The Zodiac --- The Constellation of Aries the Ram

 

Aries The Ram is one of the most ancient of the constellations. It is considered the first constellation of the Zodiac. In ancient days Aries was the home of 0'0" RA 0'00" DEC, the center of celestial cosmography. This "First Point of Aries," the moment the Sun crosses the double-zero coordinates, coincides with the Vernal (Spring) Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere and the Autumnal (Fall) Equinox in the Southern, one of two days of the year when night and day are of equal length. Due to precession, the wobble of the Earth of its axis which causes the signs to shift one degree every 72 years, the First Point of Aries is now located on the border of Pisces and Aquarius (but it is still referred to as the First Point of Aries). 

A mouflon. Except for the loyal dog, the mouflon is man's oldest domesticated animal. Animal husbandry over the last 10,000 years, took this wild, heavy-horned creature and turned it into the docile sheep we know today.

The gylph for Aries has a marked resemblance to the mouflon's horns.

In the earliest extant records of the Sumerians Aries was visualized not as a male sheep but as a farmer. Interestingly, the Sumerians had a tale, "Of The Grain And The Hoof" in which the gods called two brothers, one a shepherd (equivalent to the Biblical Abel) and one a farmer (equivalent to the Biblical Cain) to each explain why their way of life was superior to the other, after which the gods would vote on how mankind would toil and whether he would live as a wanderer or a townsman. The brothers spoke (and according to achaeanthropologists their arguments were about equal in force). The gods, in a close vote, decided that Man would till the soil and dwell in cities. However, the shepherd was merely thanked for his time and sent on his way. No one was punished nor killed in this story. In something of a sequel, the farmer helped his brother birth the first ram, and the shepherd helped his brother build the first apparatus for carding wool. According to the tale, the farmer in the sky was turned into a sheep in memory of man's nomadic days. 

One rendition of the stars of Aries. The very ancient Sumerians claimed this figure was their "Cain."

A more modern representation of Aries. It looks like not much of anything.

In this Aries asterism the horns of the ram are obvious.

Later Mesopotamian tales speak of the killing of Abel, but in ways that are surprising. In one tale, he attempts to kill Cain first; in another, he gives himself up as a blood sacrifice to fecundate his brother's land; and in a third his death marks the transition between hunting-gathering and agricultural society. Cold-blooded murder is a very late development. 

In the forgotten years when the Sumerians wandered as hunter-gatherers they likely kept flocks, though of what animals no one knows. When they entered the general area of the Middle East they made the acquaintance of the mouflon, a creature that is somewhere close to the progenitor of both sheep and goat-antelopes. Mouflon proved easy to domesticate, gave Man meat and milk and hides and wool, and eventually gave rise to the sheep we know today. Mouflon were critical to early Sumerian survival and remained important even after the Sumerians became settled (85% of Sumerians lived in cities, and Uruk had a population of 80,000 at one time, a significant fraction of the five million or so humans on earth at the time). It is of no surprise that this animal became immortalized in the stars. 

The asterism of Aries varies, depending on which dim stars are used to form the figure. It can be seen as a human figure. Some draw it as a mere crooked line, and others as a Y-shaped figure that more closely resembles its glyph of a ram's horns. There seems to be no "standard" representation of Aries the star pattern.

Aries' brightest star is Alpha Arietis or Hamal. 3000-2500 years ago, and just up until the time of the birth of Christ, the Sun conjuncted Hamal on the day of the Spring Equinox. Hamal is the sixth star in the Nautical Almanac and has its own post.

An interesting sky map, sans asterisms. The "First Point of Aries" is either end of the dotted line that represents the ecliptic. Notice that the First Point of Aries is now very nearly the Last Point of Pisces.