Caoimhín's Content

Today, we are going backwards in time! We are going to go into the past instead of looking into the future as we normally do. I have taken a look at ancient skies before, but that was quite a while ago. We are going all the way back to the 1800s in this video, and not the ones you might think. We’re going back to the year 1800 BCE! We’re not going back to the 1800s that have just passed, but to 1800 years before Year 1, or year zero, depending on how you’re counting it, in most systems there is no year zero. One thing that I particularly like about Stellarium, not only does it allow you to look into the past, but it automatically turns off simulated light pollution if you look far enough into the past. Of course, there wasn’t any light pollution back in the 1800s BCE, certainly not the level of light pollution that we have in the modern day.

We’ll move forward to later October of the year -1800, to keep the Moon out of the way, and there are some differences visible immediately. For example, Saturn is very close to Taurus, but this year it is in Pisces. If we take a closer look at Saturn, it is illuminated 100%, so it is around opposition again, which is an interesting coincidence. Saturn has just passed opposition and will only be 99.9% illuminated by late October this year, but it is still close, despite the difference in time. Also, Uranus is no longer next to the Pleiades as we’re seeing it currently. If we take a look towards morning time, Mercury is visible just ahead of the Sun. We’re definitely not seeing Mercury this October in the morning, but if you’re closer to the equator you might see it in the evening. Mars is very prominent around sunset in the year 1800 BCE, it’s much closer to the Sun for us at the moment. Venus and Jupiter are both setting with the Sun in the -1800s rather than coming up ahead of sunrise as we’re seeing them at the moment. There are definitely differences, we’ve definitely traveled very far into the past so the planets are in different positions. However there are a lot of similarities, especially in the positions of the star. Many famous shapes are still recognizable, such as the Hyades, the face of the Bull Taurus, and the whole shape of Orion.

The stars are still in the same relative positions, even though we’ve traveled, almost 4,000 into the past, about 3,825 years. Looking into the north, the Plough is still pointing up at the North Star, but there is something different. If we move through time a little bit more quickly, the sky will appear to turn due to the Earth’s rotation, as always. Getting rid of the atmosphere will make sure that the Sun doesn’t block out the stars when it rises. As the sky turns, the North Star isn’t quite staying exactly in one place, as it does today. It’s not exactly above the North Pole, as it will be in our modern day. The sky still appears to be rotating, but it isn’t quite rotating around the North Star, what we would now call the Pole Star. There are differences in the positions of the stars, not so much relative to each other, but relative to the Earth. The stars haven’t changed position, but where exactly the North Pole is pointing has changed a little. If we turn back around to the south, we should be able to spot another difference with the same cause. Unfortunately, it’s not really going to be visible at this time of the year, at least not at night. We’ll bring ourselves up to daytime, and then move the Sun out of the way. We’ll come all the way back into summertime, when the glow of the Milky Way should be pretty much at its highest in the middle of the night.

Looking at the midsummer night’s sky, we’ve got Sagittarius and all of Scorpius above the horizon in the south. I regularly complain that this isn’t something we can normally do from here in Ireland, certainly not in the modern day. Although we have traveled very far into the past, we are still in the same geographical location, just not the same temporal location. By changing the time a bit closer to the modern day, we can watch those constellations drop under the horizon. For example, by getting rid of that negative in front of the year, jumping from 1800 BCE to 1800 CE or AD. Immediately there’s a huge difference. Moving through the night a little to get those constellations up to their highest, and they’re nowhere near as high above the horizon as they are in the negative 1800s. The time had to be changed as we jumped through the centuries as there are some other little changes such as changes in the calendar being used. Various little changes occur, but the big ones are Sagittarius and Scorpius appearing to change positions, and the North Star not really being the Pole star. These are changes due to Earth’s precession, the wobble of our axial tilt. We do still have the same axial tilt, but where the axis points does wobble a little bit over long periods of time.

We’ll come back to the -1800s and all the way back a little bit closer to late October, so we’re looking at the same time of year that we have in the modern day again. That will put the Sun in front of Scorpius and Libra, which gives me an opportunity, point out something that I have mentioned in the past. We’ll adjust our view so that we are looking a the middle of the day and we’ll get rid of the atmosphere again so that we can see the stars. If I bring up the constellations, the Sun appears to be right in the middle of Libra. By default, what comes up are the modern constellations, the constellations as they’re accepted by the International Astronomical Union. These are the ones that we use in the modern day, and I have pointed out before that in the constellations of Libra and Scorpius, the names of the stars tell a slightly different story to the positions of the pictures as we have. Starting with the brightest star in Scorpius, Antares. This of course is the Greek name, related to the red planet Ares, now Mars. Various other names exist in Latin and in Arabic which call it the heart of the scorpion, Cor Scorpii and Kalb al Akrab both mean the heart of the scorpion, or the heart of the crab or the lobster, depending on how the word gets interpreted. These ones agree with each other and the modern images.

If we take a closer look at some of the stars in Libra, we’ll find Brachium, which means arm, is Sigma Librae. The same star in Arabic is Zuben Acrabi, the arm of the crab or scorpion. We can see something similar in the other stars of Libra, with Arabic names like Zuben Elgenubi, or the Southern Claw. These are related to, not the Balance of Libra, but the Claws of the Scorpion. Now, we’re looking way back here in the -1800s, and depending on the version of the chronology that you prefer, we are looking back into Babylonian times. The constellations that we use in Western astronomy, even though they’ve changed over the centuries, do trace their heritage back to the Babylonians. Stellarium even provides a resource to show drawings of the Ancient Babylonian constellations, just as it does with the modern versions. The information being used to map these out comes from a particular clay tablet, MUL.APIN, which is a catalogue of stars from later in Babylonian times. MUL is thought to mean “star” in Akkadian, the language of Babylon, and APIN is thought to be a plough, though it does have other meanings. MUL.APIN is thought to be “the star plough”, even though the plough that this text is talking about is very different from the plough that we use today. The Babylonian plough is in a different part of the sky, it’s more related to the path of the ecliptic than the North Star.

The clay tablet lists various asterisms, along with star names and positions. One asterism is EPINNU, a plough, and is roughly in the constellation of Cassiopeia, that is the modern position of Cassiopeia. Each of these asterisms was also associated with some ancient deity. Even though there are various changes, there are definitely some similarities or commonalities. Looking at the same part of the sky, there’s a scorpion and there is a balance, just as there is today. These are the counterparts of Scorpius and Libra, but they are in different positions. If we take a closer look here, the stars would be considered the front of the front claw of Scorpius in the modern day, are just at the head of the Babylonian Scorpion, with claws extending past the Sun, as it is in late October. With this sky culture being show, the stars don’t getting their modern cultural names, they’re only getting designations because only a few of these stars would have their names in Akkadian recorded. The kingdom of Babylon was part of the Akkadian or Sumer-Akkadian region of The Middle East, and Akkadian is the name of the language they used. Babylon was simply the name for their capital. The MUL.APIN tablet is in cuneiform, specifically Akkadian cuneiform. Cuneiform was also used to write Sumerian, the language of a nearby civilisation. The same writing style being used for different languages shouldn’t be too unfamiliar, with so many languages using the Latin alphabet today, despite very few Latin speakers.

Stellarium lets us quickly shift from one sky culture to another, letting us compare the Babylonian positions of Scorpius and Libra to the Modern ones. Going from one to another seems to make the constellations shift. The whole region of the sky around the Sun, in late October, was considered part of the Scorpion, from the front of the Scorpion’s Head to its claws extending around the Sun. Today, Libra’s been sort of shifted back into that position, with the Scorpion’s claws shown folded. Even if we compare with intermediate Greek constellations there will be some differences. Stellarium provides a few options for them as well. Going with the Almagest for their positions brings us into Greco-Roman times, rather than Ancient Greece. The images used also come from a sculpture of Atlas that dates to Roman times, in Villa Farnese in modern day Naples. These are very different pictures to either the modern or Babylonian versions, but there is still a Scorpion and Scales. It doesn’t look like a very good drawing of a Scorpion, but it’s got a stinger, and a claw at least. That claw stretches up to the balance of the scales, past the Sun. The positions of these constellations have changed, not just coming into the modern day, but going from the Ancient Babylonian constellations into the Greek constellations and then eventually into the Roman constellations and then the modern constellations that we use today.

Stellarium also provides some information on a lot of other cultures. Though the Babylonian and Greek and Roman constellations all seem to share a common thread with various similarities in the constellations that they use, a lot of these other groups are completely different and separate. They were not necessarily influenced by, and they haven’t necessarily influenced, the constellations that we use in Western astronomy. Even looking at the Babylonian style artwork, there are constellations that you might recognize based on the modern constellations. This is a big topic, just a small part of the history of astronomy, so I will absolutely come back to it. I’m glad I could describe a couple of the differences and how ancient these ideas are. The tablet this is based on was written, or based on observational data from, around the -1300s and -1100s, not the -1800s. I’ve gone all the way back to around the beginning of Babylonia, before Hammurabi. Again, it depends on the chronology that you use, and that is something we may get into in another piece.

If you enjoyed this piece, looking into the past and talking about the past rather than looking into the future, then please do let me know. Let me know if this is something you’d like to see more of, if you’d like this topic explored more, or if you’d like me to look at other ancient times. If you enjoyed this piece then please do like it and if you like this kind of content, then please subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel. Thank you very much for reading and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.