Naming the -Stars
SIR.—The Astronomer Royal, in his review of Mr. Peter Lum's book, The Stars in Our Heavens,- says: " The names of the star constellations, . with the exception of those in a belt of sky around the south celestial pole . . . were assigned in the third millennium B.c." Some no doubt were, but obiidusly such names as Sextaos were not given them, and the process of constellation-naming has in fact been a continuous one from early times to the nineteenth century.
. The Astronomer Royal adds that the names were assigned " almost .certainly by the people who lived in the region of Mesopotamia, though some have since acquired names from classical mythology." On the rela- tive contribution of the Babylonians • and Greeks to the naming of the stars I ask your readers to suspend judgement until they see in book form a manuscript on The Names of the Stars left behind at his death by Mr;E. J. Webb, on whom the editor of-the new Liddell and Scott's Lexicon relied for his knowledge of the Greek astronomical texts. In the first flush of the Assiriological discoveries of the nineteenth century the Babylonian_ origin of astronomical science was enthusiastically proclaimed, and it las been uncritically repeated on innumerable occasions since ; but There is reason to believe that, except in those matters where the Greeks themselves acknowledged their borrowing, the Babylonian primacy has been exaggerated.—Yours faithfully, - -
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