From Goat to Sun Disk: The Ancient Continuum of Saturn Worship
- Michelle Hayman
- Aug 12
- 16 min read
Amos 5:26 and Acts 7:43 draw a direct biblical link between Israel’s idolatry and Saturn worship. In Amos, the people are condemned for carrying Sikkuth and Kiyyun; Stephen, in Acts, cites this as the worship of Moloch and “the star of your god Rephan.” Hebrew and Ancient Near Eastern scholarship associates Kiyyun (Kaiwanu) with Saturn, while “Rephan” is a Greek form preserved in the Septuagint and Acts. This creates an early scriptural strand where the “star”; a planetary deity; is identified with a false god condemned by the prophets.
The historical trail begins with Dagan, a Bronze Age West-Semitic fertility and grain god venerated from the Middle Euphrates cities of Tuttul, Terqa, Mari, and Emar. In Emar, the great Zukru festival (Emar VI 373) paired Dagan, titled Bēl Bukkari (“Lord of Offspring”), with the city-god written dNIN.URTA. Though functioning locally as a weather or guardian deity, dNIN.URTA is the logogram for Ninurta, a Mesopotamian warrior and agricultural god. In later first-millennium Mesopotamian astronomy, Ninurta was identified with the planet Saturn. Babylonian astral texts such as MUL.APIN record the equation “Saturn = Ninurta.” This was not the intention of the Bronze Age Emar clergy, but it creates a conceptual bridge: Dagan of Emar, ritually bound to Ninurta, is indirectly connected to the Saturn of later Mesopotamian cosmology. In the western Phoenician world, Greco-Roman authors equated Saturn with the Punic Baal Hammon.
Baal Hammon, supreme god of Carthage from at least the fifth century BCE until the Roman conquest, was paired with the goddess Tanit. His domains encompassed fertility of the land, seasonal renewal, and agricultural cycles. The most consistent image for Baal Hammon in Punic art is the solar disk, often set above or between rams. In that iconography the disk functions as his badge of dominion over cyclical time and renewal, while the ram signals fertility and power. In Egyptian religion, the ram was sacred to Amun-Ra and Khnum, creator and solar deities, and in Osirian theology could represent the ba (soul) of Osiris in his chthonic form. The Punic ram under the disk and the astrological goat under Saturn (Kronos/Capricorn) converge on the same cluster of ideas: fertility, seasonality, rulership over cycles, and the liminal edge between life and death.
Saturn’s zodiacal house is Capricorn, the goat-fish, an ancient Mesopotamian symbol linked to Enki/Ea, god of water, wisdom, and creation. The goat half connects to fertility, vitality, and mountains; the fish tail links to the sea, the underworld, and primordial waters. The imagery of fish-form priestly headdresses in Neo-Assyrian reliefs; depicting Apkallu sages of Ea — shows that priestly attire could represent a deity’s dual nature. 1 Samuel 5 attests to a functioning priesthood of Dagon in Ashdod, with a threshold taboo in his temple.
Biblically, solar worship is condemned. Ezekiel 8:16 describes men bowing to the sun within the Temple courts, an act portrayed as abomination. If the “image of the sun” is understood as a solar disk; flanked by rams or engraved upon stelae; Baal Hammon’s iconography fits that condemned imagery. In Matthew 25, Christ places the goats on His left, symbolizing rejection — a fitting parallel to Saturn’s goat, tied to the god who rules the world and the flow of time, marking the dark, dying edge of the seasonal cycle.
By the Roman and patristic eras, the Saturn/Baal Hammon complex was repeatedly named in connection with child sacrifice. Diodorus Siculus (20.14) recounts noble children offered to Kronos in Carthage; Plutarch (De superstitione 13) describes the fiery image of the god receiving them; Tertullian (Apology 9) says, “Children were openly sacrificed to Saturn … and even now that sacred crime still continues in secret”; Augustine (City of God 7.26) cites Carthaginians sacrificing sons to Saturn; Lactantius (Divine Institutes 1.21) speaks of “infants immolated to Saturn.”
The archaeological counterpart is the Carthage Tophet; a walled precinct with layers of urns containing cremated remains of infants, occasionally mixed with animal bones, buried beneath stelae dedicated to “Tanit, Face of Baal, and to Lord Baal Hammon.” The iconography often combines the Tanit symbol, solar disk, and ram. Scholars debate whether these were sacrificial victims or high-mortality infants given funerary rites, but ancient testimony consistently interprets them as offerings to Baal Hammon/Saturn.
Read together, the line runs cleanly: Dagan’s cultic pairing with Ninurta; Ninurta’s identification with Saturn; Baal Hammon’s identification with Kronos/Saturn; the Punic ram beneath the solar disk as the god’s image; the goat as Saturn’s animal in Capricorn; the biblical condemnation of sun and star worship; and the repeated charge — textual and archaeological — that in Carthage, this deity of cycles was served with the costliest offerings of all.
But let's look closer...
Biblical and Historical Links to Saturn Worship
From Dagan of Emar to Ninurta of Mesopotamia
Historically, we can trace a line of continuity from the West-Semitic god Dagan to the Mesopotamian god Ninurta, and later to Saturn. Dagan (sometimes spelled Dagon) was a major fertility and agriculture god among West Semitic peoples. In the late Bronze Age city of Emar on the Middle Euphrates, Dagan was the chief deity.
Ninurta was originally a Sumerian/Akkadian deity of war, hunting, and farming, often depicted with a bow, mace, or thunderbolt. Over centuries, as Mesopotamian religion developed an astral-theological system, the gods were associated with visible planets. Ninurta eventually became identified with the planet Saturn. One source notes that in the astral-theological system, “Ninurta was associated with the planet Saturn,” and that as a farmer-god he bore similarities to the Greek Titan Cronus (whom the Romans identified with Saturn).
Through Ninurta, we have a conceptual bridge back to Dagan. In Emar’s ritual, Dagan (a fertility god) was effectively linked with Ninurta (now an astral Saturn-god). We might say that Dagan of Emar was indirectly connected to Saturn through this association. Dagan → Ninurta → Saturn. This also aligns with another West Semitic connection: some Ugaritic and early Syrian traditions identify Dagan as father of Baʿal, and in Mesopotamia Ninurta was the champion of Enlil – suggesting Dagan held a similar “fatherly” or senior role. All this cements Dagan’s position in an early Near Eastern lineage that later links to Saturn.
It’s worth noting that Dagan is often mistakenly thought of as a fish-god in popular lore (due to the Hebrew word dag meaning fish). In reality, ancient sources portray him as a grain deity, and the fish association is not found in early texts. The fish imagery likely comes from confusion with depictions of Mesopotamian sages. Assyrian and Babylonian art sometimes shows priests or demi-gods (Nephilim) in fish-cloaked costumes – human figures wearing a fish skin, with the fish’s head over their own like a hood. Their fish attire symbolized their origin from the Abzu (the cosmic underground ocean of Enki). The takeaway here is that ancient priests could embody dual symbolism (aquatic and terrestrial) without implying the deity itself was a fish. This will become relevant when we discuss the goat-fish (Capricorn) symbolism below.
Saturn and Baal Hammon: The African Connection
Moving into the first millennium BCE, we find Baal Hammon – the chief god of Carthage identified with Saturn. Baal Hammon (also spelled Baʿal Hammon) was a West Semitic deity, perhaps of Phoenician origin, who rose to prominence in the western Mediterranean colonies (Carthage, Sardinia, Sicily, etc.). He was regarded as a god of sky and weather, responsible for the fertility of vegetation and the renewal of the land. Classical authors universally equated Baal Hammon with the titan Cronus (Greek) or Saturn (Roman).
Carthage was a Phoenician (Punic) colony, and as its most important god, Baal Hammon was often simply called “Baal” by the Carthaginians. By the 5th century BCE, he was paired with a female consort, Tanit, who was a mother goddess. Tanit eventually even eclipsed Baal Hammon in popular devotion (her name often precedes his in inscriptions). Nonetheless, Baal Hammon remained the “father” deity and king of the gods of Carthage.. In most cities of Roman Africa, Saturn’s name replaces Baal Hammon, and dedications to “Saturnus” likely refer to the old Punic god. (In one region, Hadrumetum, coins even show an attempt to syncretize Baal Hammon with Apollo as a sun god, but by and large Saturn was the preferred identification.)
Ram Horns and Solar Disks: Baal Hammon’s Imagery
The iconography of Baal Hammon in Punic culture provides further evidence of his identity and links to Saturn. The most common symbols associated with Baal Hammon are the ram and the solar disk. On Carthaginian stelae (tombstones or votive monuments), the god is often symbolized abstractly: one frequent motif is a crescent moon with a sun-disc above it. In many cases, this has been interpreted as a stylized representation of a ram’s horns cradling a solar disk. (Baal Hammon was sometimes called Baal Qarnaim, “Lord of Two Horns,” and had a prominent open-air sanctuary at Jebel Bu Kornein – literally “Two-Horn Hill” – near Carthage.) Archaeologists have uncovered numerous stelae in the Tophet of Carthage (the sacred precinct) bearing the so-called “Tanit symbol” – a schematic human-like figure with outstretched arms – often topped by a disk and sometimes flanked by horned shapes. It’s generally agreed these symbols represent Tanit and Baal Hammon. In short, the sun-circle and horns became the emblem of Baal Hammon’s dominion.
Why a ram? In ancient Near Eastern religions, rams were symbols of virility, leadership, and solar attributes. In Egyptian religion, for example, the ram was sacred to Amun-Ra (a sun god) and to Khnum (a creator god associated with the Nile’s life-giving flood). Egyptian gods like Amun and Khnum are often depicted with ram’s heads, and the sun-disc icon is nestled between their horns in art. The ram could also symbolize the ba (soul) of gods like Osiris in their underworld aspect. Classical descriptions mention Cronus (Baal Hammon) in Carthage being honored with the image of a ram’s head or accompanied by ram figures. The epithet “Lord of Two Horns” reinforces that the horned ram was a principal animal of this god.
Meanwhile, the solar disk above the horns signified cosmic rule – the power over seasons and the yearly cycle of the sun. In effect, Baal Hammon was the lord of the natural year: he governed the growth of crops (hence fertility), the coming of the rains, and the return of the sun’s warmth each spring. His authority aligned with the key turning points of the solar cycle, especially the equinoxes, when day and night stand in balance and agricultural seasons shift.
The spring equinox, in particular, marked the renewal of life in the ancient Mediterranean and would later acquire added resonance in the “Christian” calendar through Easter, whose dating is tied to the first Sunday after the full moon following the spring equinox. However, the apostles themselves celebrated the resurrection of Christ — fundamental to Christian belief — in connection with Passover, as they had personally witnessed it, and not according to a solar-based calculation tied to the equinox.
This solar symbolism in Baal Hammon was not the gentle radiance of a purely benevolent “sun god” but the stern and cyclical rulership of time itself — a cosmic regulator who could grant or withhold fertility, ensuring that nature’s order was both respected and feared. As Saturn in the Roman mind, he embodied the inescapable rhythms of sowing and reaping, life and death, and the unbending passage of the seasons.
In biblical and Christian polemic, horned deities like Baal Hammon and Moloch became demonized. The ram’s horns, once signs of divine kingship, were recast as marks of the Devil. Revelation’s “beast” with horns, and medieval art’s goat- and ram-horned Satan, visually preserved this association. As "Christianity" absorbed the ancient Mediterranean world, the old horned gods were reframed as the “Prince of This World,” ruler of temporal power and false light.
In the folklore and witch trial records of early modern Europe, the “horned master” bears traits traceable to this ancient archetype: a horned, often goat-footed figure presiding over nocturnal rites, promising fertility, knowledge, or power in exchange for loyalty. Scholars such as Georg Luck have noted that post-classical pagan survivals may have merged Celtic Cernunnos, Greco-Roman Pan, and Mediterranean horned gods like Baal Hammon into a composite figure demonized as Satan.
Modern Wicca’s Horned God — lord of the wild, consort to the Triple Goddess, and ruler over the Wheel of the Year; is a conscious reclamation of this archetype, shorn of its medieval demonization. Yet the symbolic throughline remains: a horned sovereign, bound to the cycles of life and death, associated with solar and lunar power, and serving as mediator between the earthly, heavenly, and underworld realms.
"And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice,
If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand,
The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation;
and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:
And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever:
and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name."
(Revelation 14:9–11, KJV)
Capricorn and the Goat-Fish Symbolism
Interestingly, the Roman astrological symbol for Saturn ties back into a similar complex of imagery. In astrology, Saturn “rules” the zodiac sign of Capricorn, traditionally depicted as a goat-fish (half goat, half fish). This goat-fish symbol is ancient, originating in Mesopotamia. Babylonian star catalogs identify a constellation called SUḪUR.MAŠ – literally “The Goat-Fish” – representing the god Ea (Enki). Ea was the god of the subterranean waters and wisdom, often associated with creation and with the watery abyss (Apzu). The goat-fish likely signified Ea’s dual nature: the goat half representing highland fertility (goats were linked to mountain pastures) and the fish half representing the sea or abyss. This constellation later became the Greek Capricornus, and thus the symbol passed into the zodiac.
When we consider Saturn’s connection to Capricorn, a pattern emerges: Saturn embodies a mix of fertility and death, height and depth – much like the goat-fish is at home on high crags and in the depths of the ocean. The goat portion conveys robustness, agility, and procreative power (goats were commonly sacrificial animals associated with vigor). The fish portion conveys the abyss, the realm of chaos or the underworld (fish being creatures of the “deep”). Ancient mythologies often conflated the two: for example, the Sumerian god Enki (Ea) is sometimes depicted with streams of water flowing from him, filled with fish, and he bears the epithet “capricorn” in some contexts. Capricorn’s iconography thus encodes the idea of life emerging from the waters and the cycle of death and rebirth (the dry season vs. the renewal of rains).
In Assyrian art, we find a vivid parallel: the fish-cloaked Apkallu priests mentioned earlier. These sages/priestly figures wore fish skins but performed rituals on land, bridging the aquatic and terrestrial realms. While these fish-men are not directly linked to Capricorn, they show how an ancient priest could symbolize two elements at once. Likewise, Capricorn’s goat-fish is a single creature embodying the interface of two worlds. It’s tempting to draw an analogy with the Philistine god Dagon (especially since later writers like Philo of Byblos describe Dagon as “Dagon, who is also Siton,” meaning grain, but associate him with Oannes, the fish-man sage). Still, conceptually, by New Testament times, “the goat” had become a negative emblem – perhaps not coincidentally. In Matthew 25:33, in the final judgment parable, the goats are set to the left (rejected) while the sheep are on the right hand of the King. Goats in that context symbolize the condemned. In a way, this echoes the grim aspect of Saturn (the planet of misfortune in astrology) and the goat as his animal. The goat can represent the boundary between the blessed and the cursed, life and death – much as Saturn governed the edge of the visible planets (the boundary of the old cosmos).
By the first century, goats, rams, and bulls were all laden with religious connotations in the Mediterranean world: the ram with solar/fertility gods (fallen angels), the bull often with storm or creator gods, and the goat with arcane, chthonic powers (Pan was a goat-god of wilderness, and in astrology Capricorn’s goat-fish was tied to Saturn). The prophets inveighed against solar worship – e.g., Ezekiel 8:16 describes men “bowing to the sun in the temple” – and against star worship – e.g., Zephaniah 1:5 condemns those who “bow down to all the host of heaven.” These likely target the kinds of rituals that involved astral symbols like sun-disks, crescent moons, and stars (planetary deities) in Israel’s vicinity. It’s not hard to imagine that neighboring cultures venerating Baal Shamem (Lord of the Sky) or Baal Hammon with sun and star symbols would tempt some in Judah or Samaria to syncretism. The Bible consistently portrays such practices as abominations.
The Ultimate Price: Child Sacrifice to Saturn
One of the most chilling threads connecting this network of deities is the practice of child sacrifice. The Old Testament frequently denounces the sacrifice of children, particularly by fire, in relation to a deity named Molech (Lev. 18:21, 2 Kings 23:10, etc.). Scholars have long debated who Molech represents; one strong possibility is that “Molech” (which may mean just “the king”) was a title for Baal Hammon or a similar god, and that the horrific rites attributed to Molech are the same as those practiced in Carthage and Phoenician colonies – in other words, offerings to Cronus/Saturn. Indeed, Greek and Roman authors explicitly state this.
The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (1st century BCE) gives a graphic account of child sacrifice in Carthage during a crisis: he describes a bronze statue of Cronus (i.e. Baal Hammon) with outstretched hands, palms up, sloping forward – “so that each of the children, when placed thereon, rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire”. This image – a god “swallowing” children in fire – horrified Diodorus’ readers. He further notes that some wealthy Carthaginians, in attempts to evade sacrificing their own sons, would buy infants from the poor to offer – but when a disaster loomed, they feared divine retribution for that deceit and thus slaughtered 200 children of the noblest families at once to appease Cronus.
Recent studies (including a 2014 Antiquity journal report) strongly support the interpretation of intentional sacrifice, noting the statistical age distribution and the inscriptions of thanks to the gods for granting a request. It appears the Carthaginians made vows to Baal Hammon and Tanit – for example, for help in war or to ensure the fertility of the community – and if the god “granted their wish,” they fulfilled the vow by offering their own infant. This was not an everyday occurrence, but likely reserved for the firstborn of the elite in times of dire need. Strikingly (and grimly), our theme of cycle and renewal is present even here: the sacrifice is couched as “payment” to secure future favor or to avert collective ruin – essentially trading one life to ensure the life of the community continues.
Roman-era authors, looking back on these Phoenician practices, explicitly tie them to Saturn. The Christian apologist Tertullian (c. 200 CE), himself from Carthage, wrote: “Saturn, formerly received children’s sacrifices openly, until the imperial authorities (in Tiberius’ time) crucified his priests on their own trees; but even now, secret sacrifices are still offered”. He then scathingly remarks, “When Saturn did not spare his own children, he was not likely to spare the children of others”.
Sorry it's long!
When we “read together” all these strands, we see a remarkably consistent picture forming over millennia: a fertility god of the Near East becomes tied to a Mesopotamian warrior-god; that warrior becomes a star (the planet Saturn); that star-god finds a new incarnation as the chief deity of Carthage. Along the way, the symbols stay significant. The star of Saturn condemned by Amos is the same “star” worshipped by Phoenicians on stelae. The ram offered to Dagan or Baal in agricultural rites becomes the ram under the sun-disk of Carthage. The goat as a sacrificial animal and astrological sign becomes the emblem of Saturn’s harsh dominion. Even the motif of devouring the offspring – figuratively in myth and literally in cult – accompanies Saturn from Cronus’s saga to the fires of the Tophet.
In summary, the idolatry that the Biblical prophets warned against had deep roots and far-reaching branches. What started as agrarian worship of the forces of nature (grain, rain, sun) evolved into a sophisticated astral theology and then into an grim cosmic regime that demanded human life as tribute. Understanding this continuity enriches our reading of those Biblical polemics – they were not exaggerating when they linked “Moloch” and the “star-god” in the same breath. They were perceiving, in seed form, the very trajectory we’ve traced: from Dagan’s bounty to Saturn’s scythe, a through-line of pagan tradition that spanned cultures yet carried forward the same core deception, that creation (sun, stars, beasts) should be worshipped in place of the Creator.
Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue speaks of a world-renewing child and the return of a Golden Age: “A great cycle of the ages is born anew; the reign of Saturn returns; now a new offspring is sent down from high heaven… now your Apollo reigns.” In the ancient world this was a pagan vision of cosmic renewal, Saturn’s order restored, and Apollo’s light ruling over the earth. Later, "Christian" writers from the early church through the Middle Ages reinterpreted it as a prophecy of Christ’s kingdom. Pope Innocent III even cited it as foretelling the coming of the Messiah.
Yet the symbols embedded in Virgil’s lines—Saturn, the goat and Capricorn, the ram and the solar disk—tie back to the very imagery of Baal Hammon, the stern god of cycles and time, whose cult was linked to child sacrifice and whose solar emblem was carried over into Greco-Roman and occult traditions. The Apollo of Virgil’s poem, too, was bound to the solar disk, the “false light” of the seasonal sun rather than the eternal light of the Creator. In modern occultism, the horned, composite goat-image of Baphomet carries the same visual grammar: fertility, cyclical power, and the liminal threshold between life and death.
The Bible’s picture could not be more different. Christ is the Lamb, not the goat. In Matthew 24 we are warned that “as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be” at His coming—a time when violence and corruption filled the earth. The ancient Saturnian “golden age” was no paradise but the reign of a devourer, a father of giants, a serpent seed that consumed human labor, then flesh, then all creation. In the same way, the prophets and apostles condemn worship of the host of heaven and the making of any image that draws adoration from the Creator.
However magnificent the horned crowns, solar disks, and promises of cosmic renewal may appear, they are the emblems of a counterfeit kingdom. The true kingdom does not come by the return of Saturn’s reign or Apollo’s rising, but by the appearing of the Lamb who rules over time itself, whose light is uncreated and whose reign has no end.
Sources:
J. F. Healey, “Dagan/Dagon.” Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (DDD), 2nd ed. (1999) – via archive quotes.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Dagon" – summary of Dagan as grain god and Philistine worship.
Hebrew Bible, 1 Samuel 5:5 – reference to priests of Dagon and threshold custom.
Masamichi Yamada (2011), Daniel E. Fleming (1992), et al., on the Emar zukru Festival (Emar VI 373) – Dagan’s pairing with dNIN.URTA.
Gary Beckman, “The Pantheon of Emar” (1996) – discusses Emar’s gods, Dagan and the logogram dNIN.URTA for the city’s god.
MUL.APIN and Babylonian Astral Science (8th–5th cent. BC) – Ninurta identified with Saturn.
Stack Exchange history post (2019) debunking the “fish-god mitre” myth – “Dagan was not a fish-god… no priests wearing fish-hats…”.
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