The Pleiades are known in Mesopotamia through the Sumerian name MUL.MUL ―the stars‖. This term is known only from Assyrian and Babylonian sources, particularly from the Ist millennium BCE. In fact the later tradition in Akkadian language adopted Sumerian terms for the stars and constellation names, while we have few or no references at all to them in Sumerian sources.
Lexical documents equate the Sumerian term MUL.MUL ―the stars‖ to the Akkadian zappu ―bristle‖ (Gössmann, 1950: no. 279; Kurtik, 2007: m35), which is however seldom mentioned in astrological and astronomical texts as well as in literature. The term ―Bristle‖ relates this group of stars with the mane of the Taurus constellation. Taurus, which is called ―The Bull of Heaven‖ (GU4.AN.NA; Gössmann, 1950: no. 77; Kurtik, 2007: g33), may be identified with the homonym mythical being. In the Gilgameš Sumerian tale Gilgameš and the Bull of Heaven and the related episode of the Akkadian epic (Tablet VI), the god- dess Inanna/Ištar makes the gigantic bull come down from the sky to punish Gilgameš
Figure 1. Gilgameš and Enkidu killing the Bull of Heaven (Old Babylonian terracotta plaque; VA 5392)
The central section of a Uruk tablet from the Seleucid period (fig. 2) kept at the Vorderasiatische Museum in Berlin (VAT 7851; Weidner, 1967: 12-15) bears three figures. The first one represents seven stars in the middle of which the Sumerian ideogram for the Pleiades (MUL.MUL ―the Stars‖) is written. The se- cond figure is a man inscribed in the lunar circum- ference (Beaulieu, 1999). The third figure is a ram- paging bull of the zebu type (Bos indicus) to be iden- tified with the Taurus; on his back are visible the bristle, that is to say the Pleiades.
The Pleiades may stand as a pars pro toto of the Tau- rus constellation and thus appear in the Zodiac in substitution of the Taurus.
Credit - L. VERDERAME
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