NAMES OF THE PLEIADES
The Pleiades are known in Mesopotamia through the Sumerian name MUL.MUL ―the stars‖. This term is known only from Assyrian and Babylonian sources, particularly from the Ist millennium BCE. In fact the later tradition in Akkadian language adopted Sumerian terms for the stars and constellation names, while we have few or no references at all to them in Sumerian sources.
Lexical documents equate the Sumerian term MUL.MUL ―the stars‖ to the Akkadian zappu ―bristle‖ (Gössmann, 1950: no. 279; Kurtik, 2007: m35), which is however seldom mentioned in astrological and astronomical texts as well as in literature. The term ―Bristle‖ relates this group of stars with the mane of the Taurus constellation. Taurus, which is called ―The Bull of Heaven‖ (GU4.AN.NA; Gössmann, 1950: no. 77; Kurtik, 2007: g33), may be identified with the homonym mythical being. In the Gilgameš Sumerian tale Gilgameš and the Bull of Heaven and the related episode of the Akkadian epic (Tablet VI), the god- dess Inanna/Ištar makes the gigantic bull come down from the sky to punish Gilgameš (fig. 1; George, 2003: 47-54, 166-175)
