oa Bears in the starry sky

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Our names for the constellations of both hemispheres largely stem from ancient Greece. The Great Bear and the Little Bear belong to the circumpolar constellations that never set. The Great Bear’s alternative appellation, the Wain, came from Mesopotamia and was known to the Greeks but never depicted by them. The prolific ancient literature is divided into “astrothetical” works (star catalogues) and “mythographical” works (the connection of the constellations to Greek myth). The two she-bears were associated with varying mythological conceptions, while transformation myths formed the background to many constellation names: Heroes, humans, and animals were transferred to the sky as stars by the gods (catasterism). The two she-bears were thus perceived as two wet nurses of Zeus, the king of the gods, on the island of Crete; other authors attempted to demonstrate a connection with Arcadia. The Germanic peoples again saw a wain in each of the two constellations, as it had formerly been the case in Mesopotamia.