What is unique or rare about the VM Zodiac signs?

[-JKP-]

Second attempt of my deleted post.

The problem is: I distinctly remember that I have seen, way in the past, a zodiac illustration with two lobsters. This was at a time when digitised manuscripts were extremely hard to find on the WWW.

Searching in the ML archive, I found this post:

Tue, 14 Apr 1998 01:25:21 -0700 (PDT)
[...]
Dear all,

among the astronomical images which can be found at
the Unesco site I recently mentioned, there is one which
has a Scorpius image with two scorpions, while the
VMs has two lobsters for Cancer.
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I asked an expert and he told me that such duplication is not
unusual in Arabic zodiac illustrations. (The Ms from which the
above illustration originates is a Latin translation made in Italy,
of an Arabic work, by one IBN al-HAYTHAM).

Not much, but just a little hint that some Arabic original may
be behind the zodiac section of the VMs.

Cheers, Rene

So, I started to wonder if I misremembered.

The MS in question turns out to be the Vatican MS Urb.Lat.1384, and the two scorpions are on f.19.
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This is not the image of the two lobsters that I remember, so I need to keep on wondering where it was....

Just a general observation on Urb. lat. 1384: I can see that some people might mistake the scorpions for lobsters (or perhaps remember them as lobsters as time passes), but this is definitely not two lobsters/crayfish. The stinger is present on the left one and it's clearly labeled Scorpioi[n]s.

One of the things that's interesting about this manuscript is that the constellations reflect very old versions where the star groups were broken up differently from what later became the conventional zodiacs.

If I remember correctly, the way they used to be designated was as two scorpions, with part of what we now attribute to Libra, being part of the second scorpion. That's why you sometimes see Libra and Scorpius combined in some of the older manuscripts. The claws that are holding the scales are now considered to be part of the scales. It's rearranged a little in later manuscripts to what we know today. I can't remember what astronomers call them now, but they still recognize two stars with the old name, as a pair.


I suppose it might be possible for someone to mistake it as Cancer if they were looking at an Arabic manuscript (a very old one) and could not read Arabic to know that it was Scorpius (although the stinger is usually present), but to move the pair of scorpions way out of sequence to turn them into a double Cancer, I don't know. I've never seen that mistake in other manuscripts. I suppose it's possible.

---

a blue lion

I agree with the color but not for the animal.

I understand that the astrolgical sign for august is a lion or a lioness but this animal doesn't look like to a lion for me.

It seems to be more a leopard.
The first letters of leopard are LEO (like the astronomical sign).

Leopard is symbol of Normandy (french region).

It looks more like a leopard to me too. I meant to call it blue Leo rather than blue lion, but I'm always in a hurry and make mistakes.