second century A.D., the term _k[=i]ma_ retained throughout, but _kesil_
and _`ayish_ were reduced to their supposed Syriac equivalents.

Whatever uncertainty was felt as to the meaning of _k[=i]mah_ by the
early translators, it is not now seriously disputed that the Pleiades is
the group of stars in question.

The word _k[=i]mah_ means, as we have seen, "cluster" or "heap," so also
the word _Pleiades_, which we use to-day, is probably derived from the
Greek _Pleiones_, "many." Several Greek poets--Athenaeus, Hesiod, Pindar,
and Simonides--wrote the word _Peleiades_, i. e. "rock pigeons,"
considered as flying from the Hunter Orion; others made them the seven
doves who carried ambrosia to the infant Zeus. D'Arcy Thompson says,
"The Pleiad is in many languages associated with bird-names, . . . and I
am inclined to take the bird on the bull's back in coins of Eretria,
Dicaea, and Thurii for the associated constellation of the
Pleiad"[217:1]--the Pleiades being situated on the shoulder of Taurus
the Bull.

The Hyades were situated on the head of the Bull, and in the Euphrates
region these two little groups of stars were termed together,
_Mas-tab-ba-gal-gal-la_, the Great Twins of the ecliptic, as Castor and
Pollux were the Twins of the zodiac. In one tablet _'Imina bi_, "the
sevenfold one," and _Gut-dua_, "the Bull-in-front," are mentioned side
by side, thus agreeing well with their interpretation of "Pleiades and
Hyades." The Semitic name for the Pleiades was also _Temennu_; and these
groups of stars, worshipped as gods by the Babylonians, may possibly
have been the _Gad_ and _Meni_, "that troop," and "that number,"
referred to by the prophet Isaiah (lxv. 11).

On many Babylonian cylinder seals there are engraved seven small discs,
in addition to other astronomical symbols. These seven small stellar
discs are almost invariably arranged in the form :::' or:::. much as we
should now-a-days plot the cluster of the Pleiades when mapping on a
small scale the constellations round the Bull. It is evident that these
seven little stellar discs do not mean the "seven planets," for in many
cases the astronomical symbols which accompany them include both those
of the sun and moon. It is most probable that they signify the Pleiades,
or perhaps alternatively the Hyades.

Possibly, reference is made to the worship of the Pleiades when the
king of Assyria, in the seventh century B.C., brought men from Babylon
and other regions to i