Cuneiform Uranology Texts: Drawing the Constellations, Transactions, American Philosophical Society (Vol. 107, Part 2) (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 47)

Presents a newly recovered group of cuneiform texts from first millennium Babylonia and Assyria that provide prose descriptions of the drawing (eseru) of Mesopotamian constellations. Describes these constellations in terms of their parts: body parts for constellations in human or animal form, parts of a wagon for “The Wagon” and “The Wagon of Heaven” (the Big and Little Dipper), and so forth. The descriptions also typically speak of the clothing that constellations in human form wear, their beards if they are male, and paraphernalia that they hold or carry. In the case of “The Crab” and “The Wagon,” there is also reference to the Babylonian geometric shape apsamakku, a four-sided figure. Illustrations.