The proud celestial lion, Leo, is among our oldest constellations. Before Stonehenge or the Egyptian pyramids were built, astronomers in the country of Elam – on the north-eastern shore of the Persian Gulf – celebrated these stars with the name of their most fearsome natural predator.
Elamite inscriptions teem with depictions of both lions and bulls, and they transferred their veneration to the heavens. Five thousand years ago, they named the star pattern where the Sun crossed the equator at the Spring Equinox “the bull in front”: our constellation Taurus. And the constellation where the Sun lay when it was most ferocious, at Midsummer, they named after the lion.
