A friend asked me what the earliest astrological source might be that associates the Sun explicitly with both the idea of kingship and that of combustion or burning. I have no certain answer, but would be grateful for suggestions from members with greater knowledge of the Mesopotamian and/or early Greek material.

About the malefic nature of Sun according to the Hellenistic astrologers see pls in :

Dorotheus, Orpheus, Anubio & pseudo-Valens or Teaching on transits, Project Hindsight, Greek track, Voume IX, 1995, pp.vii-ix

astroart wrote:About the malefic nature of Sun according to the Hellenistic astrologers see pls in :

Dorotheus, Orpheus, Anubio & pseudo-Valens or Teaching on transits, Project Hindsight, Greek track, Voume IX, 1995, pp.vii-ix

Thanks, but what I was hoping for was a direct reference to a classical author, explicitly mentioning both the kingship connection and the combustion.

Hello:

"Martin Gansten
Thanks, but what I was hoping for was a direct reference to a classical author, explicitly mentioning both the kingship connection and the combustion

I?m not able to provide an historical source saying exactly that the Sun means kngship and to be near of it means to be burned, but I do have a book, named "Remarks Of the Euphratean Astronomical Names of the Signs of the Zodiac", by Robert Brown, 1891, published by The Society of Biblical Archeology which Amazon is currently selling, , where the authors made a relation between the sign of Leo and the Sun.
In another book of his, named Mythological Investigation, also selling at Amazon he also compares the Sun and the MoonI?ll quote the author in his first wouted book, because the question of Leo been intertwined with the Sun is something also worthy of investigation.

[ A.?Sign?the Lion.
Strassmaier observes that " a = mu (wasser), aplu (sohn) etc.; but Jensen (p. 519) is perhaps correct in the view that " A = aru = Lowe," i.e., is an abbreviation for aru, ' lion,' Heb. ITHN It may, however, be objected to this view that aru is a Semitic form, -whilst the names of the zodiacal Signs are Sumero-Akkadian, and this objection has very considerable weight. The ordinary Akkadian name for ' lion' is Lik-ma\ (" Big-dog"); but, in all probability, there was another and more direct name, just as in the Semitic we find the forms (As.) ncsu, (Heb.) aryaih, layish (the 3u? of Hesychios) etc. That the zodiacal A may be an abbreviation of some Turanian lion-name is by no means improbable, especially since we have an instance of such a name, and that, moreover, one widely diffused, i.e., the Magyar a-rszldn, Osmanli a-slan, Mongol a-rslan.
For instances and illustrations of the immense mass of mythological idea which links together the Sun and the Lion, vide my Great Dionysiak Myth, ii, 61; Law of Kosmic Order, sec. xiv; and Eridanus, Appendix iii; and in The Unicorn: a Mythological Investigation, I have endeavoured to trace the remarkable mythic history of the two creatures until they finally appear in connexion with the Royal Arms, these being "supported by a Lyon rampand, SOL; and an Unicorn, LUNA"? The following is a very interesting instance of the solar Lion
" Mr. Ruskin exhibited a handsomely illuminated leaf from the Bible of Charles the Bald, gTandson to Charlemagne, which bore in the centre a yellow lion . . . The motto on the Bible leaf was 'This lion rises, and by his rising breaks the gates of hell [Hades]; this lion never sleeps, nor shall sleep for evermore.'
On a cylinder the solar and zodical Lion is placed near the head of the solar hero Gilgames, as he overcomes the lunar Bull. Macrobius expresses the general voice of antiquity when he says of the lion, "This beast seems to derive his own nature from that luminary [the sun], being in force and heat as superior to all other animals as the sun is to the stars. The lion is always seen with his eyes wide open and full of fire, so does the sun look upon the earth with open and fiery eye."

The bold and underlined phrases are mine.

In the same way, when we examine Egyptian religion in its earliest surviving documents, it is evident that two great phenomena of nature had made the most profound impression upon the Nile-dwellers and that the gods discerned in these two phenomena dominated religious and intellectual development from the earliest times. These are the sun and the Nile. In the Sun-god, Re, Atum, Horus, Khepri, and in the Nile, Osiris, we find the great gods of Egyptian life and thought, who almost from the beginning entered upon a rivalry for the highest place in the religion of Egypt?a rivalry which ceased only with the annihilation of Egyptian civilization.

As for combustion, I?m not able to help, but perhaps as the Sun is represented as awake with wide open eyes and waves of heat it is really able to burn up :-)

Clelia