People knew about the rings long before Galileo. That's the same thing you hear about prescession--it was discovered by Hipparchus in 127 BC. Bunk it was known far longer than that.

Saturn was called the Greater Malefic because it stood in opposition at the edge of universe to God's central light--the sun, of course. In the old legends, Saturn was imaged as a serpent biting its tail or the ouroboros. There is your ring again.

There was a Cult of Saturn at one time, they called him El. His color was black, his metal was lead, his bird was the crow. So his priests wore black as they still do. Priests, nuns, judges all wear black for that reason. Saturn's number was 7 and is responsible for the 7-day week and he is the last day in that week--Saturday. For centuries, his day was the sabbath before Constantine switched it over to Sunday. Early Christians still observed Saturday as the sabbath because they were closer to being El woorshippers than Sol worshippers.

Monks (whose name signifies the moon) still paid homage to Saturn by shaving their heads in a ring. Magicians enclosed themselves in protective circles, married couples exchange wedding rings, Jews wear the yarmulke as does the pope and his cardinals all to commemorate Saturn's rings. When the yogi puts his thumb and forefinger together it is commemorate the rings of Saturn. When a sovereign wears a crown, it is to commemorate the rings of Saturn. Corona and Cronos sound alike for a reason.

But eventually a Cult of Jove arose and Saturn became demonized. His orbit also enclosed those of Venus and Mars and Jupiter and Mercury--his children so he was said to have swallowed his children. Jove overthrew him, however, because he was the leader of the new cult. The story is told in Matthew as Jesus supplanting Herod as the new king. When Herod/Saturn saw a new "star" that others hailed as king, ordered a massacre, i.e. Saturn rules the darkest time of the year--winter in teh sign of the goat.

Saturn simply beame Satan. Said to be horned because if you look at Saturn through low-power lenses, he appears to be horned. Galileo thought of him as "eared." Many old images of the ouroboros show a horned serpent.

http://www.absentofi.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/ouroboros2.jpg

http://enjoyingliterature.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/ouroboros.jpg

In esoteric Christianity, before there was a sun, Saturn was a "Dark Lord" in the form of a searing heat that attacked the universe threatening to dessicate it into dead matter. A hero arrived--a man sporting a long blond mane, wearing a mantle of stars and riding in a chariot--who strummed his lyre and roared out a victory song of life and light and the brilliant blasted the darkness to the edge of the universe in the form of the ouroboros and Saturn even takes that form in miniature--a universe surrounded by a ring. This hero is seen on the door of the Durham cathedral--a doorknocker imaged as a fearsome lion forever guarding against the Lord of Darkness--the evil horned one--Saturn. That old serpent.

The tarot tells that story and here is the Hero:

http://www.nodntap.net/tarot/images/the_chariot.jpg

He is also called the Lion King and we know him best as Leo. The blond mane, of course, being the golden rays of the sun because he is the sun--the Great Hero--and Leo represents the time of year when the sun is at its greatest strength and the ruler of the sign of Leo is the sun.

The Lion King Hero guarding the sanctuary at Durham

So, yes, humanity knew Saturn was ringed long before Galileo. We need to knock off with this European saviors crap. We keep acting like the world was chaos and ignorance before the Europeans arrived. It was mostly chaos only after.