THE PLANETS. 91 



There is as little foundation for considering such 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 

 significantly descriptive names derived from physical char- 

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

 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 or 

 less modified by the individuality of those writers' opinions. 

 What knowledge the Egyptians possessed anterior to the Chal- 

 deans, whether 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 le 

 Timee de Platon, torn, ii., p. 129-133), appears to me to have explain- 

 ed very happily the passage in Macrobius respecting the ratio Chaldceo- 

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

 mann's Museum der Alterthums- Wissenschaft, bd. ii., s. 443, and in his 

 Treatise upon Eudoxus, p. 48). Macrobius (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 

 Mercury and Venus are satellites of the Sun, 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 

 views of Cicero. He says, * ; Ciceroni, Archimedes et Chaldaeorum ra- 

 tio consentit ; Plato ^Egyptios secutus est." " Archimedes and the sys- 

 tem of the Chaldreans agree : 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 comites 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 and 

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

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

 immovable Earth. The orbit of a secondary planet can rro^ surround 

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

 tiorum ratio talis est: circulus, per quern Sol discurrit, a Mercurii cir- 

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

 dit " "The following is the system of the Egyptians: the circle in 

 which the Sun moves is encompassed by the circle of Mercury, which 

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

 permanently parallel to each other mutually surrounding. 



t Lepsius, Chronologic der JEgypter, th. i., p. 207. 



