MUL.GU4.AN.NA (Taurus)

mool good AN nah

babylonian: MUL.GU4.AN.NA

Definition

MUL.GU₄.AN.NA is the Babylonian cuneiform name of a constellation — in Akkadian Alû, "the Bull of Heaven" — the second constellation of the Path of the Moon in MUL.APIN and the forerunner of the Greek sign Tauros. Its outline took in the Pleiades (MUL.MUL), which the Path-of-Moon list counts as a separate constellation next door. In the twelve equal signs standardised in Babylonia around 400 BCE it became the second sign.

In Tradition

Assyriologists treat the Bull of Heaven as the source — in both name and image — of the Greek Tauros. Hunger and Steele keep "the Bull of Heaven" in their MUL.APIN translation. Koch-Westenholz documents that the Seleucid lumāšu-tablets show a humpbacked-bull figure whose look matches the later Greco-Roman sign — a sign that the handover from Babylon to the Hellenistic world kept both the name and the picture.

In Practice

In Babylonian sky-divination the Bull of Heaven turns up in the MUL.APIN star catalogues, in the Path-of-Moon goal-year texts, and in the per-sign omens of the late Enūma Anu Enlil tradition; in mathematical astronomy it is one of the twelve equal 30° slices of the ecliptic used for System A and System B planetary calculation. GU₄.AN.NA is a clear example of how zodiac names crossed directly from Babylon into Greek astrology: Greek translators rendered the Akkadian name as Tauros and took over the bull-symbol already found in Seleucid Babylon, anchoring the chain of transmission that runs through Hipparchus, Ptolemy, the Arabic mediators, and into the Western astrology used today.

Historical Origin

It is attested in MUL.APIN Tablet I iv 33-34 (compiled around 1000 BCE; the canonical Neo-Assyrian copies date to the 7th century BCE) as the second of the eighteen Path-of-Moon constellations. The twelve-equal-sign zodiac with GU₄.AN.NA as the second sign is firmly attested by 410 BCE (Sachs 1952; VAT 4924, the Diary for -418, preserves the earliest surviving zodiac-sign reference). Standard editions: Hunger & Steele, *MUL.APIN* (2018-2019); Koch-Westenholz, *Mesopotamian Astrology* (1995); and Rochberg, *The Heavenly Writing* (Cambridge 2004).

Further Reading

  • Hermann Hunger & John Steele, The Babylonian Astronomical Compendium MUL.APIN
  • Ulla Koch-Westenholz, Mesopotamian Astrology
  • Francesca Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture