The name of the ship Auriga was after the constellation, one of which back stories is of the legend regarding Hippolytus.

According to some sources, Hippolytus had scorned Aphrodite in order to become a devotee of Artemis, devoting himself to a chaste life in pursuit of hunting. So Aphrodite in retaliation, made Phaedra, Hippolytus step-mother fall in love with him. He naturally rejected her, which led to Phaedra plotting an assassination resulting in his death in a fall from a chariot.

As a result, a cult grew up around Hippolytus, associated with the cult of Aphrodite. His cult believed that Artemis asked Asclepius to resurrect the young man since he had vowed chastity to her. He was brought to Latium, Italy, where he reigned under the name of Virbius or Virbio.

So I was reading up the meaning of Origae to find out more about this planet the Covenant is headed to and I am reminded that there is a constellation. I previously did some investigation about the meaning of Origae, which has several meanings:



Origa

origa is an Latin word started with o. Here is the definition of origa in English

origa origa, origae

feminine noun charioteer, driver; groom, ostler; helmsman; the Waggoner (constellation);

origamasculine noun

charioteer, driver; groom, ostler; helmsman; the Waggoner (constellation)

I have been looking deeper into its other meanings to try and uncover this little puzzle Ridley has left for us, and there’s no surprise that the ship name in Resurrection is Auriga seeing as they seeked to create life from the DNA salvaged from Fury 161.

Auriga was also known as the constellation and the God Erichthonius, King of Athens and son of the fire God Hephaestus. Raised by Athena he was taught how to harness a chariot of four horses. The 6th brightest star in the sky Capella, Alpha Aurigae, is associated with Amalthea the goat who was foster-mother to Zeus. The star is located on the Charioteer’s left shoulder.



I believe Origae-6 is a planetary body orbiting Prijipati – δ Aurigae (Delta Aurigae), and of course if you are familiar with Dan O'Bannon’s first draft of Alien, the space jockey left a symbol on the dash in front of it before they died, a triangle. Δ which is the upper case of δ

Prijipati, Delta Aurigae, is a binary star about 140 light years from Earth. It consists of an orange K-type giant and a companion star 115.4 arc seconds away. The primary star has an apparent magnitude of 3.72 and the companion, 9.7. 126 light-years (39 parsecs) distant from the Earth. In Indian astronomy, the star is called Prajapati, which means “the Lord of Creation” in Sanskrit.





Here’s a little about the Indian God of Creation: Brahma is the first god in the Hindu triumvirate, or trimurti. The triumvirate consists of three gods who are responsible for the creation, upkeep and destruction of the world. The other two gods are Vishnu and Shiva. Vishnu is the preserver of the universe, while Shiva’s role is to destroy it in order to re-create.





David did quote in Prometheus “To create, sometimes you must destroy”





How this positions the story of Lawrence as his parallels David’s journey, in the Alien: Covenant commentary which @gothic-fiction-in-space drew my notice to, the design of the Covenant was inspired by a train cars.

Which puts us at Lawrence striking at the Turks’ supply lifeline, the Hejaz Railway. During one such raid, Lawrence blew up a locomotive with an electric mine. Which could explain the charged particle flare knocking out the Covenant as it was recharging along to Origae-6.

The Turk’s losses were 70 killed, 30 wounded and 80 prisoners with the loss of one Arab. Which sounds quite similar to the losses of the Covenant, as per the novelisation “We lost forty-seven colonists and sixteen second-generation embryos, and as you know, one crew member. An additional sixty-two pods incurred damage, all of which is salvageable”

Making the next movie the “War of the worlds” in which multiple parties will meet David at Origae-6 to do battle. The battle of Damascus.

As David’s story also parallels that of the Biblical David, there is also a link to Damascus. Historians of the Ancient Near East agree that David probably existed around 1000 BCE, but that there is little that can be said about him as a historical figure. There is no direct evidence outside of the Bible concerning David, but the Tel Dan Stele, an inscribed stone erected by a king of Damascus in the late 9th/early 8th centuries BCE to commemorate his victory over two enemy kings, contains the phrase ביתדוד‎(this is also hidden in the pages of The Art of Alien: Covenant Book as a blue design on the top left corner of each page), bytdwd, which most scholars translate as “House of David”. Ancient Near East historians generally doubt that the united monarchy as described in the Bible existed.

Special mention to @ASH-A-Fan-Fiction-Comic for sharing an article on the names and meanings of ships in the Alien Universe. It prompted me to look a little deeper and it of course made everything click.