July 2, 1891] 



NATURE 



201 



no large change of amplitude was necessary, but that in the 

 case of every stellar temple after a lapse of a certain 

 number of years depending upon the position of the star, 

 the temple must be twisted round if it were wished to 

 continue to make observations of the same star. 



That raises an interesting question by the way. Long 

 after the temple had been used for observation of a parti- 

 cular star, long after that temple line was blocked by ex- 

 tended building, if the horizon of these temples was left 

 open it looks very much as if when another bright star 

 came along it was laid hold of for a new set of observations. 

 However that may be, it is rendered extremely probable, 

 by the considerations I have brought before you, that the 

 Egyptians 3000 years B. c. had been rendered practically 

 conversant with the result of the precession of the equinoxes 

 by the fact that they had to rebuild and alter their temples 

 from time to time because the stars changed their decli- 

 nation. If that be confirmed by subsequent investigations, 

 it will show that these Egyptians possessed a very much 

 more profound knowledge of astronomy than they have 

 received credit for, because it is stated that the precession 

 of the equinoxes was discovered by Hipparchus. It looks 

 as if the precession of the equinoxes was probably 

 published by Hipparchus as the result of an examination 

 of the untold wealth of Egyptian astronomical obser- 

 vations which has been unfortunately lost to the world. 



This question of orientation is after all one which 

 survives among ourselves. All our churches are more or 

 less oriented, which is a remnant of old sun worship, 

 and the church is not always oriented exactly to the east, 

 but so that the light of the sunrising upon the Saint's day 

 to whom the church is dedicated may be thrown along 

 the chancel. 



It has long been known that Stonehenge is oriented to 

 the rising of the sun at the summer solstice. Its ampli- 

 tude instead of being 26" is \6' ; with a latitude of 51^, the 

 26^ azimuth of Thebes is represented by an azimuth of 

 40'' at Stonehenge. 



The first of January is very near the winter solstice, 

 but is not quite the winter solstice. If you look up the 

 old records of the races that lived 2000 or 3000 years 

 H.C., you will find that the different races began their 

 year at different times, and even that the same race at 

 different times began their year differently ; the choice 

 lay among the equinoxes and the solstices, and seeing 

 that one of the very oldest temples at Thebes is oriented 

 to sunset at the summer solstice we should not be at all 

 surprised if investigation shows that when that temple 

 was built more than 3000 years B.C., the Egyptian year 

 really began in what we should call our summer. We 

 have ample evidence of this. And I think there is little 

 doubt that when Stonehenge was built it certainly was 

 built by people who began their year with the summer 

 solstice, which you will remember is the time of the year 

 in which in many countries it is the habit still to light 

 fires upon hills and so on. 



The next point is, what was probably the use made of 

 these temples besides determining the length of the year 

 and regulating so far as they could the seasonal changes, 

 the times of the solstices, the times of the equinoxes, and 

 the various celestial phenomena .'' 



We understand that in the very beginning of obser- 

 vations in all countries, the moment man began to 

 observe anything, we saw that he began to observe the 

 stars, and the moment men began to talk about anything 

 they had seen they must have started by in some way or 

 other defining the particular stars they meant. 



They would obviously talk first of the brightest stars, 

 and separate them from the dimmest ones ; they would 

 then discuss the stars which never set, and separate 

 them from those which did rise and set ; then they would 

 take the most striking configurations, whether large or 

 small ; they would choose out the constellation of Orion or 

 the Great Bear, and for small groups the Pleiades. These 



NO. I 131, VOL. 44] 



would attract attention, and be named before anything else. 

 Then later on it would be imperative in order to con- 

 nect their solar with their stellar observations that they 

 should name the stars which lay along the sun's path in 

 the heavens. They would confine their attention to a 

 belt round the equator rather than consider the configu- 

 ration of stars half-way between the equator and north 

 pole. In all countries— India, China, Babylonia, Chaldaea, 

 Egypt — they had a sort of girdle round the heavens, 

 called by different names in different countries, and the 

 use of this girdle of stars, which sometimes consisted of 

 twenty-eight stations, sometimes of twenty-seven, and 

 sometimes of only ten, was to enable them to define the 

 place of the moon or of any of the planets in relation 

 to any of these stars. That condition of things, that 

 stage of thought, is brought well before us in the Jewish 

 Scriptures. 



In the Book of Job we read, " Canst thou bind the 

 sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion ? 

 Canst thou bring forth Maz^aroth in his season? or canst 

 thou guide Arcturus with his sons .'' " 



Here we have the difficulty which has met everybody 

 in going back into these old records, because there was 

 no absolute necessity for a common language at the time ; 

 it was open to everyone to call the stars any name they 

 chose in any country, therefore it is difficult for scholars 

 to find out what particular stars or constellations were 

 meant by any particular words. In the revised version, 

 Arcturus has given place to the Bear with its train, and 

 even our most distinguished scholars do not know what 

 Mazzaroth means. I wrote to Prof. Robertson Smith the 

 other day to ask him to give us the benefit of his great 

 knowledge, and he says that Mazzaroth is probably that 

 band of stars round the ecliptic or round the equator to 

 which I have referred, but he will only commit himself to 

 the statement that it is a probable enough conjecture ; 

 other people believe that it was a reference to the Milky 

 Way. 



I mention this to show you how very difficult this 

 inquiry really is. The " seven stars " undoubtedly mean 

 the Pleiades and not the Great Bear. Among the brighter 

 stars, Arcturus, the Pleiades, &c., are referred to by Homer 

 and still earlier writers. So far as Egyptian and Chinese 

 astronomy goes, practically the first reference to a con- 

 stellation appears in Egypt with reference to the equinox 

 which happened 3285 years B.C., and in China with 

 reference to the Pleiades in the equinox of 2357 B.C. 



In observing stars nowadays, we use a transit circle 

 which is carried round by the earth so as to pick up the 

 stars in different circles round the axis of the earth pro- 

 longed, and by altering the inclination of the telescope of 

 this instrument we can first get a circle of one declination 

 and then a circle of another. 



The Egyptians did not usually employ meridian observa- 

 tions. Did the Egyptians make star maps ? They certainly 

 did. In the temple of Denderah, which is a compara- 

 tively modern temple, there is a very precious series of 

 records which is certainly not at all modern. It repre- 

 sents a good many of the Egyptian constellations. The 

 central part was in all probability the zenith point of 

 Denderah itself, and at a certain distance from the centre 

 point we have the zodiac represented excentrically. The 

 constellations round the edge are those nearest the 

 horizon ; the central ones are those nearest the north 

 pole ; instead of having the Great Bear, we have the 

 constellation of the Thigh, representing the well-known 

 seven stars ; in addition we have the constellation Hippo- 

 potamus, which has now entirely disappeared. There is 

 also a Babylonian zodiac, which will show you that, 

 although Babylonia and Egypt were adjacent countries, 

 yet that they had a perfectly different set of constella- 

 tions. Our present constellations came not from Egyptian 

 times, but from much later — from Greek times. It is 

 almost impossible to hope to recover the names of the 



