Zodiac constellations can be traced even further back, to Bronze Age (First Babylonian dynasty) sources, including Gemini "The Twins", from MAŠ.TAB.BA.GAL.GAL "The Great Twins", and Cancer "The Crab", from AL.LUL "The Crayfish", among others. Around the end of the 5th century BC, Babylonian astronomers divided the ecliptic into twelve equal "signs", by analogy to twelve schematic months of thirty days each. Each sign contained thirty degrees of celestial longitude, thus creating the first known celestial coordinate system. Unlike modern astronomers, who place the beginning of the sign of Aries at the place of the Sun at the vernal equinox; Babylonian astronomers
The Golden Crab The queen gave birth to a daughter, and the priest's wife to a crab. When the crab and the princess were grown, the crab asked the king to fulfill his promise. The king asked him to remove a nearby mountain in one night. The crab did so, and the marriage was held. He took off his shell at night and became a handsome young man, but cautioned his wife to silence. The princess was pleased, but her mother was grief-stricken. On Sundays, the crab sent his wife to church ahead of him and came in human form; her mother said