despite it being very faint, capricornus has one of the oldest mythological associations. it has consistently been represented as a cross of a goat and a fish since the middle bronze age. the earliest picture of capricornus is on a cylinder-seal dating c. 21st century bce. from the mid second millennium it became a popular motif on boundary stones. it was explicitly recorded in the babylonian star catalogues as "the goat-fish" before 1000 bc. the constellation was a symbol of ea and in the early bronze age marked the winter solstice.