with thunderbolts in
each hand, stands on the creature's back.
Enlil's Lion-Griﬃ n carried into Greek astronomy
as the constellation Draco the Dragon, which stands
in front of the Dipper/Wagon. Today the Wagon seems
to precede the Dragon around the celestial pole as the
sky turns, but during the 3rd millennium BC the north
celestial pole was near Alpha Draconis (Thuban), so the
Wagon and most of the Dragon pivoted closely around
the pole opposite each other. The arrangement is seen
on the next page, with the dots connected as they appear
on Sky & Telescope's star charts. The complete scene

Sk yandTelescope.com May 2016

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Sky and Telescope - May 2016

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