Ancient Astrological Motif on the Pope's Hat

The top frame presents an image that was produced on clay 1000s of years ago, produced when a stone cylinder having an intricately carved image was rolled over moist clay. The scene depicted is that of a devotee's audience with Ninurta, the Sumerian god of war and agriculture, whose counterpart as the god of agriculture was the god Saturn in Roman mythology. Take note of the figure of a 6-pointed star on the clay tablet; it was used as an astrological motif for identification of a depicted figure as divine, a god. The motif, as you can see, is found on the Pope's hat, too, along with jewels surrounding it for representing the stars of the Pleiades constellation -- the same motif as found on the Sumerian artifact. The star on the Pope's hat is formed by the interlacing of 2 triangles for production of the hexagram, the same as used for presentation of the Star of David, which comes into present-day Judaism as a revival from ancient astrological lore via the Kabbala, because it was also found earlier in Judaism apart from the later Kabbalistic literature, for it was found in the excavated ruins of a synagogue in Capernaum, built between the 2nd-5th centuries.