404 Astronomical and Nautical Collections. 
tended for the first sign, and this would answer either to the 
century immediately preceding the birth of Christ, or to a period 
fourteen centuries earlier. ‘The zodiac at Dendera appears to 
.begin with Leo; and unless we suppose its antiquity extra- 
vagantly great, we must refer it to the time of T1BERIUS, as 
Visconti has indeed already remarked. Mr. Hamilton has con- 
firmed this opinion by the collateral evidence of inscriptions in 
honour of the Roman emperors: although, with respect to the 
difference of time implied by the difference of a sign in the be- 
ginning of the zodiacs, he is rather inclined to adopt the senti- 
ments of Lalande, who refers it to the effect of the precession 
of the equinoxes; imagining, without any kind of authority, 
that the division of the signs corresponded to the period of the 
solstices, a period which never constituted a marked feature in 
the Egyptian calendar.” . . 
“ The beetles in the [square] zodiac of Dendera have a very 
different signification, and THE WHOLE REPRESENTATION IS 
MUCH MORE OF A MYTHOLOGICAL THAN OF AN ASTRONOMICAL 
NATURE.”’—Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1V. 
Edinb. 1818., Article Ecyrr, Section IV. 
“* Some of our journals,” says Mr. Champollion, “ have pub- 
lished an abstract of a Memoir on the Zodiac of Dendera, read 
by M. Biot to the Royal Academy of Sciences, the 15th and 
22d of July, and communicated the 19th to the Academy of 
Inscriptions and Belles Lettres. This able mathematician 
having undertaken to investigate the nature of the projection 
employed in this zodiac, from the places assigned to some prin- 
cipal stars, supposed to be recognised, has inferred from his 
researches that the date of the monument must have been 
716 B.C. 
‘“‘ Here, then, we have a new opinion upon the epoch to be 
attributed to an astronomical representation, which, for twenty 
years, has been successively the occasion and the subject of a 
multitude of systems, all conflicting with each other, according 
to the different degrees in which those who have wished to ex- 
plain it, and to infer rigorous conclusions from it, have been 
