Ancient astronomers

The earliest known recorded observations of Mercury are from the Mul.Apin tablets. These observations [97] were most likely made by anAssyrian astronomer around the 14th century BC. The cuneiform name used to designate Mercury on the Mul.Apin tablets is transcribed as Udu.Idim.Gu\u4.Ud ("the jumping [i][98] planet"). Babylonian records of Mercury date back to the 1st millennium BC. TheBabylonians called [99] the planet Nabu after the messenger to the gods in their mythology. The ancient Greeks of Hesiod's time knew the planet as ( Stilbon), meaning "the gleaming", and [100] (Hermaon). Later Greeks called the planet Apollo when it was visible in the morning sky, and Hermes when visible in the evening. Around the 4th century BC, Greek astronomers came to understand that the two names referred to the same body, Hermes (: Herms), a planetary name [101] that is retained in modern Greek (: Ermis). The Romans named the planet after the swift-footed Roman messenger god,Mercury (Latin Mercurius), which they equated with the Greek Hermes, because [102][103] it moves across the sky faster than any other planet. The astronomical symbol for Mercury is a [104] stylized version of Hermes' caduceus. The Roman-Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy wrote about the possibility of planetary transits across the face of the Sun in his workPlanetary Hypotheses. He suggested that no transits had been observed either [105] because planets such as Mercury were too small to see, or because the transits were too infrequent.

Ibn al-Shatir's model for the appearances of Mercury, showing the multiplication ofepicycles using the Tusi-couple, thus eliminating the Ptolemaic eccentrics andequant.

In ancient China, Mercury was known as Chen Xing (), the Hour Star. It was associated with the direction north and the phase of water in the Wu [106] Xing. Modern Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese cultures refer to the planet literally as the [107] "water star" (), based on the Five elements. Hindu mythology used the name Budha for Mercury, and this god was thought to preside overWednesday. The god Odin (or Woden) of Germanic [109] paganism was associated with the planet Mercury and Wednesday. TheMaya may have represented Mercury as an owl (or possibly four owls; two for the morning aspect and two for the evening) that served [110] as a messenger to the underworld.
[108]

The ancient association of Mercury with Wednesday is still visible in the names of Wednesday in various modern languages of Latin descent, e.g. mercredi in French, mircoles in Spanish, or miercuri in Romanian. The names of the days of the week were, in classical times, all related to the names of the [citation needed] seven bodies that were then considered to be planets. In ancient Indian astronomy, the Surya Siddhanta, an Indian astronomical text of the 5th century, estimates the diameter of Mercury as 4,841 kilometres (3,008 mi), an error of less than 1% from the currently accepted diameter of 4,880 kilometres (3,032 mi). This estimate was based upon an inaccurate [citation needed] guess of the planet's angular diameter as 3.0 arcminutes (50 millidegrees). In medieval Islamic astronomy, the Andalusian astronomer Ab Ishq Ibrhm al-Zarql in the 11th century described the deferent of Mercury's geocentric orbit as being oval, like an egg or a pignon, [111][112] although this insight did not influence his astronomical theory or his astronomical calculations. In the 12th century, Ibn Bajjah observed "two planets as black spots on the face of the Sun", which was later suggested as the transit of Mercury and/or Venus by the Maragha astronomer Qotb al-Din Shirazi in the [113] 13th century. (Note that most such medieval reports of transits were later taken as observations [114] of sunspots. ) In India, the Kerala school astronomer Nilakantha Somayaji in the 15th century developed a partially heliocentric planetary model in which Mercury orbits the Sun, which in turn orbits the Earth, similar to the Tychonic system later proposed by Tycho Brahe in the late 16th century