Nowadays the Square of Pegasus has reached 0h, but this what not so in ancient times. In the Babylonian zodiac it - described as an inundated Field - rose earlier in the year:
Their
Great
One
must
have
been
Aquarius
(perhaps
pinpointed
as
Sadalmelik,
the
star
of
the
Lucky
King),
but
between
the
Great
One
and
Field
there
was
a
Swallow
instead
of
the
southern
fish
of
our
Pisces.
This
Swallow
is
probably
the
same
as
the
Chinese
Swallow
close
to
the
end
of
February:
| 10 |
Girl |
ε Aquarii (Albali) |
Bat |
| 11 |
Emptiness |
β Aquarii (Sadalsud) |
Rat |
| 12 |
Rooftop |
α Aquarii (Sadalmelik) |
Swallow |
| end of February |
| 13 |
House |
α Pegasi (Markab) |
Pig |
| March equinox |
| 14 |
Wall |
γ Pegasi (Algenib) |
Porcupine |
And
the
other
characteristic
connected
with
the
Chinese Sadalmelik
-
the
name
Rooftop
for
the
station
-
possibly
could
give
us some
clue
as
to
why
the
top
of
the
pointed
headgear
of
the
Great
One
touches
the
belly
of
the
Swallow
(maybe
equal
to
the
Belly
of
the
Fish,
Al
Batn
Al
Hūt,
ruled
by
the
Girdle
star,
Mirach).
| 24 |
Al Fargh al Mukdim |
Fore Spout |
α Pegasi (Markab), β (Scheat) |
349 |
March 5 (429) |
|
322 |
| 25 |
Al Fargh al Thāni |
Rear Spout |
γ Pegasi (Algenib), α Andromedae (Sirrah) |
0 |
March 21 (445) |
16 |
338 |
| 26 |
Al Batn Al Hūt |
Belly of the Fish |
β Andromedae (Mirach) |
16.0 |
April 6 (461) |
16 |
354 |
| 27 |
Al Thurayya |
Many Little Ones |
Messier 45 (Pleiades) |
56.3 |
May 16 (501) |
40 |
394 |
| 28 |
Al Butain |
The Bellies |
δ Arietis (Botein), ε, ρ³ |
|
|
|
|
A
girdle
is
drawn
around
the
midline
of
the
torso,
across
the
belly:
... The fish came near the surface then, so that Maui's line was slack for a moment, and he shouted to it not to get tangled. But then the fish plunged down again, all the way to the bottom. And Maui had to strain, and haul away again. And at the height of all this excitement his belt worked loose, and his maro fell off and he had to kick it from his feet. He had to do the rest with nothing on.
The brothers of Maui sat trembling in the middle of the canoe, fearing for their lives. For now the water was frothing and heaving, and great hot bubbles were coming up, and steam, and Maui was chanting the incantation called Hiki, which makes heavy weights light.
At length there appeared beside them the gable and thatched roof of the house of Tonganui, and not only the house, but a huge piece of the land attached to it. The brothers wailed, and beat their heads, as they saw that Maui had fished up land, Te Ika a Maui, the fish of Maui. And there were houses on it, and fires burning, and people going about their daily tasks. Then Maui hitched his line round one of the paddles laid under a pair of thwarts, and picked up his maro,
and
put
it
on
again
...
| Maro Maro: A sort of small banner or pennant of bird feathers tied to a stick. Maroa: 1. To stand up, to stand. 2. Fathom (measure). See kumi. Vanaga.
Maro: 1. June. 2. Dish-cloth T P Mgv.: maro, a small girdle or breech clout. Ta.: maro, girdle. Maroa: 1. A fathom; maroa hahaga, to measure. Mq.: maó, a fathom. 2. Upright, stand up, get up, stop, halt. Mq.: maó, to get up, to stand up. Churchill.
Pau.: Maro, hard, rough, stubborn. Mgv.: maro, hard, obdurate, tough. Ta.: mârô, obstinate, headstrong. Sa.: mālō, strong. Ma.: maro, hard, stubborn. Churchill.
Ta.: Maro, dry, desiccated. Mq.: mao, thirst, desiccated. Fu.: malo, dry. Ha.: malo, maloo, id. Churchill.
Mgv.: Maroro, the flying fish. (Ta.: marara, id.) Mq.: maoo, id. Sa.: malolo, id. Ma.: maroro, id. Churchill. |
MALO ¹, s. Haw., a strip of kapa or cloth tied around the loins of men to hide the sexual organs. Polynesian, ubique, malo, maro, id., ceinture, girdle-cloth, breech-cloth.Sanskr., mal, mall, to hold; malla, a cup; maltaka, a leaf to wrap up something, a cup; malâ-mallaka, a piece of cloth worn over the privities ... Greek, μηρνομαι; Dor., μαρνομαι, to draw up, furl, wind round. No etymon in Liddell and Scott.
MALO ², v. Haw., to dry up, as water in pools or rivers, be dry, as land, in opposition to water, to wither, as vegetables drying up; maloo, id., dry barren.
Ta., maro, dry, not wet; marohi, dry, withered. A later application of this word in a derivative sense is probably the Sam. malo, to be hard, be strong; malosi, strong; the Marqu. mao, firm, solid; N. Zeal., maroke, dry; Rarot., Mang., maro, dry and hard, as land.
Sanskr., mŗi, to die; maru, a desert, a mountain; marut, the deities of wind; marka, a body; markara, a barren woman; mart-ya, a mortar, the earth; mîra, ocean.
For the argument by which A. Pictet connects maru and mira with mŗi, see 'Orig. Ind.Eur', i. 110-111. It is doubtless correct. But in that case 'to die' could hardly have been the primary sense or conception of mŗi. To the early Aryans the desert, the maru, which approached their abodes on the west, must have presented itself primarily under the aspect of 'dry, arid, sterile, barren', a sense still retained in the Polynesian maro. Hence the sense of 'to wither, to die', is a secondary one. Again, those ancient Aryans called the deity of the wind the Marut; and if that word, as it probably does, refers itself to the root or stem mŗi, the primary sense of that word was certainly not 'to die', for the winds are not necessarily 'killing', but they are 'drying', and that is probably the original sense of their name.
Lat., morior, mors, &c. Sax., mor, Eng., moor, equivalent to the Sanskr. maru." (Fornander)
|
The Easter Island month Maro was June, they say. But the heliacal date of Mirach was April 6. Possibly there was a lunar month Maro in April, and a sun month Maro in June? The common denominator could be a mark for where the old year was about to end. The Pleiades - 'Many Little Ones', Al Thurayya - rose with the Sun in May and in June was the solstice.
I guess the June month Maro was the result of indigenous efforts to point at a Gregorian month which had a similar meaning to an ancient premissionary month Maro. A solar year could once have begun after the June solstice, like the Celtic year:
... Midsummer is the flowering season of the oak, which is the tree of endurance and triumph, and like the ash is said to 'court the lightning flash'. Its roots are believed to extend as deep underground as its branches rise in the air - Virgil mentions this - which makes it emblematic of a god whose law runs both in Heaven and in the Underworld ... The month, which takes its name from Juppiter the oak-god, begins on June 10th and ends of July 7th. Midway comes St. John's Day, June 24th, the day on which the oak-king was sacrificially burned alive. The Celtic year was divided into two halves with the second half beginning in July, apparently after a seven-day wake, or funeral feast, in the oak-king's honour ...
Eridu could be similar to the June (Sun) Maro and the Great One similar to a Moon Maro. There are 'rivers' both at Eridu - though broken off - and in the hands of the Great One. And Aquarius has a Towel like a loose girdle around his middle:
... And at the height of all this excitement his belt worked loose, and his maro fell off and he had to kick it from his feet ...
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