Explore the etymology and symbolism of the constellations
Lyra
the Lyre
Urania's Mirror 1825
Lyra represents the lyre, an ancient stringed musical instrument. Lyra has titles identifying it with a variety of stringed instruments and some of these names might be due to a lack of knowledge of what a lyre was. That there was a difference between the lyre and the cithara is certain. Hermes invented the lyre, and Apollo invented the cithara (the zither and guitar are related to this word). "The lyre and chelys on the one hand, and the cithara and phorminx on the other, were similar or nearly identical" [1]. Aratos called Lyra Khelus olige, the Little Tortoise or Shell; Greek Khelus is equivalent to the Latin word Chelys (olige from Greek oligos, meaning 'little'). The chelys or lyre is a stringed musical instrument which had a vaulted back of tortoise-shell, or of wood shaped like that shell. The word cizelys was used in allusion to the oldest lyre of the Greeks which was said to have been invented by Hermes. According to tradition he was attracted by sounds of music while walking on the banks of the Nile, and found they proceeded from the shell of a tortoise across which were stretched tendons which the wind had set in vibration (Homeric Hymn to Hermes, 475 I) [2]. Pausanias says that it was in Khelydorea ('rich in Tortoises') adjoining Mount Kyllene, in Arcadia, that Hermes is said to have found a tortoise and made the lyre [3].
All living turtles belong to the crown group Chelonia, this generic name was derived from Greek Khelus (tortoise), Latin Chelys:
"When the wedding of Zeus and Hera took place, Hermes invited not only the gods, but also all the humans and even the animals to attend. Chelone was the only person who stayed at home. Hermes noticed that she was not there; he came down to earth, took hold of the house with the girl inside it and cast them both into a river. Chelone was changed into a tortoise which, like her, is inseparable from its house" [Grimal].
Another version:
"Zeus asked the tortoise (Khelone) her reason for not having come to the feast. The tortoise said, 'Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.' Zeus got angry at the tortoise and ordered her to carry her house with her wherever she went" [Aesop, Fables 508 (from Chambry 125) 4]
The word
chelone, is a siege performed with shields united so as to
resemble the shell of a tortoise;
the same as Latin testudo,
from Greek kelone, 'tortoise', from
Greek kelus, 'tortoise', literally 'the yellow animal', related
to Greek khloos 'greenish-yellow color', and cognate with Old
Slavonic zely, from Indo-European base *ghel-
'yellow' [Klein
Testudo, Lyrae Testudo, and
Testa, were Latin names for this constellation. Turtles,
Tortoises, and Terrapins are reptiles of the order Testudines
(all living turtles belong to the crown group Chelonia) [5].
Testudines, Testudinidae, from Latin,
and Chelonian from Greek are used interchangeably for
this family of reptiles and have the same meaning. Latin testudo
is related to the word test, meaning a cupel for
refining or separating metals; also has the meaning of an
examination or trial, and probably cognate with Latin texere,
'to weave' [Klein
The Lyre has architectural associations in mythology; in the hands of Amphion Thebes was built with the music of his lyre. "The tones of Amphion's lyre built the walls of Thebes" [6]. "The magic of his music caused the stones to move into place on their own accord" [7]. The Testudines, or chelonians, carry their homes on their back; architectural skills are needed to build a home.
Text and weaving: Penelope tells the story of Odysseus as she weaves it at her loom. She ravels and unravels in a continuously changing tapestry of meaning [8].
The
word lyre, from Greek lura, is etymologically
related to the word lyric,
from Greek lurikos, 'pertaining
to, or singing to, the lyre'.
Erato is the Muse of lyric poetry and mime. Nature might
provide an understanding of this connection between mime,
lyric and lyre. The
Lyrebirds
are ground-dwelling Australian birds most notable for their
extraordinary ability to mimic natural and artificial
sounds from their environment — chainsaws, car engines, alarms,
rifle-shots, camera shutters, barking dogs and crying babies. Lyrebirds
are shy birds and a constant stream of bird calls coming from one place
is often the only way of identifying them and their presence.
“The ancients called the cithara fidicula or fidicen,
because the strings of this instrument agreed together among
themselves in the same way as happens among those who have trust (fides)”.
The cithara in antiquity had seven strings. Whence it is said in
Vergil (Aen. 6.646): ...'the seven different notes'. Vergil
speaks of differences because no string gives a sound like that of
the neighboring string. But there are seven strings either because
they fill out the entire vocal range, or because heaven resonates
with seven motions...
The lyre (lyra)
is so called from the word lerein (i.e.
'speak frivolously'), that is, from 'variety of voices,' because it
renders diverse sounds. They say that the lyre was first invented by
Mercury in the following way. When the Nile was receding into its
channels, it left behind various animals on the plains, and a
tortoise was one that was stranded. When it decomposed, and its
tendons remained stretched out in the shell, it made a sound when
Mercury plucked it. Mercury made a lyre of this shape and handed it
over to Orpheus, who was by far its most zealous student. Whence it
is thought that by his art he controlled not only wild beasts but
also the rocks and the woods by the modulation of his song. On
account of his love of musical pursuits and praise of song,
musicians have imagined, in the fictions of their tales, his lyre as
being located among the stars” [The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville
Manilius giving the astrological influences of the constellation:
"...
and one may see among the stars the Lyre, its arms spread apart in
heaven, with which in time gone by Orpheus charmed all that his
music reached, making his way even to the ghosts of the dead and
causing the decrees of hell to yield to his song. Wherefore it has
honour in heaven and power to match its origin : then it drew in its
train forests and rocks; now it leads the stars after it and makes
off with the vast orb of the revolving sky". [Manilius,
Astronomica
"Next, with the rising of the Lyre, there floats forth from Ocean
the shape of the tortoise-shell (testudinis),
which under the fingers of its heir (Mercury) gave forth sound only
after death; once with it did Orpheus, Oeagrus' son, impart sleep to
waves, feeling to rocks, hearing to trees, tears to Pluto, and
finally a limit to death. Hence will come endowments of song and
tuneful strings, hence pipes of different shapes which prattle
melodiously, and whatever is moved to utterance by touch of hand or
force of breath. The child of the Lyre will sing beguiling songs at
the banquet, his voice adding mellowness to the wine and holding the
night in thrall. Indeed, even when harassed by cares, he will
rehearse some secret strain, tuning his voice to a stealthy hum and,
left to himself, he will ever burst into song which can charm no
ears but his own. Such are the ordinances of the Lyre, which at the
rising of Libra's twenty-sixth degree will direct its prongs to the
stars". [Manilius, book 5,
Astronomica
Fidis, a ghost constellation, or Lyra? A few pages after giving the influences
for Lyra (p.327, see above) Manilius gives the astrological influences
of a constellation which he call Fidis (translated Lute, on p.333-335)
to which the translators of Astronomica
"When the constellation of the Lute (Fidis)
rises into the mighty heavens, there shall be born a man to
investigate wrong-doing and punish the guilty he will get to the
bottom of crimes by sifting the evidence for them and bring to light
- all that lies hidden under the silence of deceit.
Hence, too, are begotten the merciless torturer, the dispenser of
penalties, whoever insists on the truth and abominates evil, and the
man whose profound understanding will put an end to disputes.
[Translator's note: The synonymous fidicula occasionally
used to designate the constellation of the Lyre, also signifies an
instrument of torture; and it is clearly this significance which
furnishes the poet with his character-sketch]". [Manilius, book 5,
Astronomica
© Anne Wright 2008.
| Fixed stars in Lyra | |||||||
| Star | 1900 | 2000 | R A | Decl 1950 | Lat | Mag | Sp |
| Vega alpha | 13CAP55 | 15CAP19 | 278 48 41 | +38 44 09 | +61 44 07 | 0.03 | A1 |
| zeta | 16CAP44 | 18CAP07 | 280 45 43 | +37 33 06 | +60 20 54 | 4.29 | A9 |
| epsilon | 17CAP15 | 18CAP38 | 280 40 14 | +39 37 00 | +62 23 59 | 6.00 | A4 |
| Sheliak beta | 17CAP30 | 18CAP53 | 282 03 30 | +33 18 12 | +55 59 24 | 3.50 var | B2 |
| delta | 20CAP01 | 21CAP24 | 282 59 41 | +36 54 29 | +59 25 24 | 5.51 | B3 |
| Sulaphat gamma | 20CAP32 | 21CAP55 | 284 16 04 | +32 37 11 | +55 01 07 | 3.30 | B9 |
Hevelius, Firmamentum, 1690
from
Star Names
Ariones harpe fyn.
— Chaucer's Hous of Fame.
Lyra, the Lyre or Harp, is the Leier of Germany, Lira of Italy, and Lyre of France, and anciently represented the fabled instrument invented by Hermes and given to his half-brother Apollo, who in turn transferred it to his son Orpheus, the musician of the Argonauts, of whom Shakespeare wrote:
{Page 281} Everything that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their heads, and then lay by.
While Manilius said that its service in its last owner's hands, in the release of Eurydice from Hades,
Gained it Heaven, and still its force appears,
As then the Rocks it now draws on the Stars.
From its ownership by these divinities came various adjectival titles: Ermaie and Kullenaie, referring to Hermes and his birthplace (Mount Kyllini or Cyllenia); Cicero's Clara Fides Cyllenea and Mercurialis, that Varro also used; and the Cithara, or Lyra, Apollinis, Orphei, Orphica, and Mercurii. It also was Lyra Arionis and Amphionis, from those skilful players; but usually it was plain Lyra and, later on, Cithara; Fides, — the Fidis of Columella, who, with Pliny, also used Fidicula; Decachordum; and Tympanum. In this same connection we see Fidicen, the Lyrist; Deferens Psalterium; and Canticum, a Song.
The occasional early title Aquilaris was from the fact that the instrument was often shown hanging from the claws of the Eagle (Aquila) also imagined in its stars.
In Greece it was Kithara; the ancient phormigx, the first stringed instrument of the Greek bards; and Aura or Aure, and Aura katopheres, the Pendent Lyre.
Ovid mentioned its seven strings as equaling the number of the Pleiades; Longfellow confirming this number in his Occultation of Orion:
with its celestial keys,
Its chords of air, its frets of fire,
The Samian's great Aeolian Lyre,
Rising through all its sevenfold bars,
From earth unto the fixed stars.
Still it has been shown with but six, and a vacant space for the seventh, which Spence, in the Polymetis, referred to the Lost Pleiad.
Manilius seems to have made two distinct constellations of this, — Lyra and Fides, — although we do not know their boundaries, and the subject is somewhat confused in his allusions to it.
The Persian Hafiz called it the Lyre of Zurah, and his countrymen translated Kithara, by Sanj Rumi; the Arabians turning this into Al Sanj, from which Hyde and others derived Asange, Asenger, Asanges, Asangue, Sangue, and Mesanguo, all titles for Lyra in Europe centuries ago. But Assemani thought that tliese were from Schickard's Azzango, a Cymbal. The {Page 282} reproduced Alfonsine Tables of 1863-67 give Alsanja; while Sanj was again turned into Arnig and Aznig in the translation of Reduan's Commentary, and into the still more unlikely Brinek, as has been explained by Ideler.
In Bohemia our Lyra was Hauslicky na Nebi, the Fiddle in the Sky; but the Teutons knew it as Harapha, and the Anglo-Saxons as Hearpe, which Fortunatus of the 6th century, the poet-bishop of Poitiers, called the barbarians' Harpa. With the early Britons it was Talyn Arthur, that hero's Harp. Novidius said that it was King David’s Harp; but Julius Schiller, that it was the Manger of the Infant Saviour, Praesepe Salvatoris.
Jugum has been wrongly applied to it, from the Zugon (yoke) of Homer, but this was for the Yoke, or Cross-bar, of the instrument, with no reference to the constellation, which Homer probably did not know; still the equivalent Zugoma was in frequent use for it by Hipparchos.
Sundry other fancied figures have been current for these stars.
Acosta mentioned them as Urcuchillay, the parti-colored Ram in charge of the heavenly flocks of the ancient Peruvians; Albegala and Albegalo occur with Bayer and Riccioli, like the Arabic Al Baghl, a Mule, although their appropriateness is not obvious; and Nasr al Din wrote of alpha, epsilon, and zeta collectively as Dik Paye among the common people of Persia; this was the Khutro-pous, or Greek tripod, and the Uthfiyyah of the nomad Arabs.
Chirka, also attributed to Nasr al Din, was, by some scribe's error for Hazaf, figured in this location on the Dresden globe as a circular vessel with a flat bottom and two handles; but on the Borgian it is a Scroll, commonly known, according to Assemani, as Rabesco.
The association of Lyra's stars with a bird perhaps originated from a conception of the figure current for millenniums in ancient India, — that of an Eagle or Vulture; and, in Akkadia, of the great storm-bird Urakhga before this was there identified with Corvus. But the Arabs' title, Al Nasr al Waki’ — Chilmead's Alvaka, — referring to the swooping Stone Eagle of the Desert, generally has been attributed to the configuration of the group alpha, epsilon, zeta, which shows the bird with half-closed wings, in contrast to Al Nasr al Ta'ir, the Flying Eagle, our Aquila, whose smaller stars, beta and gamma, on either side of alpha, indicate the outspread wings. Scaliger cited the synonymous Al Nasr al Sakit, from which came the Nessrusakat of Bayer and Nessrusakito of Assemani.
Al Sufi, alone of extant Arabian authors, called it Al Iwazz, the Goose.
Chrysococca wrote of it as kathemenos, the Sitting Vulture, and it has been Aquila marina, the Osprey, and Falco sylvestris, the Wood Falcon.
{Page 283} Its common title two centuries ago was Aquila cadens, or Vultur cadens, the Swooping Vulture, popularly translated the Falling Grype, and figured with upturned head bearing a lyre in its beak. Bartsch's map has the outline of a lyre on the front of an eagle or vulture.
Aratos called it Khelus olige, the Little Tortoise or Shell, thus going back to the legendary origin of the instrument from the empty covering of the creature cast upon the shore with the dried tendons stretched across it. Lowell thus described its discovery and use by Hermes:
So there it lay through wet and dry,
As empty as the last new sonnet,
Till by and by came Mercury,
And, having mused upon it,
"Why, here," cried he, "the thing of things
In shape, material and dimension!
Give it but strings and, lo ! it sings -
A wonderful invention."
The equivalent Latin word Chelys does not seem to have been often applied to the constellation, but the occasional adjectival titles Lutaria, Mud-inhabiting, and Marina were, and are, appropriate, while Testudo has been known from classical times. Horace thus alluded to it:
Decus Phoebi, et dapibus supremi
Grata testudo Jovis; O laborum
Dulce lenimen;
the poet doubtless having in mind the current story that the Tortoise-Lyre was placed in the sky near Hercules for the alleviation of his toil. The Alfonsine illustration is of a Turtle, Galapago in the original Spanish, which Caesius turned into the indefinite Belua aquatica, and La Lande into Mus and Musculus, some marine creature, not the little rodent.
Other names were Testa, the creature's Upper Shell; and Pupilla, which, by a roundabout process of continued blundering explained by Ideler, was derived from Testa, or, as seems more likely, from Aquila. Bayer's Basanos is probably a mistranslation of Testa that also signified a Test.
Smyth said that another Testudo was at one time proposed as a constellation title for some of the outside stars of Cetus, between the latter's tail and the cord of Pisces.
When the influence of Greek astronomy made itself felt in Arabia, many of the foregoing designations, or adaptations thereof, became current; among them Nablon, from Nabla, or Nablium, the Phoenician Harp; Al Lura, which degenerated into Allore, Alloure, Alohore, Alchoro, etc., found {Page 284} in the Alfonsine Tables and other bygone lists; Shalyak and Sulahfat, words for the Tortoise, Ulug Beg's translator having the former as Shelyak, which Piazzi repeated in his catalogue; Salibak, which heads Kazwini's chapter on the Lyre; — Ideler tracing these Arabic words to Khelus. They were turned into Azulafe and Zuliaca in the original Alfonsine Tables, and Schaliaf in Chilmead's Treatise. The Almagest of 1515 combines all these figures for Lyra's stars in its Allore.- et est Vultur cadens: et est Testudo; while that of 1551 says Lyrae Testudo.
But, notwithstanding the singularly diverse conceptions as to its character, the name generally has been Lyra, and the figure so shown. Roman coins still in existence bear it thus, as does one from Delos, Apollo's birthplace in the Cyclades; and Cilician money had this same design with the head of Aratos on the obverse. The Leyden Manuscript has the conventional instrument, with side bars of splendid horns issuing from the tortoise-shell base; the Venetian Hyginus of 1488, with a similar figure, calls it Lura as well as Lyra; but the drawing of Hevelius shows "an instrument which neither in ancient nor in modern times ever had existence." Durer's illustration, as well as others, places it with the base towards the north.
Lyra is on the western edge of the Milky Way, next to Hercules, with the neck of Cygnus on the east, and contains 48 stars according to Argelander, 69 according to Heis. Its location is noted as one of the various regions of concentration of stars with banded spectra, Secchi's 3d type, showing a stage of development probably in advance of that of our sun.
From near its kappa, 5° southwest of Wega (Vega), radiate the swiftly moving Lyraids, the meteors which are at their maximum of appearance on the 19th and 20th of April, but visible in lesser degree from the 5th of that month to the 10th of May. These have been identified as followers of the comet 1 of 1861.
. . . azure Lyra, like a woman's eye,
Burning with soft blue lustre.
— Willis' The Scholar of Thebit ten Khorat.
[Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, Richard H. Allen, 1889.]
- ANDROMEDA
- ANTLIA
- APUS
- AQUARIUS
- AQUILA
- ARA
- ARGO NAVIS
- ARIES
- AURIGA
- BOOTES
- CAELUM
- CAMELOPARDALIS
- CANCER
- CANIS MAJOR
- CANIS MINOR
- CANES VENATICI
- CAPRICORN
- CARINA
- CASSIOPEIA
- CENTAURUS
- CEPHEUS
- CETUS
- CHAMAELEON
- CIRCINUS
- COLUMBA
- COMA BERENICES
- CORONA AUSTRALIS
- CORONA BOREALIS
- CORVUS
- CRATER
- CRUX
- CYGNUS
- DELPHINUS
- DORADO
- DRACO
- EQUULEUS
- ERIDANUS
- FORNAX
- GEMINI
- GRUS
- HERCULES
- HOROLOGIUM
- HYDRA
- HYDRUS
- INDUS
- LACERTA
- LEO
- LEO MINOR
- LEPUS
- LIBRA
- LUPUS
- LYNX
- LYRA
- MENSA
- MICROSCOPIUM
- MONOCEROS
- MUSCA
- NORMA
- OCTANS
- OPHIUCHUS
- ORION
- PAVO
- PEGASUS
- PERSEUS
- PHOENIX
- PICTOR
- PISCES
- PISCIS AUSTRINUS
- PUPPIS
- PYXIS
- RETICULUM
- SAGITTA
- SAGITTARIUS
- SCORPIO
- SCULPTOR
- SCUTUM
- SERPENS
- SEXTANS
- TAURUS
- TELESCOPIUM
- TRIANGULUM
- TRIANGULUM AUSTRALIS
- TUCANA
- URSA MAJOR
- URSA MINOR
- VELA
- VIRGO
- VOLANS
- VULPECULA