Farnese Atlas

The Farnese Atlas is a 2nd-century CE Roman marble sculpture of Atlas holding up a celestial globe. It is thought to be a copy of an earlier work from the Hellenistic period, making it the oldest statue of Atlas, a Titan from Greek mythology. Atlas was known in stories long before this sculpture, appearing in earlier Greek vase painting. This statue is also special because it is the oldest known representation of the night sky and the classical constellations that people used long ago.

The statue was made around the year CE 150, during the time of the Roman Empire. It was created after the famous book called the Almagest by Claudius Ptolemy, but the globe on the statue shows constellations that were probably mapped much earlier, during Hellenistic astrology, especially by a man named Hipparchus who lived in the 2nd century BCE.

Atlas holds up the globe because, in the myth, Zeus had sent him to carry the sky forever. The globe shows the night sky as if you were looking from outside the farthest part of the heavens. It has small carvings of 41 or 42 of the 48 classical Greek constellations that Ptolemy described, including Aries the ram, Cygnus the swan, and Hercules the hero. The whole statue stands about 2.1 meters tall, or 7 feet, and the globe itself is about 65 centimeters, or 26 inches, across.

The statue is called the Farnese Atlas because it was bought by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in 1562 and later displayed in the Villa Farnese. Today, this amazing sculpture can be seen at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples in Italy.

Dating the original

In 2005, a professor named Bradley E. Schaefer presented an analysis suggesting that the constellations on the Farnese Atlas might have been inspired by a lost star catalog from the ancient astronomer Hipparchus. He believed the constellations were very accurate for the time and matched how the stars would have looked around 129 BCE.

However, the dating of the globe remains uncertain because the constellations are not exact and were likely copied by a sculptor, not drawn by an astronomer. Some experts disagree with Schaefer's conclusions, pointing out differences between the constellations on the globe and Hipparchus's known work.