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In culture

The existence of the planet Jupiter has been known since ancient times. It is visible to the naked eye in the night sky and can occasionally be seen in the daytime when the Sun is low. To the Babylonians, this planet represented their god Marduk, chief of their pantheon from the Hammurabi period. They used Jupiter's roughly 12-year orbit along the ecliptic to define the constellations of their zodiac.

The mythical Greek name for this planet is Zeus (Ζεύς), also referred to as Dias (Δίας), the planetary name of which is retained in modern Greek. The ancient Greeks knew the planet as Phaethon (Φαέθων), meaning "shining one" or "blazing star". The Greek myths of Zeus from the Homeric period showed particular similarities to certain Near-Eastern gods, including the Semitic El and Baal, the Sumerian Enlil, and the Babylonian god Marduk. The association between the planet and the Greek deity Zeus was drawn from Near Eastern influences and was fully established by the fourth century BC, as documented in the Epinomis of Plato and his contemporaries.

The god Jupiter is the Roman counterpart of Zeus, and he is the principal god of Roman mythology. The Romans originally called Jupiter the "star of Jupiter" (Iuppiter Stella), as they believed it to be sacred to its namesake god. This name comes from the Proto-Indo-European vocative compound * Dyēu-pəter (nominative: * Dyēus -pətēr, meaning "Father Sky-God", or "Father Day-God"). As the supreme god of the Roman pantheon, Jupiter was the god of thunder, lightning, and storms, and was called the god of light and sky.

In Vedic astrology, Hindu astrologers named the planet after Brihaspati, the religious teacher of the gods, and often called it " Guru ", which means the "Teacher". In Central Asian Turkic myths, Jupiter is called Erendiz or Erentüz, from eren (of uncertain meaning) and yultuz ("star"). The Turks calculated the period of the orbit of Jupiter as 11 years and 300 days. They believed that some social and natural events connected to Erentüz's movements in the sky. The Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans, and Japanese called it the "wood star" (Chinese: 木星; pinyin: mùxīng), based on the Chinese Five Elements. In China, it became known as the "Year-star" (Sui-sing), as Chinese astronomers noted that it jumped one zodiac constellation each year (with corrections). In some ancient Chinese writings, the years were, in principle, named in correlation with the Jovian zodiac signs.