Origin 500 BCE to 100 BCE
The glyph of Leo is a small loop opening into a long curved stroke, read traditionally as the mane and sweeping tail of a lion, and by some as the lion crouched in profile. The lion of these stars is the Nemean lion of the first labour of Heracles, whose hide no weapon could pierce, and behind that a much older Near Eastern association of the constellation with royal and solar power. As with the other sign glyphs the pictorial reading is traditional and the written form is first securely attested in the medieval Byzantine codices. Leo is fixed fire and the only sign ruled by the Sun, and the glyph stands for the solar qualities: warmth, display, generosity, command, creative self-expression, and the wish to be seen and to shine for others as well as for oneself.
Facts
Origins
Origin PeriodThe twelve-sign zodiac was standardised in Babylonia in the mid-first millennium BCE and fixed as equal signs in Hellenistic astrology. Place of OriginMesopotamia (Babylonia), transmitted through the Hellenistic Greek world. 2 Form
Type of SymbolAstral figure: sun, moon or planet 1 Geometric FormA curving line read as the lion's mane or tail. 1 Learn More
A Sign of the Zodiac
Leo is the fifth sign, a fixed fire sign ruled by the Sun, emblematised by the Lion. The lion of the constellation carries a very old pedigree in Near Eastern sky lore, linked there to royal and solar power for centuries long before it entered Greek myth, but the compact written glyph used for the sign today is a comparatively late piece of notation. It appears with the rest of the zodiacal shorthand in the Greek horoscope papyri of Roman Egypt, ordinary documents of the early centuries of the common era catalogued by Otto Neugebauer and Henry Van Hoesen in their reference work Greek Horoscopes, passed through centuries of Byzantine manuscript copying, and was only fixed into its familiar printed shape during the Renaissance, when astronomical almanacs and ephemerides began setting the zodiac consistently in type rather than copying it freehand.
Leo's Unicode codepoint, U+264C, is one of twelve consecutive zodiac symbols the standard assigned to the Miscellaneous Symbols block, a set of two hundred fifty-six codepoints running from U+2600 to U+26FF, when that block was introduced in version 1.1 in 1993, alongside separate blocks later added for astronomical bodies and weather.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Heracles directly: "The lion of these stars is the Nemean lion of the first labour of Heracles, whose hide no weapon could pierce, and behind that a much older Near Eastern association of the constellation with royal..."
This source names Mani the Prophet directly: "The glyph of Leo is a small loop opening into a long curved stroke, read traditionally as the mane and sweeping tail of a lion, and by some as the lion crouched in profile."
Symbol Of
The symbol's own cited description identifies its glyph as that of this zodiac sign.
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.