may instead be a characteristic of the scribes’ approach to copying astronomical texts.
Against the latter view we could point to the various differences in case vowels, indicated
above, which might ostensibly be put down to the personal preference of the individual
scribes. If this is the case, then the individual’s preference for a particular case vowel in a
particular context may in fact be coloured by an aspect of pronunciation. However, at-
tempts to delineate between the choice of case vowels by any extraneous conditioning
elements, such as individual copyist or geographical region, appear on the surface to be
fruitless.
Stylistic Variants (Type 1)
The majority of minor stylistic variations involve the addition or omission of determina-
tives, conjunctions, prepositions, relative pronouns or enclitic particles. Of these the
omission or addition of the determinative that begins a new section, DIŠ, is the most
common form of variation.
Somewhat less frequent are changes in grammatical number to subjects or objects in the
text. In one instance, M55, the constellation comprised of ε, π, ρ, and θ Herculis are de-
scribed in the plural in most sources, but in the singular in source AA. The treatment of
this constellation as a collective singular in AA is in contrast to the same source’s treat-
ment of the adjacent constellation, ζ and η Herculis, as plural.
Other similar differences in grammatical number pertain to the description of a given
constellation with either the singular noun or determinative “star” or plural “stars,” for