ns, Accadians and Babylonians; that these were carried westward
into ancient Greece by the Phoenicians, and to the lands of Asia Minor
by the Hittites, and that Hellenic culture in its turn introduced them
into Arabia, Persia and India. From the earliest times the star-groups
known as constellations, the smaller groups (parts of constellations)
known as asterisms, and also individual stars, have received names
connoting some meteorological phenomena, or symbolizing religious or
mythological beliefs. At one time it was held that the constellation
names and myths were of Greek origin; this view has now been disproved,
and an examination of the Hellenic myths associated with the stars and
star-groups in the light of the records revealed by the decipherment of
Euphratean cuneiforms leads to the conclusion that in many, if not all,
cases the Greek myth has a Euphratean parallel, and so renders it
probable that the Greek constellation system and the cognate legends are
primarily of Semitic or even pre-Semitic origin.

The origin and development of the grouping of the stars into
constellations is more a matter of archaeological than of astronomical
interest. It demands a careful study of the myths and religious thought
of primitive peoples; and the tracing of the names from one language to
another belongs to comparative philology.

The Sumerians and Accadians, the non-Semitic inhabitants of the
Euphrates valley prior to the Babylonians, described the stars
collectively as a "heavenly flock"; the sun was the "old sheep"; the
seven planets were the "old-sheep stars"; the whole of the stars had
certain "shepherds," and _Sibzianna_ (which, according to Sayce and
Bosanquet, is the modern Arcturus, the brightest star in the northern
sky) was the "star of the shepherds of the heavenly herds." The
Accadians bequeathed their system to the Babylonians, and cuneiform
tablets and cylinders, boundary stones, and Euphratean art generally,
point to the existence of a well-defined system of star names in their
early history. From a detailed study of such records, in their nature of
rather speculative value, R. Brown, junr. (_Primitive Constellations_,
1899) has compiled a Euphratean planisphere, which he regards as the
mother of all others. The tablets examined range in date from 3000-500
B.C., and hence the system must be anterior to the earlier date. Of
great importance is the _Creation Legend_, a cuneiform compiled from
older records duri