THE PLANETS. 91 



There is as little foundation for considering sucli a system as 

 this to be Egyptian,* as there is for confounding it with the 

 Ptolemaic epicycles or the system of Tycho. 



The names by which the star-like planets of the ancients 

 were represented are of two kinds : names of deities, and 

 iignijicaiitly descriptive names derived from physical char- 

 acters. Which part of them originally belonged to the Clial- 

 deans, and which to the Egyptians, is so much the more dif- 

 ficult to determine from the sources which have hitherto been 

 made use of, as the Greek writers present us, not with the 

 original names employed by other nations, but only transla- 

 tions of these into Greek equivalents, which were more oi 

 less modified by the individuaUty of those writers' opinions. 

 What knowledge the Egyptians possessed anterior to the Chal- 

 deans, Avhether these latter are to be considered merely as gift- 

 ed disciples of the former,! is a question which infringes upon 

 the important but obscure problem of primitive civilization 

 of the human race, and the commencement of the develop- 



* Henry Martin, in his Commentary to the Timceus (Etudes sur It 

 Timie de Platan, lom. ii., p. 129-133), appears to me to have explaiii- 

 •?d very happily the passage in Macrobius respecting the ratio Chaldceo 

 rum, which led the praiseworthy IJeler into error (in Wolff's and Butt, 

 aiann's Museum der Alterlhnms- Wissenschaft, bd. ii., s. 443, and in his 

 Treatise itpori Eudoxns, p. 48). JNIacrobiiis (in Somn. Scipionis, lib. i., 

 cap. 19 ; lib. ii., cap. 3, ed. 1634, p. 64 and 90) says nothing of the sys- 

 tem mentioned by Vitruvius and Martianus Capella, according to which 

 Mei-cm*y and Venns are satellites of the San, which, however, itself re- 

 volves with the other planets round the Earth, which is fixed in the 

 center. He enumerates only the differences in the succession of the 

 orbits of the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon, according to the 

 v^iews of Cicero. He says, *• Ciceroni, Archimedes et Chaldaeorum ra- 

 tio consentit ; Plato iEgyptios secutus est." " Archimedes and the sj's- 

 tem of the Chaldeans agi'ee ; Plato followed that of the Egyptians." 

 When Cicero exclaims, in the eloquent description of the whole plan- 

 etary system (Somn. Scip., cap. 4, Edmond's translation, ed. Bohn, p. 

 294), " Hunc (Solem) ut coinites consequuntur Veneris alter, alter Mer- 

 curii cursus;" " The motions of Venus and Mercury follow it (the Sun) 

 as companions," he refers only to the proximity of the Sun's orbit anc^ 

 those of the two inferior planets, after he had previously enumerated 

 the three cursus of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, all revolving round the 

 immovable Eaith. The orbit of a secondary 2:)lanet can not surround 

 that of a principal planet, and yet Macrobius says distinctly, " iEgyp- 

 tiorura ratio talis est: circulus, per quem Sol discurrit, a Mercurii cir- 

 culo ut inferior ambitur, ilium quoque superior circulus Veneris inclu- 

 (lit " " The following is the system of the Egyptians : the circle in 

 which the Sun moves is encompassed by the circle of [Nlercury, which 

 in its turn is encircled by th& larger one of Venus." The orbits are all 

 permanently parallel to each other mutually surrounding. 



i l.epsius, Chronologie der JEgyptcr, th. i., p. 207. 



