An Ancient Greek star map revealed

Just as our knowledge of the stars of the Universe expands so too does our knowledge of what our ancestors knew and discovered in their times about the heavenly bodies.

The monastery of St Catherine in Sinai has defied time and circumstance to preserve an astonishing treasure house of early manuscripts in its library. It is one of these codices, which is now in the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC, which has yielded a fascinating story. The Syriac codex is a palimpsest. In the tenth or eleventh century a Syriac text was written on top of a collection of fifth or sixth century astronomical material. 

This then yielded part of a star catalogue that can be assigned, because of the Earth’s precession, to the time of Hipparchus in the second century BC. Although Hipparchus was believed to have made such a star catalogue its text had not, it was thought, survived. Here

appears to be clear evidence that it did exist, was still being transcribed centuries later, and that part at least still exists.

Hipparchus, of whom there is a lengthy Wikipedia account at Hipparchus, has been seen as one of the greatest astronomers of all time, a Greek who drew upon Babylonian records for his work.

This latest manuscript discovery is set out in an article in Nature which can be seen online at  First known map of night sky found hidden in Medieval parchment

That article is reprised in an article in Greek Reporter which gives a little more context to the career of Hipparchus and can be seen at Ancient Greek Map of the Sky Discovered at Orthodox Monastery