10 Amazing Ancient Relics

In spite of astrology, the ancients accumulated a surprisingly large body of astronomical knowledge. This age-old love of stars bridges time and space. Most importantly, it reminds us of just how little we are.

10 Babylonian Jupiter Tablet

Astronomical inscriptions have turned up in all sorts of unexpected places, including ancient drinking vessels. A 2,600-year-old skyphos (double-handled cup) was pulled from a ditch at the Halai acropolis outside Thebes and seems to combine the two traditional Greek pastimes of stargazing and drinking.

The wine cup depicts a seemingly random zoological mishmash. On it, we see a bull, a snake, a large feral cat (possibly a lion or panther), a scorpion, a hare-dog creature, and most unexpectedly, a dolphin. At first glance, the cup displays the common motif of a hunting scene. However, that blasted dolphin voids this hypothesis.

Instead, University of Missouri researchers posit that the animals represent constellations. The relative positions are inaccurate but only because ancient artisans organized the constellations by season and not their placement in the night sky.

The discovery opens up the exciting possibility that other astronomical depictions have gone unnoticed in plain sight—just as the cup itself languished in obscurity at the Lamia Archaeological Museum in Greece.

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