Nunki

The IAU catalogue's account

ᵐᵘˡNUN.KI or ᵐᵘˡNUNᴷᴵ = the star or constellation of Eridu where Eridu is one of the first big cities known. Archealogical proofs date back to the 3rd millennium (Sumer). It is located at the southern coast of Mesopotamia. The identification of the star or asterism is highly uncertain: it is often identified with Canopus and adjacent areas or "somewhere in Argo". ᵐᵘˡNUN.KI is listed in MUL.APIN and there, it seems to refer to the area of Aquarius with unknown identification (Canopus not excluded) but the identification with other Babylonian texts seems to propose only in the northern part of modern Argo, i.e. Vela. The Euphratean name "Nunki" was mentioned and associated with Sigma Sgr in Robert Brown, Jr. (1892, Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, Volume 14, p. 298; "Nun-ki", "Prince-of-the-Earth"), and its use diffused through the 20th century after being mentioned in Richard Hinckley Allen's (Star Names, their lore and meaning, p. 359). The modern Nunki is, thus, not identical with the Sumerian one; it is one of the many misapplications.

Source language

Sumerian

Reference

MUL.APIN I ii 20 (Hunger+Steele 2019), Horowitz, W. (2018) ‘Communication and miscommunication in the southern sky’, in Registers and Modes of Communication in the Ancient Near East. 1st edn. Routledge, pp. 69–84. Robert Brown, Jr. (1892, Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, Volume 14, p. 298. Richard Hinckley Allen's (Star Names, their lore and meaning, p. 359).

Source: IAU Catalog of Star Names (IAU-CSN), Working Group on Star Names. The account is the IAU's own text and is quoted in full: it is published under CC BY.