Authors: Chloe Pare-Anastasiadou, Jeffrey Kotyk, and Aida Alavi

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) is excited to announce the public launch of “Visualization of the Heavens,” a digital database of objects related to astronomy and starscapes originating in Eurasia and North Africa from 4000 BCE until 1700 CE. The platform provides an exciting new resource for historians of science, educators, and all those interested in astral imagery and narratives.

Exploring the Database

Around 3000 objects in the database are available open access. The items include star maps, worship objects, and instruments related to cosmology, astrology, navigation, rituals, and healing practices. Each object is tagged with metadata such as disciplines, materials, object types, themes, and colors—some as broad as “paper” and others as specific as the Egyptian goddess “Sekhmet.” Through these tags, users can enter a search term in the database to explore an object’s cross-cultural and trans-regional representations, visualizations, and material embodiments.

Creating the Database: Researcher Collaboration across Disciplines

The “Visualization of the Heavens” database project started in the Department "Artifacts, Action, and Knowledge" at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in 2017. The database has been multiauthored since its beginning, expanding through contributions from multiple researchers and serving as a cartography of the people who contribute to it. The curation of the objects aims towards a vast geography and historicity: this brings the complication of not having specific authorship, making it hard to attribute sources, but enables the inclusion of a wide range of languages, historical periods, and geographical areas.

The database is already used by the MPIWG’s “Heavens in Your Hand” Working Group at the MPIWG to discuss the affinities of histories that rarely land on the same tables. Objects from the platform have been used as sources in the edited volume Imagining the Heavens Across Eurasia from Antiquity to Early Modernity (eds. Rana Brentjes, Sonja Brentjes, and Stamatina Mastorakou, eds., Milan: Mimesis International, 2024).

What’s Next? Expanding Sources and New Constellations in the Database

Digital humanities transcend forms rapidly, and this database will also adapt, expand, and embody un-imaginable forms. So what do we have in mind for developing the database further? Image search engines may be developed to create even larger constellations and relationships between objects. Artificial intelligence could serve further as a collaborator in interpreting, locating, and connecting knowledge. The database adheres to its origins as a cartography of inter-dependent and ever-growing knowledge: this public launch opens it up to its own unfolding futures.