* Astronomy

Sagittarius, the archer, is often imagined as a centaur: half-man and half-horse. Ancient Greeks and Romans often confused Sagittarius with Centaurus, a constellation farther to the southwest.
Yet the origin of Sagittarius may have come much earlier than this; the stellar figure seems to personify the Archer Nergal, a god of war inscribed on ancient Sumerian cuneiform tablets. The Archer is even included as a "horse's head," or "horseman," in the 3,000-year-old zodiac of India. The human part of the figure is depicted by a fan made of a lion's tails and owned by the wife of an Indian monarch.

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