SOUTHERN STARS. 137 



sentations of Dendera, and in the Egyptian Book of the 

 Dead), is perhaps the star indicated in an obscure passage of 

 Job (ch. ix., ver. 9), in which Arcturus, Orion, and the Plei- 

 ades are contrasted with " the chambers of the south," and 

 in which the four quarters of the heavens in like manner are 

 indicated by these four groups.* 



"While a large and splendid portion of the southern heav- 

 ens beyond stars having 53 S. Decl. were unknown in an- 

 cient times, and even in the earlier part of the Middle Ages, 

 the knowledge of the southern hemisphere was gradually 

 completed about a century before the invention and appli- 

 cation of the telescope. At the time of Ptolemy there were 

 visible on the horizon of Alexandria, the Altar, the feet of 

 the Centaur, the Southern Cross, then included in the Cen- 

 taur, and, according to Pliny, also called Ccesaris Thronus, 

 in honor of Augustus,! and Canopus (Canobus) in Argo, 

 which is called Ptolemceon by the scholiast to Germanicus.J 



* Lepsius, Chronol. der ^Egypter, bd. i., s. 143. In the Hebrew 

 text mention is made of Asch, the giant (Orion?), the many stars (the 

 Pleiades, Gemut?), and "the Chambers of the South." The Septua- 

 gint ^ives : 6 iroiuv 'EAetd<5a /cat 'Ecmepov Kal 'ApKrovpov /cat ra^eta 

 vorov. 



The early English translators, like the Germans and Dutch, under- 

 go >d the first group referred to in the verse to signify the stars in the 

 Great Bear. Thus we find in Coverdale's version, " He maketh the 

 waynes of heaven, the Orions, the vii. stars, and the secret places of 

 the south." Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Old Testament. (TR.) 



t Ideler, Sternnamen, s. 295. 



t Martianus Capella changes Ptolemceon into Ptolemceus; both names 

 were devised by the flatterers at the court of the Egyptian sovereigns. 

 Amerigo Vespucci thought he had seen three Canopi, one of which was 

 quite dark (fosco), Canopus ingens et niger of the Latin translation ; most 

 probably one of the black coal-sacks. (Humboldt, Examen Crit. de 

 la Geogr., torn, v., p. 227, 229.) In the above-named Elem. Chronol. 

 et Astron. by El-Fergani (p. 100), it is stated that the Christian pilgrims 

 used to call the Sohel of the Arabs (Canopus) the star of St. Catharine, 

 because they had the gratification of observing it, and admiring it as a 

 guiding star when they journeyed from Gaza to Mount Sinai. In a fine 

 episode to the Ramayana, the oldest heroic poem of Indian antiquity, 

 the stars in the vicinity of the South Pole are declared for a singular 

 reason to have been more recently created than the northern. When 

 Brahminical Indians were emigrating from the northwest to the coun 

 tries around the Ganges, from the 30th degree of north latitude to the 

 lands of the tropics, where they subjected the original inhabitants to 

 their dominion, they saw unknown stars rising above the horizon as 

 they advanced toward Ceylon. In accordance with ancient practice, 

 they combined these stars into new constellations. A bold fiction rep- 

 resented the later-seen stars as having been subsequently created by 

 the miraculous power of Visvamitra, who threatened " the ancient gods 

 that he would overcome the northern hemisphere with his more richly- 



