goat-fish

goat-fish (plural goat-fish or goat-fishes)

1. (mythology) A sea goat (upper half goat, lower half fish).

   Synonym: fish-goat

   • 1634, Thomas Carew, Cœlum Britanicum. A masque at White-Hall in the Banquetting-House on Shrove-Tuesday-Night, the 18. of February 1633, London: John Walkley, page 9:

     The Centaure, the horn'd goatfiſh Capricorne,
     The ſnake-heard [sic] Gorgon, and fierce Sagittar.

   • 1899, Richard Hinckley Allen, Star-Names and their Meaning, New York: G.E. Stechert, page 138:

     From this figuring Camões, in Os Lusiadas of 1572, called it the Semi-Capran Fish, as it is now with us the Goat-Fish and the Sea Goat.

   • 1953, B. L. van der Waerden, “History of the Zodiac”, in Archiv für Orientforschung, volume 16, page 226:

     In the analogous case of the goatfish, represented in Dendera and on the boundary stones by quite similar pictures (figs. 6 and 7), we know that it was transferred to the sky before 700 B.C., since the constellation suh̬ur-maš is mentioned in ^mulAPIN.

   • 1965, Willy Hartner, “The Earliest History of the Constellations in the near East and the Motif of the Lion-Bull Combat”, in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, volume 24, number 1/2, page 14, column 1:

     Similarly, the ibex with the round symbol in its horns, though for several thousand years past removed from its original place among the stars and reduced later to the little constellation of the Goat-Fish (Šuh̬ur-máš, Capricorn), subsists as an artistic motif throughout the millennia.

   • 1998, John H. Roger, “Origins of the ancient constellations: I. The Mesopotamian traditions”, in Journal of the British Astronomy Association, volume 108, number 1, page 11, column 1:

     "Ea", the beneficent god of earth and life, who dwelt in the abyssal waters, was shown with two streams running from his hands or shoulders; he became Aquarius, and his symbols also formed the constellations of Capricornus (Ea's goat-fish, first seen on the seal of Ur just before 2000 BC), the Field (our Square of Pegasus), Piscis Austrinus, and perhaps Pisces [...] and Aries (Ea's ram's-head staff).