Word: saturn
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...what keen-eyed observer in the dawn of history first picked out Saturn as a planet, or heavenly wanderer, from the dizzying background of myriad fixed stars. Probably the first stargazers to leave a record of Saturn's appearance in different parts of the night sky were the Sumerians...
...about 5,000 years ago and, according to George Michanowsky, a scholar of cuneiform writing, they called the planet Sag-Ush, regarding it as a male fertility symbol. The Babylonians, who eventually ruled over that part of Mesopotamia, watched the heavens from the tops of their ziggurats. To them Saturn was known as Kaiamanu (the steadfast one), possibly because, in contrast to nearer planets, it moved so slowly across the skies. Kaiamanu was generally associated with the death of cattle, and other calamities. Perhaps in hopes of better luck, one of the names the Egyptians later gave Saturn was Horus...
...sixth, was born, Rhea tricked Cronus into swallowing a stone instead. After he was dethroned by Zeus (who became the king of the gods), Cronus went off to rule another kingdom, where he reformed his ways and taught people the secrets of planting. The Romans knew Cronus as Saturn, and as a god of fertility and planting. Every Dec. 17 they staged the Saturnalia in his honor. At this time there was gift giving, drinking and wenching and suspension of punishment for criminals...
Some ancients also watched the planets out of sheer intellectual curiosity. Ptolemy, one of the greatest of the Greek astronomers, wanted nothing more than to explain the eccentric wanderings of the five known planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Why, for example, did Saturn seem at times to forge ahead of Jupiter in the sky, and at other times lag behind it? To fit this movement into the prevailing earth-centered view of his day, Ptolemy assembled meticulous records of planetary movements. In A.D. 140, he made a good guess about Saturn. Because of its slow pace, he deduced...
...took another 1,400 years, and the invention of the telescope, before Saturn was really established as a planet. In July of 1610, Italian Astronomer Galileo Galilei contemplated Saturn through a new, 8-power spyglass. He was stunned. The familiar planet seemed to have sprouted ears or handles. Galileo assumed that Saturn's ears were moons like those of Jupiter, which he had discovered only a few months earlier. But when he looked again, some time later, he got another surprise: the moons had vanished. Whimsically, he asked: "Has Saturn, perhaps, devoured his own children...