Sky Cultures · 1 of 7

Before the Greeks

Who gave us the zodiac and the 24-hour day?

The zodiac is Babylonian, the 24-hour day is Egyptian, and both were worked out by people watching this part of the winter sky.

You’ll be able to point to the Babylonian zodiac and the Egyptian hours in the winter sky.

9 steps · about 7 min

Before this: Why the Sky Moves (8 min)

Where and which night

Working out when this is best placed from where you are…

Where

Which night

Date

Time

Kept for this guide only, until you change it here — your map settings, and every other guide, stay as they are.

Print, play outside or present

Present on a big screen

Sources

HYG stellar database v4.2 — star positions, magnitudes and every separation quoted here
Hunger & Pingree, MUL.APIN: An Astronomical Compendium in Cuneiform, AfO Beiheft 24 (1989)
Rogers, "Origins of the ancient constellations: I. The Mesopotamian traditions", JBAA 108, 9 (1998)
Neugebauer & Parker, Egyptian Astronomical Texts, vol. I: The Early Decans (Brown University Press, 1960)
Censorinus, De Die Natali 18 and 21 (238 CE) — the Sothic year and the coincidence of 139 CE
Herodotus, Histories 2.86 — the seventy days of embalming
Taittiriya Samhita 2.3.5 — Soma and Rohini, the station of the Hyades
Leaman & Hamacher, "Aboriginal astronomical traditions from Ooldea, South Australia, Part 1: Nyeeruna and the Orion Story", JAHH 17, 180 (2014) — Kambugudha on the Hyades
Allen, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (SBL, 2005) — Sah, Sopdet and the Imperishable Stars

← GUIDES

Over four thousand years ago, Egyptians saw gods here. Orion was , bound up with Osiris; the star its Belt points to, Sirius, was , Isis. In the Pyramid Texts, carved in royal tombs from about 2350 BCE, the dead king rises to join Sah.

Each spring Sopdet sinks into the dusk glare and hides about seventy days: Osiris dead. Herodotus gives embalming the same seventy days. Then Isis returns at dawn, and with her the flood and the new year.

Sirius's dawn return, from The Star That Brought the Flood

Coffin lids of about 2100 BCE carry star clocks: 36 decans, each hidden 70 days like Sopdet and back at dawn ten days after the one before — 36 × 10 = 360 days, plus five. By night one rose every 40 minutes: count them.

Twelve decans rose on a short summer night, so night had twelve hours. Daylight got ten more, by shadow clocks, and an hour of twilight at each end: twenty-four, stretching with the seasons until Greek astronomers made them equal.

A thousand years on, Babylonian scribes called Orion the True Shepherd of Anu, the sky god, and listed it in MUL.APIN, "the Plough Star" after its first line: a clay handbook of which stars rise together, and when. The oldest dated copy is from 686 BCE.

MUL.APIN lists the seventeen or eighteen figures in the path of the Moon. This V is one, the Bull of Heaven's jaw; in India it is Rohini, at Ooldea Kambugudha. The list opens just west, with the Stars: find them.

By 400 BCE the Sun's and Moon's road was cut into twelve signs of 30°, pinned to the stars: the strokes are three. Virgo was the Furrow; its star Spica, below the horizon now, an ear of grain. Precession has since slid your star sign off them (The Wandering Equinox).

Signs and stars slid apart, from The Wandering Equinox

One sign changed animal. The figure at Hamal and Sheratan was the Hired Man, a farm labourer; it reached the Greeks as the Ram, perhaps through a scribal pun: LÚ, "man", read as LU, "sheep". The Scorpion and the Goat-Fish crossed unchanged; the Sun also crosses a thirteenth, left out.

The sky the Greeks were handed twice.

Egypt gave the 365-day year and 24 hours
Babylon gave the zodiac and most of its figures
One V: Bull's jaw, Rohini, Kambugudha

Before the Greeks

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