Recent work on the origin of the Greek constellations

Rock carvings at Yazilikaya, Hattusa, thought to represent a lunisolar calendar, ~ 1230 BCE

Following further research into the origin of the Greek constellations, I quote below from the introduction to a very recent (2022) article by Kechagias and Hoffmann "Intercultural Misunderstandings as a possible Source of Ancient Constellations".

Constellations are a very popular topic with which we deal in any planetarium show and astronomy textbook -- unfortunately in most cases only by summarising ancient fairy tales. The real origins of the constellations are hardly known. Undoubtedly, today's constellations are rooted in the ancient Greek tradition of Ptolemy's Almagest (Delporte 1930). However, the origin of the 48 ancient constellations of the Almagest remain largely enigmatic in contrast to the modern southern constellations, where the exact place, date and way of their invention is known (Ridpath 1988, Hoffmann 2021d, Frank 2015, 148-149). There has been much speculation about possible origins in ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt (Boll 1903) with the first hypothesis being more popular due to the panbabylonism in the first half of the 20th century. It is supported by rather recent studies on the exchange between the Greeks and the Eastern peoples in Homeric times (Petropoulos 2018). Nevertheless, evidence for the conjectures about the constellations is hardly to be found. One of the reasons might be the lack of relevant sources or relevant archaeological material which informs us about detailed procedures of creating constellations. Furthermore, the Mesopotamian origins of the constellations are poorly studied and we only have compilations of sources (Gössmann 1950, Hunger & Pingree 1999, Kurtik 2007). In particular, almost no research has been done on how the constellations of Mesopotamia were transformed over many centuries or even millennia of their use (Hoffmann 2016, 2017b, 2018, 2021c,d).

The important conclusion from this and many other studies is that any claim, such as that made by Biblical Scholar David Miano in his YT videos opposing my work, that the origin of the Ancient Greek constellations is known, is false. While a few facts are known from surviving written sources, like those mentioned above, just about everything else is conjecture.

We must be especially careful about making the logical error that attributes prior knowledge simply on the basis of surviving texts. That is, just because Old Babylonian (early 2nd millennium BCE) texts record the names of many Mesopotamian constellations, some of which are later seen in Greek texts, it does not necessarily mean the Mesopotamians invented them. It is entirely possible the Greeks invented them and information travel was in the other direction, or that both the Greeks and Mesopotamians inherited them from an earlier third culture.

In fact, given the preponderance of animal symbols on ancient artefacts from the prehistoric period (4th millennium BCE and earlier) of the near east (including Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran etc.) together with other symbols with obvious astronomical interpretations, such as bull symbols decorated with stars or zodiac-like symbols next to 'sunset' semi-circles, we should be open to a much earlier origin for many of the known constellations and symbols.

My work that compares symbols seen on GT's pillars with these familiar constellations strongly suggests the origin for some of these constellations is much older than generally acknowledged. But this should not be surprising as many scholars, like Hartner and Gurshtein, already argued this. I will aim to give a better account of the evidence for much more ancient knowledge for some of these constellations in a forthcoming update to my 'Origins of the Greek constellations' manuscript in the near future.