MAHOMET'S KNIFE— DEUCALION— JONAH 441 



The place of fish in the Zodiac has been aheady noticed. 

 Apparently the position of the Pisces led Kepler to believe that 

 he had discovered the means of determining the true year of 

 our Saviour's birth. From the conjunction of Jupiter and 

 Saturn and Mars in 1604, the astronomer working backward 

 found that Jupiter and Saturn were in the constellation of the 

 Pisces (a fish, be it noted, being the astrological symbol for 

 Judasa) in the latter half of the year of Rome 747, and were 

 joined by Mars in 748. Their first union in the East awoke the 

 attention of the Magi, told them that the expected time had 

 come, and bade them set forth for Judaea. 



Astronomy has been to archaeology a most helpful hand- 

 maiden in establishing not only this but other dates of ancient, 

 especially of Assyrian, history. 1 



If the surmise of Isaak Walton 2 that Seth, the son of Adam, 

 taught his son to cast a Hne, and engraved the mystery of the 

 craft on those pillars of which Masons are supposed to know so 

 much, or even if the statement that, 



" Deucalion did first this art invent 

 Of Angling, and his people taught the same," 



could have been verified, how many discussions on the question — 

 formerly almost as hotly combated as some reHgious doctrine — 

 as to what was the first method of fishing would have been 

 avoided. Alas ! an authoritative answer is even yet to seek. 

 The nature of the " great fish " of Jonah will, I fear, no 

 longer prove an attractive subject for sermons. Identification 

 of " the beast " ranging through all the fishes of Ichthyology, 

 from the celebrated " first, aiblins it was a whale," down to 

 " nineteenthly " (whose precise species I forget), will alas ! with 



^ See antea, p. 388, n. i. 



2 The Compleat Angler, ch. I. " Others say that he left it (the Art of 

 AngUng) engraven on those pillars which he erected to preserve the knowledge 

 of Mathematicks, Musick, and the rest of those precious Arts, which by God's 

 appointment or allowance, and his noble industry were thereby preserved from 

 perishing in Noah's Floud." According to Manetho, Syncell Chron., 40, these 

 tables engraved with sacred characters were translated into the Greek tongue 

 in hieroglyphic characters, and committed to writing and deposited in the 

 temples of Egypt. See the Epistle of Manetho, the Sebennyte, to Ptolemasus 

 Philadelphus, and I. P. Cory, Ancient Fragments of Phosuician, Egyptian and 

 other writings {London, 1832), pp. 168-9, and Eusebius, Chron. 6. Cf. Georgius 

 SyUceJJLjiS, Chronographia (Bonnae, 1829), i. pp. 72-3. 



