The Big Dipper and Ursa Major Across Time and Cultures


On a given night



With stars labelled
Image by Ken Christison



North American interpretation



Shang-di, aka, the Jade Emperor
Stone carving from the Wuliang Shrine, ca. 150 CE



Starry Plough flag of the Irish Citizen Army, 1914



From Abdul Rahman bin Omar al-Sufi’s Pictures of the forty-eight planets, ca. 950 CE



Egypt, from the tomb of Seti I at the Valley of the Kings, ca. 1280 BCE
Photograph by M. Sanz de Lara



Charles’s Wain, aka Charles’s Wagon, Europe, ca. 1500s CE


From Gaylord Johnson’s The Star People, 1921



As part of Ursa Major, described by Ptolemy ca. 150 CE


From Johann Bayer’s Uranometria, 1603

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