Antlia

The constellation Antlia commemorates the air pump which had been invented by 17th-century British chemist and physicist Robert Boyle. Boyle used his air-compressing pump to lead to the understanding of the laws of gas behavior and laws of thermodynamics. Air pumps were used to either fill something up with air (make high pressure) or to take air away (make a vacuum). Scientists could then study how air acted under different pressures. Using this pump, now known as vacuum pump and at the time also referred to as a 'pneumatic engine' [1], Boyle and Hooke noticed that vessels filled with air become warmer as their internal pressure is increased. In time the ideal gas law was formulated.

Antlia lies north of the great Ship Argo Navis. The word Antlia comes from Latin antlia, pump, from Greek antlos, 'ship's hold, bilge water', the bilge is the rounded portion of a ship's hull, forming a transition between the bottom and the sides, 'lowest internal part of a ship', also "the foulness which collects there", variant of bulge 'ship's hull', also 'leather bag', from Late Latin bulga 'leather sack' [2]. Greek hyperantlos ousa symphorai, is a metaphor taken from a ship which can no longer keep out water [3].

"The antlia usually used in ancient Greece was probably the pole and bucket for drawing water out of a well" [4].

Jesus said:

"Now draw (Greek antlesate) some [water] out, and take it to the chief steward" (v. 8). [5]

‘Draw out now’; ‘Antlesate’: The verb is used of drawing water out of a well or baling out a ship, but can be used more generally to signify drawing out by means of some vessel, thus the noun for ‘bucket’, antlema, is etymologically similar [6]. A bucket in Greek was antlema or antleo.

Antlia is the vacuum pump, or air pump, "at the time, the air pump was a major scientific instrument, since one could make a vacuum with one" [7]. Vacuum is from Indo-European root *eue- 'To leave, abandon, give out, whence nominal derivatives meaning abandoned, lacking, empty'. Derivatives: wane, wanton, (these words from Old English wanian), want, vain, vanity, vaunt, evanesce (to dissipate or disappear like vapor), vanish, (these words from Latin vanus, empty), evanescent, vacant, vacate, vacation, vacuity, vacuum, void, avoid, devoid, evacuate, (these words from Latin vacare, variant vocare, to be empty), waste (from Latin vastare, to make empty), devastate (from Latin vastus, empty, waste, from Latin evacuare ‘to empty’, from vacuus ‘empty’). [Pokorny 1. eue- 345. Watkins]

Some etymologists wonder if there could be a relationship between the words Latin vacco, cow and Latin vacare ‘to be empty’. Etymologist Bill Casselman says "the metaphor being the emptying of a cow’s udder during the act of milking. Thus vacca would be the animal that one empties by milking. Such an etymology is supposititious, there being no certain evidence of that relationship". There are three Latin roots for cow; vacca, bos, and iuvenca. Latin vacca is related to vaquero (cowboy), and vaccine. A vaccination involves the pumping of an antigenic substance into the body in order to inoculate against a particular disease.

The void is generally seen to be in outer space, and the empty or vacant spaces between the stars:

"Parmenides (5th century B.C.) uses verbal reasoning to postulate that a void, essentially what is now known as a vacuum, in nature could not occur. This theory was disproved by the introduction of the vacuum pump. Yet the earliest conception of Chaos was that almost unthinkable condition of kosmic space or kosmic expanse, which to human minds is infinite and vacant extension of primordial Aether, a stage before the formation of manifested worlds, and out of which everything that later existed was born, including gods and men and all the celestial hosts. We see here a faithful echo of the archaic esoteric philosophy, because among the Greeks Chaos was the kosmic mother of Erebos and Nyx, Darkness and Night -- two aspects of the same primordial kosmic stage." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_thermodynamics

The word pump is said to be of imitative origin, related to French pompier, 'fireman', from pompe, 'pump', a fireman's scaling ladder, and to the metaphoric extension as in 'to pump' someone for information. These words are not recognized cognates of pomp, pomposity, and pompous, meaning pumped up with self-importance, but if they were related, they would parallel the meanings in the words vain and vanity of the *eue- root. Pomp, from Latin pompa, from Greek pompe 'a sending, solemn procession', related to pempein, 'to send', and pump, 'a kind of shoe', and apopemptic 'pertaining to sending away', 'addressed to one who is departing'; as in 'apopemptic hymns'. Pompholyx (of imitative origin), is a skin disease characterized by an eruption of vesicles — Latin, from Greek pompolux 'bubble', 'blister' (or maybe pimple?), a blister, contains watery fluid pumped into a bubble (Antlia commemorates the air pump invented by Robert Boyle - boil). Pomp, from Greek pempein, 'to send or "to bid a thing to be carried to one". Jesus gave an order when he said: "Now draw (Greek antlesate) some [water] out, and take it to the chief steward" (v. 8).

The city Pompeii vanished by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79.

There is an obsolete word pumper, meaning to break wind, from German dialectal pumpern, from which we get the word pumpernickel.

The abbreviation for the constellation is ANT. The suffix ant- means 'forward, before'. The word antlia resembles the word antler [these words are not recognized cognates]. An antler is a branched growth from the foreheads of the males of the deer family, the 'bucks' [and this constellation is Antlia from Greek antlos, meaning a 'bucket']. The word antler comes from Latin *anteocularis (ante-ocularis), positioned 'before' (ante) 'of the eye' (ocularis). This constellation, Antlia, is positioned near the front of the Argo Navis. The argo of the ship Argo Navis is related to Argus, his epithet Panoptes, 'all-seeing, all eyes', a giant with a hundred eyes (whose tail after he was beheaded was put on the Peacock, Pavo).

The likely physical representation in the human body of the air-pump is the diaphragm, a comparison has been made on this page that says: "The easiest way to create an artificial vacuum is to expand the volume of a container. For example, the diaphragm muscle expands the chest cavity, which causes the volume of the lungs to increase. This expansion reduces the pressure and creates a partial vacuum, which is soon filled by air pushed in by atmospheric pressure". In order to draw air into the lungs, the diaphragm contracts, in its relaxed state, the diaphragm is shaped like a dome. It is controlled by the phrenic nerve, it is sometimes referred to as the thoracic diaphragm. The diaphragm muscle is responsible for all the breathing related to voice [7].

The celestial Argo Navis Ship is traditionally shown without a prow, the explanation being that the ship lost its prow in the Clashing Rocks. Before the ship sailed, the goddess Athena fitted at the prow of the ship, a piece, or a branch, of Zeus' oracular 'Oak Tree of Dodona', and thus giving the ship Argo the power of speech and it would advise the Argonauts on the right course. The Speaking Oak of Dodona continued advising and urging the Argonauts throughout the voyage, even after it had lost its prow.

Maybe the Speaking Oak branch is represented in Antlia. Antlers of buck deers resemble branches of trees.

The diaphragm muscle (which acts like an air pump) "is responsible for all the breathing related to voice" [8]. A diaphragm is also a thin disk, especially in a microphone or telephone receiver, that vibrates in response to sound waves to produce electric signals, or that vibrates in response to electric signals to produce sound waves. The Speaking oak branch that Athena fitted to the prow might also be a forerunner of the antenna which is a vertical pole, as for a radio or television aerial, for sending or receiving electromagnetic waves.

As the Argo Navis was about to sail the Oak of Dodona urged them on (like a pompous official giving orders):

"And a strange cry did the harbor of Pagasae utter, yea and Pelian Argo herself, urging them to set forth. For in her a beam divine had been laid which Athena had brought from an oak of Dodona and fitted in the middle of the stem" [Grimal]. [The stem of the ship curved upright beam at the fore of a vessel into which the hull timbers are scarfed to form the prow. Antlia relates to the bilge, the rounded portion of a ship's hull]

© Anne Wright 2008.