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THE CANON OF ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN ART
19: THE ICONOGRAPHY OF ANCIENT ASTRONOMY
19. THE ICONOGRAPHY OF ANCIENT ASTRONOMY  Asia Haleem
So gut wir nun aber auch über die Benennung und Ausdehnung vieler Sternbilder im Alten Orient unterrichtet
sind, so wenig wissen wir noch über die Art der bildlichen Vorstellungen, welche die Babylonier mit den
einzelnen Sterngruppen verknüpften.[Ernst Weidner: ‘Eine Beschreibung des Sternhimmels aus Aššur’ AfO IV]
In preceding chapters of this book we have pieced together the main images of the Canon of Ancient Near
Eastern Art (which we shall usually abbreviate by the acronym CANEA) by focusing on one recurring group in
its sequence - the lion and prey symbol - not only to demonstrate its enduring significance over time, but
also to use it as a prime indicator from which to build up a picture of its distribution and art historical
phases. It was through its juxtaposition with a variety of other images that we were able to build up the
likelihood of the existence of a canonical cycle of images that in part or in whole takes centre stage in
Mesopotamian art over at least three millennia, and is probably as important an invention as writing was for
the same period. My aim, once you have seen evidence, is to be able to decode CANEA iconography
extremely easily.
Only by knowing how to measure the year and monitor the pattern of days, months and years was it possible
for the great agro-urban civilisations of the Fertile Crescent to manage the rising complexity of their trading
interaction with lands around them. Centres in Egypt and Mesopotamia at this time began to come to grips
with true control of the calendar in order to predict the timing of the seasons and thus plan ahead to sustain
a regular economy. THENCE AROSE THE LITURGICAL YEAR, ADHERED TO WITH THE HELP OF IMAGE, TEXT AND RITUAL.
In fact, this chapter stands outside the cumulative process followed in the CATALOGUES and SYNTHESES
sections preceding it, since it uses the analysis of five artefacts outside the main CANEA to solve some
identification issues concerning key stars in Mesopotamian cosmology in order to be able to read its visual
imagery more accurately. It still needs refinement, so check the website for updates. I have put it on the
Layish/CANEA website now, presenting the fruit of the tree ahead of the tree that bore it, since digitising
the Catalogues is time-consuming. It covers the content of two papers presented at an ARAM conference in
2010 so attendees can follow up references as given in the footnotes (the entire Bibliography and cross-
references will not be ready until the book is complete). Comments and feedback are welcome, and I can
answer specific questions if contacted by e-mail - and if you quote me, please acknowledge me!
It is a study in itself to look extensively into the tap root of this tradition which really goes back into the
Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods, so I embarked on an intense study of this subject only where there is a
dramatic increase in evidence from the proto-historical period onwards (starting c.4500BC), where the case
for use of calendrical images can start to be put forward plausibly. Knowing I cannot take it for granted that
readers will have the requisite astronomical background, the narrative in this and Chapter 22 (which finally
interprets the full Canon of Ancient Near Eastern Art) is punctuated by interludes intended as short
‘tutorials’ in naked-eye astronomy that at times, with apologies, needs must spell out the obvious.
PURPOSE OF THIS CHAPTER WITHIN A BOOK OF 22 CHAPTERS
Having studied the cycles of other religious iconography from later times (such as the Life of Christ or the
Labours of Hercules) it struck me an approach no scholar of the Ancient Near East (AncNME) had taken
before, was to interpret the main body of Mesopotamian visual arts as an embodiment of that civilisation’s
1

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THE CANON OF ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN ART
19: THE ICONOGRAPHY OF ANCIENT ASTRONOMY
central astronomical preoccupations1.The invention by unknown people of this great cycle of imagery at the
heart of the arts of the ancient Near East is remarkable, and must have started in the Neolithic period2.
Scholars such as Henri Frankfort, Anton Moortgat and Thorkild Jacobsen, archaeologists with a solid German
art history training, took the first steps towards interpreting many of its aspects, but I go further in declaring
its main content overall to be a series of astronomical images embodying the key nodes of Mesopotamian
religion3 as punctuated by calendrical turning points. Its staying power has been borne out by how some of
its icons were perpetuated even into the visual arts of mediaeval Islam and Christianity long after the urban
civilisations of Sumer and Egypt had sunk into oblivion. Proving my case through textual evidence alone is
not possible, but more oblique ways of pinning down its existence beyond reasonable doubt are available. As
Elizabeth Baity expressed it4, some decades after Weidner’s perceptive comment at the head of this chapter,
‘there is a need for an international astro-iconographical index’. I trust I am making a contribution toward
such an index, not simply by reconstructing the main features of the Canon of Ancient Near Eastern Art, but
also by putting forward in the final chapter what emerges as a very obvious interpretation for it.
FIVE ARTEFACTS WITH ASTRONOMICAL CONTENT
For a conference at the Oxford Oriental Institute on Ancient Near Eastern Astronomy and Astrology in Art (8-
10 July 2010) in a paper analysing five artefacts ranging in date between 2500BC and the 2C AD I prepared
the ground for proving my hypothesis publicly about the astronomical background to Mesopotamian
iconography5 by showing literal instances of its use. Evenly spaced in this chapter and tagged for ease of
reference as Icons A-E, they start with the latest and go back in jumps to Icon D at 2500BC (with a coda at of
Etruscan date – Icon E) to provide stepping stones of certainty within a vast time-frame. CANEA’s main
content is I believe calendrical, and based on the astronomical concerns of the time, though its use of
imagery is not as obvious as on the artefacts I present in this particular chapter. For my overall hypothesis to
be acceptable the presentation of the visual evidence assembled in the catalogue chapters has to be looked
at and assessed - but this short preview of the Mesopotamian mindset is best precedes that longer process.
Even by acknowledging the inclusion of the heavenly bodies in the iconography of ancient near eastern art in
Icons A-E, we already in this chapter can begin to decode many other items bearing related images that refer
to contemporary cosmology. At the outset we could identify it as ‘proto-Zoroastrian’ though we need to take
into account how its initial view of the universe acquired much ‘foreign’ detail between the Fourth and First
Millennia as changes in practice resulting from more detail in observing the sky phenomena overlaid the main
values of primordial Zoroastrianism. But whatever the individual contributions of Susa, Sumer, Akkad, Assyria
and Babylon may have been, we must remember all the time that all these traditions experienced the

1
Neugebauer (1945) writes ‘In spite of attempts to make Egypt responsible for many forms, the predominant influence of Babylonian
concepts on the grouping of stars into pictures must be maintained’.
2 Some animal symbolism, for instance, may go as far back as 10M Gobekli Tepe (Ill.19-15), let alone items of Palaeolithic art.
3 ‘In general the evidence appears to indicate that astronomical lore, astra and deity symbolism, and seasonal rituals set by astra events
and considered essential to successful agriculture and stockbreeding were part of the Neolithic mixed-farming tool-kit travelling along
with seeds and stocks, with an origin perhaps as early as the 9th millennium’ (Baity 1973 – see fn. 4 below) (NB her eccentric use of astra
for astronomical). In her masterly overview of archaeo-astronomy she points out that a further factor in the culture included the search
for and processing of minerals and semi-precious stones, to be woven into the worship of the planetary and stellar Gods.
4 Her synthesis of the state of Astroarchaeology was made in an extensive paper read to the 36th annual meeting of the Society for
American Archaeology, Oklahoma, on May 8 1971 which fully lays out the many indications of Neolithic beginnings for that discipline -
‘Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy So Far’ Current Anthropology XIV 1973, 389-449
5 This chapter is the full version of that paper, to be published in the ARAM Proceedings of the July 2010 Conference, in the meantime
accessible via this link on my own website archive http://www.layish.co.uk/astronomical_iconography_of_5_icons.pdf.
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planets and stars as powers of the Gods and Goddesses, using conventions for depicting their qualities
through animals, humans or composite creatures to mark what was to become a calendrical programme of
rituals and Year turning points - many of which even survive in the sacred art of the Monotheistic traditions.
Throughout this and the very last chapter (22) short interludes describe the basic characteristics of the
practice of Astronomy in the region based on naked-eye astronomy, which I will call Sky Anchors. Once I
have shown at what level of detail Mesopotamian Astronomy (with growing ability to predict the future and
conduct divinatory practices) lies behind CANEA, finally in the last chapter we will demonstrate how the lion
and prey group, our starting point on this odyssey, takes pride of place at a key juncture in the grand cycles
of time measurement, becoming a cipher of prestige to those in charge of regulating the calendar.
PROLOGUE
Enough work has been done in the 20C for a new generation to rewrite the history of Astronomy of the
ancient near east – and in this century I hope it will be done. The few exceptions aside, it is shocking how
writers in the field continue to copy previous books or papers without challenging early translations and
assumptions on the basis of actual sky behaviour. Though not an expert in the field myself, this chapter also
take diversions at times to teaze out a few astronomical puzzles - by actually going out and looking at star
behavior - in order to make more accurate sense of the pictures!

Ill.19- 1 Within and to the sides of the crescent sweep of the Milky Way that cuts the sky diagonally lie most of
the brightest stars of the sky, centred on Sirius, Orion’s Belt and Taurus in the Duat Zone. In this view for 1 May
2010 at1800hrs Gemini, Auriga and Taurus (with Venus, ruler of Taurus, conjunct above) surround Orion’s head;
Ursa Major comes into view higher to the North making a corridor down Gemini to Orion head, and Leo strides in
from the left, his feet on the same line as Procyon and Orion’s shoulders.
Although the sky is important the whole way round, there is one particular region of the sky that had
glamour quality in ancient man's mind, due to the group of very bright stars lying near each other that in the
earliest years of calendar formulation were associated with a particular season as they started to rise in the
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night sky. For an overall impression this first skymap6 shows no delineation of constellations or labels,
demonstrating the prominence of a bright hexagon of stars7 just to the right of the NS-EW crossing point.
They became identified with the time when the Old Year comes to an end and the New Year starts - that
special period of 11 days and 12 nights we still celebrate today between Christmas and New Year (though in
some areas of the ancient world this festival could also take place at the Summer Solstice or the Spring or
Autumn Equinoxes depending on local conditions). It is this period in the calendar, heralded by the rising of a
pattern of first- and second-magnitude stars in one field of the sky in the New Year season leading up to
Spring that will largely command most of our attention in this chapter, since we will show how these stars
have their own distinctive iconography in the Canon of Ancient Near Eastern Art specifically linked to that
zone of the sky with the Hunter and his Dog, and Lion and Bull images as their focal centre. Thus the
constellations that repeatedly come to our attention are Sirius, Orion, Leo, Gemini, Taurus, Auriga, Perseus
and (sometimes appearing to rise on the opposite side of the sky) the Bears at the Pole. They are emphasised
in Icon A, a Mithraic iconostasis, and show up in different groupings with varying emphases on the other four
artefacts. It is well worth obtaining a good, large sky map, now, to study their positions in relation to each
other, since we shall look at close-ups of these from many different angles in the course of this exposition.
Initially we stand back and take an overall perspective on the sky as a whole in order to understand the main
preoccupations underpinning Mesopotamian (and sometimes Egyptian) astronomy. I will at times seek help
from the traditions of surrounding contemporary civilisations, as well as from late practices representing
continuity of tradition even in late eras. Indeed, what I call the Sky Anchors provide opportunities for
bringing in artefacts smaller than the main icons (mostly cylinder seals) that reinforce our readings. The
preoccupations of the Mesopotamian world view can be read in the documentary sources, so whatever can
be gleaned from Mesopotamian planet and star lists - and ancient calendars - is woven into the logical steps
we take during this chapter to show how they are expressed in the imagery of the CANEA. But we must allow
visual images as evidence for this tradition as well, many of which predate surviving texts!
I should first quickly outline where scholarship is today in understanding Babylonian astronomy, partly to
indicate why interpretations which affect our exercise of matching astronomy to visual images is far from
straightforward, but beyond that to establish at least a few islands of certainty. Take from this chapter what
might be useful to you, remembering that I have a particular problem to solve that may not be your concern
but if you wish to participate in that journey, then this chapter is more of a detective story where each clue
leads on to the next, and needs to be followed step by step if you are to understand the logic of the final
outcome. I am not trying to clean up the whole of Babylonian astronomy, but to highlight those aspects that
have a bearing on the Canon of Ancient Near Eastern Art, and on the Lion and Prey symbol in particular!
CORE SURVIVING TEXTS AND CURRENT SCHOLARSHIP ON MESPOTAMIAN ASTRONOMY
Since the late nineteenth century, in the field of ancient near-eastern archaeo-astronomy only a few
specialists have ever combined a knowledge of astronomy with the disciplines not only of mathematics and
cuneiform decipherment but also of art and archaeology in order to be in a position to take in hand the

6 I have tried to make illustrations as clear as possible, but the reader may find maps more legible by zooming in on-screen, or making
an enlarged photocopy.
7 The ancient Egyptians called this zone the Duat, and for convenience of reference we follow suit.
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painful reclamation (through translation and visual concordances) of material that reveals the origins and
practice of Babylonian astronomy. In the quotation at the head of this chapter Weidner at least was aware
that this was a task not yet fully undertaken or solved. The stereotypical comment of modern scholarship is
that nineteenth- or early twentieth-century books on a subject must be ‘out of date’8: well might they be in
some aspects, but in the arena of the CANEA we do sometimes find the earliest authors valuable, even if
they have to be very critically read (but this is as true of modern scholars who keep repeating that Greece
owed nothing to Babylonian astronomy, for example, or that India could only have learned astronomy from
Greece!). This is because, compared to the current 21st-century astrophysical approach to the universe,
these were scholars for whom traditional astronomy and knowledge of stars and planetary cycles were still as
natural a part of their education as a grounding in ancient history and the Classics. Instead of the one-
subject specialists we tend to cultivate today, they had had an all-round education that made them
polymath enough to see the links between one discipline and another. They were also brought up from a
young age on the Bible and ancient mythology and so naturally spotted obvious interpretations for the newly
rediscovered material coming out of the ancient near east in their time that were often closer to the mark
than those of more recent scholars in the field who may have more technical information at their fingertips
but do not always have that necessary rich cultural grounding or development of the imagination.
Neugebauer (ibid.) saw that to start with, ‘Nothing short of a systematic ‘corpus’ of all the relevant texts
can provide us with the requisite security for systematic interpretation’ and that ‘years of systematic work
[would] be needed before the foundations for a reliable history of the development of Babylonian astronomy
are laid’, which would involve the re-editing of all early period Assyriological key works, let alone new
research! To Neugebauer the earliest scholar of any value was Kugler for identifying the Babylonian gift for
mastering ‘celestial mechanics’ remarking: ‘It can justly be said that his discoveries rank among the most
important contributions toward an understanding of ancient civilisation – it is very much to be regretted that
historians of science often quote Kugler but rarely read him’. Neugebauer dates the start of the
development of long-range prediction of celestial behaviour back to the ‘systematic observational activity
during the Late Assyrian and Persian periods (roughly from 700BC onward)’, but many Assyrian documents
were copies of Old Babylonian or even Sumerian works, proving astronomical observation, however basic,
was going on as far back in their history as we can go - and the inclusion of visual artefacts proves it.
Neugebauer criticises the ‘modern attitude toward ancient astronomy: the usual treatment of ancient
sciences as a homogeneous type of literature is very misleading’. Indeed, it must be a sine qua non that
people pronouncing on the subject should have a grounding in observational astronomy and recognise the
significance of what is observed and written down in the texts. There are drawbacks enough: given that
concrete evidence of Mesopotamian astronomical activity in terms of actual clay texts or planispheres is but
a small percentage of the already tiny proportion of possible texts unearthed by the spade when compared
to all that must have existed and still remains buried - and that reclaimed material dates from different
periods in time (even if translatable) - and is rarely intact - the extraordinarily difficult task of
understanding the stages of ancient near eastern astronomy from patchy astronomical texts of different

8 As Neugebauer in ‘The History of ancient Astronomy Problems and Methods’ JNES IV 1945 1-38 states, such texts are ‘subject to all
the misunderstandings of this early period of Assyriology, and very little has been done to repair these original errors’.
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THE CANON OF ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN ART
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centuries is compounded. Fortunately some key items of the surviving material - in the form of both text and
artefact - is available in the British Museum on my own doorstep. Indeed, some of the very first texts
unearthed by Victorian archaeologists such as Henry Layard and George Smith were astronomical in nature,
giving a head start to British Museum keepers in understanding just how central the practice of observing and
recording the stars and planets was for the ancient civilisations of Sumer, Akkad and Babylon. With what
core material there is to hand locally, therefore, and espousing the hope that pars pro toto will suffice,
despite all the handicaps it is within the bounds of possibility that we can pin down sufficient documentary
evidence from a handful of telling clay tablets to enable us to establish a reliable context for the CANEA. Of
course we will have to rely on cross-references with clay tablets in other institutions and of course the
translations, commentaries and guidance of scholars in the field. Though there are no easy answers (even by
the end of this chapter some questions will not have been resolved definitively), at least the problematic
nature of many blindly accepted interpretations will have been highlighted on the dissecting table!
A generation after Neugebauer, Johannes Koch9, a new scholar in the field of Assyrian and Babylonian texts
on Astronomy, in conducting his own work to improve on the early attempts of previous scholars to provide a
foundation for the study of Babylonian astronomy, has been well-placed from an up-to-date vantage point to
assess scholarship on the subject so far, and to coordinate the work of the earliest scholars with the findings
of recent writers and scholars who are his contemporaries. It is interesting that he declares even recent
contributions, let alone the first fumblings with the subject over a century ago, often amount to wasted
effort because so much consists of guesswork or uncritical repetition of the work of predecessors (in
accuracy of translation and interpretation). When it comes to star identification from cuneiform texts he
states, 'Es bleibt dabei, dass Ernst Weidner’s Handbuch der Babylonische Astronomie I10 und
Reiner/Pingree’s Babylonian Planetary Omens II11 nach wie vor, den gegenwärtigen Stand unseres Wissens
über den babylonischen Fixsternhimmel aufzeigen.' Also at the very start of his own Neue Untersuchungen
(p.6) Koch states: ’Uns interessiert jetzt allerdings van der Waerdens12 Auswertung des Textes Mul-Apin I’.
We can do no better for our own enquiry than to go along with Koch’s recommendation that we take as our
authorities Weidner, Hunger, Reiner/Pingree and van der Waerden's works to provide us with a reliable
approach towards the textual footholds we will rely on (not without criticism) in our quest to understand the
astronomical background for the CANEA, though obviously we will need refer to others on the sidelines
where needed. We should not forget that our prime source document is the sky itself: in this chapter we
refer throughout to actual star maps to solve obvious problems from text sequences or image configurations.
It requires the ability to reason – and to hold several possibilities in mind until accumulated proofs emerge.
THE MUL APIN STAR LIST
The prime text we turn to is the compendium of star information (of which there are several full or
fragmentary copies) known as the Mul Apin Star List. The most complete is illustrated below. Koch says of it,
‘Tatsächlich ist ja nun jene Sternliste aus neuassyrischer Zeit [7-6C BC] die umfassendste Überlieferung

9 Johannes Koch Neue Untersuchungen zur Topographie des babylonischen Fixsternhimmels Wiesbaden 1989
10 E Weidner Handbuch der babylonische Astronomie I: Der Babylonische Fixsternhimel (HBA) Leipzig 1915 (Part II never completed)

11 E Reiner & D Pingree Babylonian Planetary Omens II: The Enuma Anu Enlil Tablets (BPO) Malibu 1981
12 B L van der Waerden ‘Babylonian Astronomy II: The Thirty-Six Stars’ JNES VIII 6-26 (abbreciation 36Stars) 1949
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astronomischer Informationen, die bislang für die Kenntnis des babylonischen Fixsternhimmels aufgefunden
wurde. Die meisten der heute gängigen Sternidentifizierungen beruhen auf diesen Informationen von Mul-
Apin I.’ We can go a long way towards resolving our particular questions by getting information about star
names and behaviour from this primary textual source of Babylonian astronomy13. There are various copies

Ill.19- 2 Clay Tablet showing the Mul Apin Star List (the fullest surviving copy) - British Museum (BM 86378)
of it, usually written on one tablet (though there is the unusual instance of a Mul Apin II) recording many
kinds of astronomical information (collated by Hunger and Pingree14). There is also a handful of informative
clay planispheres to consult which confirm the overall arrangement of information in Mul Apin, translated
and interpreted mostly by Koch’s approved authorities, and Koch himself.
Overall we constantly bear in mind two key statements made by Weidner in his introduction to the
Handbook of Babylonian Astronomy I (HBA), that for the Babylonians ‘die Weltenbild und Himmelsbild sind
eins’ and that for the astronomer ‘die Bewegungen der Himmelskörper und ihre Stellungen zueinander
musste er erforschen, um den Willen der Gottheit zu erkunden’15. In other words, it is the stars and planets
that not only mesure out the calendar, but also reveal the respective powers of Gods and Goddesses that are
good and bad influences for life on Earth, so we will expect any relevant imagery to refer to them.

13 B.M. 86378 - Cuneiform text first transcribed (but not translated) in Cuneiform Texts XXXIII 1912 with short overall description by
Keeper, L W King. In a host of books and articles the academic world to the present day grapples with the problem not only of
translating all the star names definitively, but also deconstructing from within the patchwork of cuneiform text contemporary additions
(Assyrian) as well as core text from earlier centuries (Akkadian and Sumerian). Hunger & Pingree’s 1989 translation and analysis is best.
14 Hunger and D Pingree Mul Apin,AfO Beiheft 24 1989
15 The importance of Astrology in Mesopotamian Divination is fully described in Book 7A on the www.cosmokrator.com website.
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Interestingly, Weidner echoes Röck16’s estimation that the division of the sky into zones associated with
different animals had its roots in the Neolithic period at a time when the Sun rose against the stars of
Gemini (starred above) to mark the Spring Equinox at the Vernal Point. Below is a table showing the World
Ages described in terms of axes of signs opposite each other that changed as the Vernal Point for Sunrise at
the Spring Equinox slipped backwards through the zodiac over the centuries (the Mespotamian habit of
LEO-Aquarian 11126-8426 BC
CANCER-Capricornian 8426-6266 BC
*GEMINI-Sagittarian 6266-4106 BC
TAURO-Scorpean 4106-1946 BC
ARIES-Libran 1946-215 BC
PISCES-Virgoan 215BC-2375 AD
AQUARIAN-Leonid 2375-4535 AD
Ill.19- 3 Powell’s calculation of World Eras17 as dictated by the Spring Equinox point at the 0 meridian of each
sign (the Vernal Point moves back against the stars within the sign given in capital letters)
seeing star groups in terms of oppositions is described in Sky Anchor 8). ‘Die Zwillingszeitalter* (etwa 6200
bis 4400 v.Chr.) galt bei den späteren Babyloniern als der Anfang aller Kultur und alles Wissens. Auf dieser
Zeit wird daher möglichst alles zurückgeführt’ wrote Weidner. It follows therefore that in this aeon the
Summer Solstice three months later began with sunrise against the stars of Virgo, to them representing the
Sky Goddess. We only have echoes of this era in star names because they go back to a preliterate period:
most of the earliest star lists written on clay refer to the placing of the four seasons against the backdrop of
star behaviour of the next era, the Taurus-Scorpio period, which are often matched up to month-lists. Later
tables and texts from c. 2000BC then refer to the new Spring Equinox sign (and lunar month) – that of Aries.
In contrast, what the Egyptians called their ‘First Time’ coincides, Bauval calculates, with the Leo-Aquarian
era - two stellar axes-long before the Zwillingszeitalter Weidner nominates as Mesopotamia’s own ‘First
Time’. With foundations laid on the basic Neolithic priorities of astronomy that we will gradually describe in
the Sky Anchors, they were so true and useful that they persisted as the underlying tradition into the
Taurus-Scorpio and Ares-Libra eras that followed though later elaborations were built on them to fit
changing circumstances and increasing knowledge as late as the Archaic Greek period: then a break occurred
as Greece and Rome took centre stage in the Pisces-Virgoan era.
This is important for our matching of images to the calendar because all these changes involved changes of
timing for the seasons and their linkage to the months (which started out as exactly coincidental to the
Cardinal Signs). We know from our own experience that with any list of items we use for years on end whose

16 F Röck ‘Der Palaeozodiakus: Die prähistorische Urform unseres Tierkreises’ Memnon VI 145-176
17 Robert Powell, Hermetic Astrology 1987
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order is then changed, we will still tend while getting used to it see it in terms of the one we were used to –
and in our exercise of unlocking star iconography these slippages from old to new month calibrations with
the starting-points of the seasons always have to be borne in mind if we are to avoid such mistakes as
imposing a later calendar over a new one and misreading everything by one or more removes. Furthermore,
the earliest star names were often intended to refer only to individual stars, and not necessarily to
constellations - which later took on the same name of the principal name-holder - yet it is also highly
possible star groups such as the Great Bear and Orion18 were exceptions, so distinctive is their overall shape.
THE EARLY INSTITUTIONALISATION OF ASTRONOMY IN MESOPOTAMIA
When star-gazing Neolithic herdsmen and farmers moved down from mountain areas to the plains of Susiana
and Sumer in the 5th-4thM BC the astronomer’s perspective on the sky would have come down to such a low
vantage point that artificial mountains (ziggurats) and specially oriented temples had to be constructed as
mud brick observatories with outer zones used as entrepots for storing and exchanging livestock and
produce. Interestingly, with the growth of early urban centres there is some textual evidence that specific
roles for sky observation were allotted city by city, coordinated at the capital. We have glimpses of the
practice of orienting temples to serve as observatories, the most clear being the autobiographical account in
cuneiform on one of Gudea's statues in the Louvre (end of the 3M BC) recounting his dream in which the
Goddess Nisaba draws his new temple plan with axis oriented to a propitious constellation in the sky (not
named). Thus we know the temple he was to build at Lagash (its floor plan is drawn out on a tablet held in
his lap) was deliberately orientated towards a specific zone of the sky19 (possibly Orion - see under Lagash in
table below).
Taking odd lines from various fragmentary sources of different periods and putting them together into a
table (next page) gives us a conglomerate, if patchy, idea (subject to further refinement) about the
particular heavenly bodies certain cities specialized in monitoring (some names are left untranslated) - or
even which constellation the city represented in a likely system of Sacred Geography mapped across the
whole territory. The point of the exercise for us is to get a general idea of the overall picture and then let it
drop, keeping at the back of our minds the key roles that stand out for certain key cities (see table next
page) such as Ur and Aššur, because it is relevant to our understanding of Icon B.
There surely had to be a coordination point (as later Delphi was for the Greek world), and from the
archaeological evidence it seems clear that the bigger picture for star and planetary observation was first
plotted at the central ziggurat/temple complexes at Eridu and Susa in the 5/4M, moving to Uruk in Sumer in
the 4/3M, Akkad in the 2M BC (though we have no archaeological remains for Akkad), and then finally to
Aššur and Babylon during the 1M BC. These cities served as the coordination point for all information fed in
by individual observatories, which is why they were capitals. Like Delphi with its Omphalos marking the
Centre in the Archaic Period, such cities themselves stood as 'Sky' or 'Pole' for the rest of the land20. Noting
the evidence of our own Catalogues A-H, it looks as if there was even a time, as the 0 meridian gradually

18 There have been claims for identifying the Orion outline on Ice Age art on bone, for instance.
19 Weidner OLZ 1913, 2 para 54
20 Even Sippar, which specialized in Sun observation, did not hold this distinction.
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THE CANON OF ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN ART
19: THE ICONOGRAPHY OF ANCIENT ASTRONOMY
moved westward during the late first millennium under Achaemenid rule, when Persepolis was such a capital
to which astronomical specialist centres were assigned to report in from as far west as Sardis or Athens.
CITY ZODIAC SIGN NAMES OF KEY NAME OF TEMPLE OTHER PHENOMENA ALTERNATIVE
STARS MENTIONED NAMES
OBSERVED
Akkad Leo
Aratta Taurus Gu-Anna Bit-dErua
AŠŠUR*
[?AŠŠUR]** Virgo Absin/Uga**
ILAŠSUR Mul-Apin
BABYLON Iku/Dilgan* Jupiter (Marduk)
E-Sagila
& Mutbal Sagittarius Pabilsag Dilgan (Capella) Šupa (Arcturus)
Borsippa - Gulf Išḫara
Scorpio Girtab
(Dilmun/Bahrein) Tiamat
Der Šugi Dur-Anki
ERIDU Capricorn Suḫurmaš Bit-dAnnunaki Nunpe
[& ERIDU] Aquarius Gula Bit-dNingišzida
Harran (Sibzianna)
Kish Zamama (Eagle)
Kullab Aries Ištar Tar-lugal
Kutha Gemini Mars (Zalbat)
Lagash Orion (Ningirsu)
Larsa Libra Bit-dI[štar]
Pisces Bit-Uri-in
Nippur Aries Margidda* E-kur Margidda Šugi (Perseus)
Nisinna Gula star (Urn)
Al-Lul*
SIPPAR Cancer Sun (Shamash)
Sibazianna
SUSA*
E-namtila Ka-a
Ḫursagkalama Urbarra
UR Zappu Moon (Sin)
URUK Leo (or Urgula E-Anna Anu (Sky)
Sagittarius) Ur-Maḫ Bit Reš Polar Centre,Venus
KEY
 Most of the information, much of it fragmentary, is taken from Brown, Primitive Constellations (black type) and
 Weidner Gestirndarstellungen auf Babylonischen Tontafeln (1967); his ‘Astrologische Geographie im Alten Orient’
AfO XX 118-121 and OLZ 1913, 2 para 56 (mauve type)-on one tablet fragment (where, against Aššur* and Susa* the
tablet is broken so, tantalizingly, no star name remains).
 **Aššur is information from Section 6 of Astrolabe K (Icon B) and the succeeding entry for Aššur from Astrolabe VR46
discussed by Weidner in HBA p.51

Ill.19- 4 Table summarising specialised astronomical duties of Mesopotamian cities mentioned in cuneiform texts
It is precisely at these capital cities and their key subsidiary temple sites that we find abandoned in the
archaeological record images belonging to the Canon of Ancient Near and Middle Eastern Canon Art (CANEA)
whose astronomical meaning, once we know how to read them, becomes immediately obvious. By studying
their iconographical content in relation to astronomy we should arrive at a position where we can test the
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