Planet Mars Chronology

Planet Mars and the Ancients
Compiled by Paul Karol and David Catling

This page is part of the Planet Mars Chronology from ancient to present day.

You may also be interested in Planet Mars in Popular Culture

c. 3000 BC: Egyptians recognize the apparent retrograde motion of Mars calling it Sekded-ef em khetkhet, one "who travels backward".; Ancient Egyptians knew the planet by various names including Har décher (meaning the "Red One") and also Harmakhis.
c. 23 century BC: A series of tablets are written in the time of King Sargon of Akkad (died c. 2279 BC). The text relates to many astrological descriptions of the heavens, including the planets. Sargon was a ruler of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), who is reported to have built the capital city of Agade, which unfortunately has never been located or excavated probably because it was destroyed. Modern astronomy derives from the work of these early Mesopotamian astronomers, such as Sargon's daughter, En Hedu'anna. However, in early times, astronomy (science) was always subsumed by astrology (superstition).
c. 1000 BC: Ancient Chaldeans are reported to call Mars Nergal (or Nirgal). Chaldea was a land in southern Babylonia frequently mentioned in the Old Testament and identified with modern Iraq. Strictly speaking, Chaldea is the land bordering the head of the Persian Gulf between the Arabian desert and the Euphrates delta. Nergal (Mars) was the great hero, the king of conflicts, the master of battles, and the champion of gods. On the banks of the Euphrates the planet Mars was also known under the names of Allamou and Almou.
c. 1200-300 BC: The ancient Greeks called the planet Ares, the son of the chief god Zeus and his consort Hera. Ares was considered murderous, bloodstained, fiery and tempestuous, so he was disliked by many of the other gods according to Homer's Iliad. Ares had nowhere near the status for Greeks that Mars did for the Romans, but he was worshipped in the northern areas of Greece. Also in Sparta, in early times, human sacrifices were made to Ares from among the prisoners of war.
c. 750 BC: There is a possible biblical mention of Mars in Amos, the third of 12 Old Testament books that bear the names of the Minor Prophets, collected in one book under the Jewish canon titled The Twelve. Amos was active in the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of Jeroboam II (c. 786-746 BC). "But yet have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god..." (Amos 5:26). Depending on which vowels are inserted into the vowel-less ancient text, Chiun can be translated as either Kijun or as Kewan. Kewan is the name of the planet Saturn among Persians and Syrians. However, the astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835-1910) suggests that during the time of Amos, it meant Mars based on the research of German scholars.; Note: Dating the bible is difficult, but modern scholars suspect that the Old Testament was written in Hebrew between 1200 and 100 BC. The collection of folklore and historical material probably dates back to the 10th century BC.
422 BC: The earliest known Babylonian observation records of the movement of Mars are contained within cuneiform treatises discovered at Nineveh by Sir Austin Henry Layard (1817-1894), an English archaeologist. One part reads "When the star of Mars becomes powerful its brightness increases: seven days, fourteen days, twenty-one days it journeys backwards, and then it continues on its prescribed course." Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli (1835-1910) director of the Brera Observatory in Milan, interpreted this to mean: "Mars at its greatest power becomes very bright and remains so for several weeks; then its motion becomes retrograde for several weeks, after which it resumes its usual direct motion."; The cuneiform treatises contains few astronomical inferences of scientific interest. Instead, much of it is mystical astrological prediction, i.e., nonsense from a modern scientific perspective. An example of the latter is: "When a halo surrounds the Moon and Mars stands within it, there will be a destruction of cattle in all lands and the planting of dates will not prosper"; farmers beware! (Ref: Thompson, R.C., The Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh and Babylon in the British Museum, Luzac and Co., London, 1900.)
4th century BC: Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 400-350 BC), a Greek astronomer and mathematician, developed a system of 27 concentric spheres. In this system, the observed motion of heavenly bodies was caused by the motion of several nested, interconnected spheres, each one centered on the Earth. Each of the five known planets rode on the equator of its inner sphere except for the Moon, which rode on the middle. Each sphere had its own axial inclination and rotational speed. The outermost sphere accounted for the daily east-to-west apparent motion of the stars. Eudoxus's system closely represented the observed motions of Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon. But it was poor for Venus and failed completely for Mars. Also it could not account for the lunar variations in brightness, apparent size and orbital period.; Aristotle (384-322 BC) witnessed an occultation of Mars by the Moon, and concluded that Mars was "higher up in the heavens". In terms of astronomical distance this observation was correct.
c. 4th-3rd century BC:: The legend of Romulus and Remus originates around this time. According to legend, the god Mars fathered a pair of twins, Romulus and Remus. Their mother was Rhea Silvia, daughter of Numitor, king of Alba Longa. Numitor was deposed by his younger brother Amulius, who forced Rhea to take a vow of chastity. Subsequently, when she bore twins, Amulius ordered the infants drowned in the river Tiber. However, the trough in which they were placed floated down the Tiber and came to rest at the site of the future Rome. There a woodpecker and a female wolf -- animals sacred to Mars -- suckled and fed the infants until they were found by Faustulus, a herdsman. The twins were brought up by Faustulus and his wife Acca Larentia, and became leaders of a band of rebellious youths. They eventually killed Amulius and restored Numitor to the throne. Subsequently they founded Rome on the site where they had been saved.; In Roman legend, Mars was second in importance only to Jupiter. Mars was variously interpreted as a god of agriculture, spring and war. By historical times he was essentially a god of war and considered protector of Rome. Sacrifices were made to Mars in his temple in Rome before military expeditions, and booty was offered afterward. Later, under the reign of Augustus (63 BC-AD 14), Mars became Mars Ultor ("Mars the Avenger" of Julius Caesar), and a personal guardian of Augustus.
272 BC: The first precise observation of Mars and its position. In January of 272 BC, Mars is recorded to have passed close to the star Beta Scorpii.
250 BC: A Greek astronomer, Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 BC), is the first to maintain that the Earth rotated on its axis once a day, and that it orbited around the Sun once a year. Unfortunately, these ideas were disputed, lost in time, and revived later only in the Renaissance.
2nd Century BC: The astronomer and mathematician, Hipparchus (who died sometime after 127 BC) calculates the length of the Earth's year to within 6.5 minutes, discovers the precession of the equinoxes, compiles the first known star catalog, and discovers some trigonometry. Ptolemy (see below) often quotes from Hipparchus, and it is clear that Ptolemy derived many of his astronomical ideas from this predecessor.
6 BC: The historical year of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth is uncertain but has been narrowed down by scholars to between 6 and 4 BC. A triple conjunction in 6 BC, in which Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn stood at the vertices of a triangle, has been suggested as a possible explanation for "The Star of Bethlehem". Earlier in 7 BC, Jupiter and Saturn were within 3 degrees of each other for eight months and three times within that period passed within 1 degree. Several years later, on June 17, 2 BC, Venus and Jupiter would have appeared to Matthew's "wise men from the East" to have merged just before setting in the direction of Bethlehem to the west. Later in the 17th century, Johannes Kepler suggested that the Star of Bethlehem might have been a (super)nova, which modern astronomy identifies with a stellar explosion. Chinese astronomers recorded novae in 5 BC and 4 BC.
1st Century AD: Pliny the Elder (c. 23-79 AD), calls Mars inobservabile sidus because of its baffling motion. Pliny the Elder is reported to have been the author of seven major works. However, only his Natural History survives. This historic, encyclopaedic work describes scientific matters but is often careless and inaccurate. Also Pliny's beliefs in magic and superstition were influential in their perpetuation in subsequent centuries by Latin scholars. Pliny's pseudoscience was finally questioned in the Renaissance in the 15th century and eventually rejected by leading scientists in the 17th century.
: Claudius Ptolemy (127-145 AD), an astronomer and mathematician from Alexandria, develops the Ptolemaic System in which each planet moves around a small circle known as an epicycle. The epicycles moved around a larger circle centered on the Earth. Ptolemy's work was enshrined in his book He mathematike syntaxis ("The Mathematical Collection"), which eventually became known as Ho megas astronomos ("The Great Astronomer").

1277

Pope John XXI grants the Bishop of Paris permission to state that there could be more than one world in space.

This webpage was created in the spare time of David Catling, a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center. I hope you appreciated this historical survey of Mars.