A new study by Dr. Linda Evans and her colleagues from Macquarie University, Australia, published in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, has recently identified what may be an Egyptian petroglyph depicting the zodiac sign Capricornus, a hybrid creature with the forequarters of a goat and body of a fish.

She explains why the image was subsequently interpreted as depicting Capricornus, stating, “There is nothing like the goat-fish in pharaonic animal iconography… The Egyptians didn’t create hybrid animals willy-nilly; instead, they drew together the features of animals that shared certain qualities, such as the Seth animal, which combines the physical features of a range of aggressive predators to create a truly powerful being. The el-Hosh creature also resembles the zodiac goat-fish so closely that we felt it is more likely the latter than evidence of a new type of hybrid animal.”

The first occurrence of something resembling Capricornus occurred in Mesopotamia, where the Sumerian god Enki and the Akkadian equivalent Ea were usually depicted as bearded men with horned caps, wearing gowns. At the shoulders of these gowns, water streams filled with fish would spout. This later evolved into the first recognizable depiction of a goat-fish hybrid at the feet of the god on cylinder seals dating to ca. 2112–2004 BCE.