Most ancient cultures saw pictures in the stars of the night
sky. The earliest known efforts to catalogue the stars date to
cuneiform texts and artifacts dating back roughly 6000 years.
These remnants, found in the valley of the Euphrates River,
suggest that the ancients observing the heavens saw the lion,
the bull, and the scorpion in the stars. The constellations as
we know them today are undoubtedly very different from those
first few--our night sky is a compendium of images from a number
of different societies, both ancient and modern. By far, though,
we owe the greatest debt to the mythology of the ancient Greeks
and Romans. The earliest references to the mythological
significance of the Greek constellations may be found in the
works of Homer, which probably date to the 7th century B.C. In
the Iliad, for instance, Homer describes the creation of
Achilleus's shield by the craftsman god Hephaistos: On it he
made the earth, and sky, and sea, the weariless sun and the moon
waxing full, and all the constellat