Capricorn. ♑︎

The goat-fish needed an explanation, and Greece improvised one: when the monster Typhon fell upon the gods, Pan dived into the Nile mid-transformation, goat above the waterline, fish below. Zeus, amused, kept the result. A second tradition points instead to Amaltheia, the goat that nursed the infant Zeus in the Cretan cave and was set among the stars for it.

Both stories are patches on a picture the Greeks inherited whole. Neither explains the fish tail so much as apologise for it, because the composite was never theirs to explain: the goat-fish arrived from Mesopotamia fully drawn, and the myths were written to fit the animal, not the other way round.

SUHUR.MASH, the goat-fish, is the emblem of Ea, god of the deep freshwater and of wisdom, and it appears on Babylonian seals and boundary stones essentially unchanged for four thousand years: the oldest continuously drawn figure in the zodiac. When the zodiac was fixed, the winter solstice stood here; the Tropic of Capricorn keeps the receipt.

A faint, patient smile of stars between the archer and the water-bearer. Algedi, at the head, is a naked-eye double for anyone who looks carefully; Deneb Algedi, ‘the goat’s tail’, is the brightest thing on offer. It is not a constellation that shouts. Neither, its admirers note, is wisdom.

Sources: MUL.APIN I · Aratus, Phaenomena 284 · Catasterismi 27 · Hyginus, Astronomica 2.28