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when the Greeks had possession of Egypt, was almost out of 

 the Crab. The time when the equinox was in the Bull and 

 the solstice in the Lion, belongs to that period of remote an- 

 tiquity from which so many astronomical monuments of a 

 similar character have been transmitted to us, viz., about three 

 thousand years B.C. On the outer margin two little pointers 

 are seen, directed to the Bull and the Scorpion, and two other 

 singular marks directed to the Lion and the Water Bearer. I 

 cannot doubt that these mark the ancient places of the ecjui- 

 noxes and solstices, whilst the lines passing through the 

 Hawks-headed figures shew the present or modern position. 

 One of those lines would pass just between the Ram and the 

 Fish on one side, the Virgin's Ear of Com on the other : 

 this would be the place of the equinox at the time of the 

 Ptolemies. The other would pass through one of the Twins 

 and Sagitarius : this would mark the solstice at that epoch. 

 And I believe if we could read the hieroglyphics round the 

 inner border, we should find the history of this procession of 

 the equinoxes related in it. I think one instance of this can 

 be pointed out, i.g,, at four different places a Ram's head, or 

 heads, with the solar disc upon it. Now this was the common 

 way, and most intelligible, of expressing the principal resting 

 place of the sun in one of th^ signs. The solar disc on the 

 head of the Ram would express the vernal equinox when it 

 was in that sign, and the same disc on the head of Apis, the 

 Sacred Bull, when in Taurus. The solar disc resting on the 

 heavens, supported by lions, which was one of the emblems of 

 the Egyptian God Re, would represent the sun's influence at 

 the summer solstice when that was in the Lion ; and the same 

 disc in the sign of the Crab, (or rather in that of the Beetle, 

 or Scarabeus as the Egyptians chose to call that sign,) would 

 mark this influence when the tropic was in Cancer. Innumer- 

 able instances occur in Egypt of these four solar crowned 

 zodiacal signs — Rams and Bulls, Beetles and Lions — the gods 

 whom they represented being typical of the peculiar influence 



