Every sign has a Greek myth, but the pictures came from Babylon first, the Thai names came by way of India, and the 13th-sign story told in Thailand doesn't match the original.
Every sign has a Greek myth attached. Aries is the golden ram that flew in to save two children from being sacrificed. Cancer is the crab that the goddess Hera set in the sky after it nipped Heracles' foot. Scorpio is the scorpion sent to kill the hunter Orion. But the pictures in the sky came before the stories. The 12-part zodiac arose in Babylonian astronomy in the 1st millennium BC and was passed to the Greeks by the 2nd century BC. For several signs, Capricorn, Sagittarius and Pisces among them, the Greeks had to find a story to explain a figure they had inherited.
As for the 13th sign, Ophiuchus the serpent-bearer is a real constellation that the Sun passes through, but it isn't a sign in traditional astrology. The version retold on Thai Wikipedia has a doctor who sees a snake eat a fruit and become immortal; the Roman-era version has the healer Asclepius watching one snake bring healing herbs to another. And the story that NASA added a 13th sign? NASA itself says it never changed the zodiac.
The pictures came from Babylon
How the zodiac travelled from Babylon to Thailand is told in full in our article on where astrology got its meanings. Here we look only at what the Babylonians saw. The constellation that is now the ram was first "the Hired Man," a farm labourer, and probably became a ram through its link with Dumuzi the shepherd god. The bull was "the Bull of Heaven," which the goddess Ishtar sent to kill Gilgamesh. The twins were "the Great Twins," the lion "the Great Lion," and the scorpion was MUL.GIR.TAB, literally "the creature with a burning sting." The goat-fish is one of the oldest images of all: it appears on cylinder seals from around the 21st century BC and has never changed shape.
Some signs the Babylonians saw quite differently. Cancer's name, MUL.AL.LUL, can mean either a crab or a turtle, and on Babylonian boundary stones a turtle turns up regularly while a crab has never been found. Part of Virgo was "the Furrow," standing for the goddess Shala and her ear of grain, a trace still kept in the star name Spica, "ear of grain." Aquarius was the god Ea holding an overflowing vase. And Pisces was stitched together from "the Great Swallow" and Anunitum, "Lady of the Heavens."
Aries, Taurus, Gemini: a ram that flew over the sea, a bull that swam, and twins who refused to be parted
The golden ram's story begins in the house of King Athamas. Phrixus and Helle were his children by his first wife, Nephele. His second wife, Ino, was jealous enough to want them dead. She brought famine to Boeotia, then forged a message from the Oracle of Delphi saying Phrixus must be sacrificed to end it. Athamas was about to do it on Mount Laphystium when the golden ram sent by Nephele arrived. The ram flew off with both children, but Helle slipped from its back and drowned in the Dardanelles, which is why the strait was called the Hellespont after her. Phrixus reached Colchis, and the ram's fleece became the Golden Fleece that Jason later went looking for.
Taurus is Zeus in the shape of a magnificent white bull, carrying off the princess Europa. The constellation shows only the front half of the animal, explained as the bull swimming out to sea with her, its hindquarters under water. Another version makes the bull Io, a lover Zeus turned into a heifer to hide her from his wife Hera. Gemini is Castor and Pollux, both sons of Leda, but Pollux was the son of Zeus and Castor the son of Tyndareus, king of Sparta. When Castor, being mortal, died, Pollux begged Zeus to make him immortal, and Zeus did it by setting them together in the sky.
Cancer and Leo: two signs from the labours of Heracles
While Heracles was fighting the many-headed Hydra, a crab scuttled up and bit his foot, and he killed it. The goddess Hera, Heracles' enemy, placed the crab among the stars. English Wikipedia notes that in Babylon this constellation was already tied to death and the passage to the underworld, which may be where the later Greek story of Heracles and the Hydra came from.
Leo is the Nemean Lion, killed by Heracles in the first of his twelve labours. Some mythologists think that in Sumer the lion was the monster Humbaba, slain by Gilgamesh. Leo also has the most consistent name across cultures of any sign here: the Persians, Turks, Syrians, Jews and Indians all called it a lion. Its bright star Regulus, at the lion's breast, was a royal star to the Babylonians.
Virgo and Libra: several maidens, and the scales that came last
Virgo has no single main story. Greeks and Romans linked it to the goddesses Demeter and Persephone. Some said she was Astraea, goddess of justice, who left the earth for the sky when the Silver Age ended. Others said she was Erigone, daughter of Icarius of Athens: Icarius was killed by his own shepherds while they were drunk, and Erigone hanged herself in grief.
In Babylon, Libra was "the Scales," sacred to Shamash, the sun god and patron of truth and justice, though it was also called "the Claws of the Scorpion." The Greeks saw it as the scorpion's claws, part of Scorpio. It only became a constellation of its own in Rome, as the scales held by Astraea of Virgo. That makes Libra the only sign that isn't a living thing, and the last to become a sign of its own.
Scorpio and Sagittarius: the scorpion that chases Orion, and an archer nobody could pin down
In one version the hunter Orion boasted to the goddess Artemis and her mother Leto that he would kill every animal on Earth, so they sent a giant scorpion to kill him. The fight caught Zeus's eye, and he raised both combatants into the sky as a reminder to mortals to curb their pride. In another version it was Artemis's twin, Apollo, who sent the scorpion, after Orion won the goddess over by admitting she was the better hunter. In both, it was Artemis who asked Zeus to raise Orion. Ever since, Orion hunts every winter and flees every summer when the scorpion rises, which is the myth's explanation for why the two constellations never share the sky.
The Babylonians saw Sagittarius as the god Nergal, a centaur-like creature firing a bow, and the Sumerian name Pabilsag means roughly "elder paternal kinsman, chief." English Wikipedia suggests that because the Greeks inherited this Sumerian constellation, they were never sure who the archer was. Some said Chiron, the centaur son of Cronus and tutor to Jason. Some said Chiron invented the constellation himself to guide the Argonauts to the Golden Fleece. Eratosthenes said it was no centaur at all but the satyr Crotus, son of Pan, whom the Greeks credited with inventing archery.
Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces: fleeing Typhon, a great flood, and two fish
Capricorn has been a goat-fish since Babylon, so the Greeks had to find someone for it to be. Some said Amalthea, the goat who suckled the infant Zeus while his mother Rhea hid him from his father Cronos, who would have swallowed him. Amalthea's broken horn became the cornucopia, the horn of plenty. Others said Pan, the goat-horned god, who escaped the monster Typhon by giving himself a fish's tail and diving into a river.
In Babylon, Aquarius was the god Ea with his overflowing vase, and it was tied to the destructive floods the Babylonians knew well, so it was a bad omen. The Greeks kept the flood in one version: Deucalion, son of Prometheus, who built a ship with his wife Pyrrha to survive the great flood. In another, the water-bearer is Ganymede, the beautiful son of King Tros of Troy, whom Zeus carried off to Mount Olympus to be cupbearer to the gods.
Pisces has two versions of the same escape. In the Greek one, told by Hyginus, Aphrodite and her son Eros fled the monster Typhon by leaping into the Euphrates and turning into fish. In the Roman one, told by Ovid, Venus and Cupid were carried to safety on the backs of two fish. In the first the fish are the gods themselves; in the second they are rescuers. The cord that ties the two fish together goes back to Babylon, where part of the constellation was called "the fish cord."
| Sign | Thai dictionary figure | What Babylon saw | Greek and Roman myth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aries | Ram | The Hired Man, later a ram | The golden ram that saved Phrixus and Helle |
| Taurus | Bull | The Bull of Heaven Ishtar sent against Gilgamesh | Zeus as a bull carrying off Europa · or Io |
| Gemini | Twins | The Great Twins | Castor and Pollux |
| Cancer | Crab | Crab or turtle, tied to the way down to the underworld | The crab that bit Heracles, set in the sky by Hera |
| Leo | Lion (singha) | The Great Lion | The Nemean Lion, Heracles' first labour |
| Virgo | Young woman | The Furrow and the goddess Shala's ear of grain | Demeter, Persephone, Astraea or Erigone |
| Libra | Scales | Shamash's scales, or the scorpion's claws | Astraea's scales, made a separate sign in Rome |
| Scorpio | Scorpion | The creature with a burning sting | The scorpion sent to kill Orion |
| Sagittarius | Bow | The god Nergal, a centaur-like archer | Chiron, or the satyr Crotus |
| Capricorn | Makara, glossed as dragon | Goat-fish | The goat Amalthea, or Pan fleeing Typhon |
| Aquarius | Pot | The god Ea with an overflowing vase; an omen of floods | Deucalion surviving the flood, or Ganymede |
| Pisces | Fish | The Great Swallow + the goddess Anunitum | Aphrodite and Eros becoming fish to escape Typhon |
| Ophiuchus (a constellation, not a traditional sign) | Phuchong, meaning snake or nāga | Not in this dataset | Apollo fighting the Delphi serpent · Asclepius |
The Thai names tell another story: Capricorn is a makara, Aquarius a pot, Sagittarius a bow
The Thai sign names didn't come from Greek; they came by way of India. Thailand's Royal Institute Dictionary gives the origins of several: mesa means ram and comes from Sanskrit, phruetsaphop means bull, min means fish, and Aquarius's name in the Hindu zodiac, kumbha, means water-pitcher. So most Thai signs picture the same things as the Greek ones. The interesting ones are those that don't.
The Royal Institute Dictionary glosses makon, Capricorn, as "mangkon," dragon, and its list of zodiac signs calls it the dragon sign, while the table on Thai Wikipedia gives the same sign's symbol as a sea-goat, after the Babylonian goat-fish. The dictionary's kumbha is "the constellation shaped like a pot," with no one holding it, and thanu is "the constellation shaped like a bow," the weapon rather than the archer. Three signs that the Greeks told as characters, a centaur, a water-bearer and the goat that nursed Zeus, become in Thai one mythical beast and two objects.
The 13th sign, the serpent-bearer: the Thai retelling and the original
Thai Wikipedia's page on the zodiac calls this sign rasi phuchong, the serpent-bearer, between Scorpio and Sagittarius, and tells the myth this way: a physician named Ophiuchus saw a snake eat the fruit of a certain tree and become immortal, and so learned the tree's secret. Zeus, afraid the secret would get out and humans would become immortal, killed the doctor and raised his spirit into the sky as a constellation. The same page says NASA announced on 13 January 2016 that the zodiac really has 13 signs.
The original, as English Wikipedia tells it, is different. The ancient Greeks saw the constellation as the god Apollo wrestling the huge snake that guarded the Oracle of Delphi. Roman-era writers made it Asclepius, the healer who learned how to hold death at bay by watching one snake bring healing herbs to another. Jupiter killed him with a thunderbolt so that the whole human race wouldn't become immortal, then placed his image in the sky to honour him. Later myths identified the figure with Laocoön, the Trojan priest who warned about the wooden horse and was killed by a pair of sea serpents. The Thai retelling turns the herbs into a fruit, drops Asclepius's name, and has Zeus do the killing.
Ophiuchus is a real constellation. The Greek poet Aratus describes it trampling the Scorpion underfoot; it was one of Ptolemy's 48 constellations and is one of the 88 recognized today. The ecliptic really does cross 13 constellations. But a sign is a 12-fold division of the ecliptic, 30 degrees each, not the constellation itself, which is why English Wikipedia says calling Ophiuchus the 13th sign confuses signs with constellations, and why it is not a sign in traditional tropical or sidereal astrology. NASA's own answer: "No, we did not change the zodiac," adding that the story re-emerges every few years.
What actually holds
Of the 12 signs in this dataset, 7 were already the same figure in Babylon that we see today: the ram, the bull, the twins, the lion, the scorpion, the centaur archer and the goat-fish. The other 5 changed on the way: Cancer may have been a turtle, Virgo was a furrow, Libra was the scorpion's claws, Aquarius was the god Ea, and Pisces was a bird and a goddess. On the Greek side, 7 signs have two or more versions of their myth: Taurus, Virgo, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. Zeus is involved in 5 signs, Heracles in 2, and the monster Typhon drives gods to become fish in 2.
The pattern that repeats is that the picture came first and the story followed, and each culture that borrowed the picture told its own story over it. Babylon saw gods and flood omens, Greece saw heroes and punishments, and Thailand, taking the names by way of India, turned Capricorn into a dragon. A caveat: most of our sources are Wikipedia, and a culture with as many surviving texts as Greece will naturally have more stories to count. If we found no story from another people, that doesn't mean they had none.
Finally
Next time you read a horoscope for Scorpio or Capricorn, think of the scorpion that chases Orion out of the sky every summer, or the Babylonian goat-fish on a cylinder seal that Thai calls a dragon. Your sign always has more than one story, and some of them are older than the Greeks.
Frequently asked
What is the myth of Aries?
The golden ram sent by Nephele to save Phrixus and Helle from being sacrificed after their stepmother Ino forged a message from Delphi. Helle fell off and drowned in the strait named the Hellespont after her, and the ram's fleece became the Golden Fleece of the Jason story.
How are the Scorpio myth and the constellation Orion connected?
Orion boasted he would kill every animal on Earth, so Artemis and Leto sent a scorpion to kill him; in another version Apollo sent it. Zeus raised both to the sky, so Orion hunts in winter and flees when the scorpion rises in summer. The two are never in the sky together.
Who is the archer of Sagittarius?
The Greeks weren't sure, because they inherited the constellation from the Sumerians, who saw the god Nergal. Some said Chiron, the centaur who tutored Jason; others the satyr Crotus, son of Pan and inventor of archery. The Thai dictionary pictures the sign simply as a bow.
What is the myth of Aquarius?
Babylon saw the god Ea with an overflowing vase, an omen of floods. The Greeks said Deucalion, who built a ship to survive the great flood, or Ganymede, whom Zeus took to Olympus as cupbearer. The Thai name, kumbha, means pot.
Why is Capricorn called the dragon sign in Thai?
The Royal Institute Dictionary glosses makon as dragon, and its list of zodiac signs uses the dragon name. The sign's figure since Babylon, though, is a goat-fish, which Thai Wikipedia calls a sea-goat.
What is the 13th zodiac sign?
Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer, is a real constellation on the ecliptic, but not a sign in traditional astrology, because the signs are twelve 30-degree divisions of the ecliptic. Roman-era myth makes it the healer Asclepius.
Did NASA really change the zodiac signs?
No. NASA said "No, we did not change the zodiac" and "We didn't change any zodiac signs, we just did the math." Thai Wikipedia still says NASA announced on 13 January 2016 that the zodiac has 13 signs.
Which sign isn't an animal or a person?
Libra, the scales, sacred to Shamash in Babylon, seen as scorpion claws by the Greeks and only made a separate sign in Rome. By the Thai dictionary, Sagittarius and Aquarius are objects too: a bow and a pot.
Sources for the traditions cited (18)
How we counted: 370 traditions from every continent, living and ancient, from sources in dozens of languages. One tradition, one vote, and only where a source confirms it. A tradition missing here is not evidence it lacks the belief, only that we found no document. Scriptural religions (Buddhist, Hindu, Chinese, Jewish, Christian, Muslim) are described in more detail than oral ones, and some records come through missionaries or outsiders. This page does not judge which belief is true.
Read next: Where astrology got its meanings (history) · Rahu swallowing the moon: where the Thai eclipse story comes from, and who eats the moon in 37 cultures · Where do the Thai colours of the day come from? The myths behind Thai fortune-telling · The Chinese Zodiac Race: Why the Rat Won, Where the Cat Went, and Who Swaps Which Animal · Who Gave Humans Divination? 52 Origin Myths from 29 Cultures, and Where Tarot Really Came From
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