146 



♦ KNOW^LEDGE ♦ 



[May 1, 1888. 



was diiecteJ. This leaves us only two dates between which 

 to choose, for the time of the important astronomical era 

 marked by the building of the Great Pyramid — viz. about 

 2200 B.C., and about 3400 B.C. — unless we care to go back 

 some 27,000 years farther, when again we find a pair of 

 dates, about 31,000 and 32,200 years B.C., when Thuban was 

 rightly situated. We may safely reject all such exceedingly 

 remote dates, however, as Egyptologists agree in assigning 

 to the dynasty of Cheops, C'hephren, &c., dates between 

 3200 and 3600 before Christ. 



For the date 3400 b.c, then, I construcled my charts, 

 expecting to obtain interesting and curious results. I hoped 

 in particular to find explanations of references to the stai's 

 by poets of later days, who recalled old sayings in ignorance 

 of the fact that the aspect of the heavens had altered since 

 those sayings had been in vogue. For experience shows 

 that there are few subjects in which old ideas retain their 

 influence more tenaciously than they do in regard to the 

 aspects and movements of the heavenly bodies. 



The first glance at my maps (when they were completed 

 in such sort that the skies of 5300 years ago were presented 

 before me) served to explain several familiar passages of the 

 clas.sics. For instance, Virgil's well-known lines, 



Candidus aurati.s aperit quum cornibus aiiLum 

 Taurus, 



imply as distinctly as possible the idea that the year began 

 (which would mean that the sun crossed the equator at 

 spring) when the sun was on the Bull's horns. But in 

 Virgil's time, the sun was not in the constellation of the 

 Bull at all when the year began (in the old sense of the 

 words). The point where he crosses the equator had passed 

 out of Taurus, over Aries, and had already entered Pisces 

 at that time. The sun in Virgil's age was passing over the 

 Bull's horns in the middle of May, a time which cannot by 

 any astronomical or meteorological artifice be regarded as 

 the opening of the 3-ear.* But in my chart for 3400 b.c, 

 the sun was right on the Bull's horns at the beginning of 

 spring. 



Another passage in Virgil finds an explanation from the 

 same chart. In his "Pollio," taken from a Siliylline 

 prophecy of venerable but unknown antiquit}', we find him 

 saying. 



Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna, 



as if there were some connection between the constellation 

 of the Virgin and the return of the beneficent influence 

 poured forth by the sun in summer. Pope, indeed, in his 

 introduction to his eclogue, " Messiah," goes so far as to 

 draw a parallel between this ))assage and the well-known 

 passage in Isaiah, " Behold a A^irgin shall conceive and bear 

 a son." But without entering into a discussion of the 

 Virgin birth attributed of old to sun-gods, Osiris, Horus, 



* I may remark here that Chaucer is more careful in this matter, 

 but has been blamed by Tyrwhilt for an error which he had not 

 made. In the prologue to the " Canterbury Tales," he speaks of the 

 time (which he there indicates as ia April, and in other places marks 

 as late in April) as that 



When Zephyrus . . . with his swoote breath 



Inspired hath in every holt and heath 



The tender cvoppes, and the yonge sun 



Hath in the Ram his halfe course y-run. 



On this Tyrwhitt remarks that this would place the time of the 

 pilgrimage in the end of JIarch. But Tyrwhitt lias confounded 

 the sign with the constellation. Our almanacs speak of the sun 

 entering Aries on the day of the autumnal equinox, meaning the 

 sign, winch for convenience still has its " iirst point " at the place 

 where the sun crosses the equator. But the sun does not really 

 enter the constellation of the Ram till a month later. Chaucer, 

 who seems to have been well versed in the astronomy of his day, says 

 rightly that the sun had run half his course in the Kam towards 

 the end of April. 



Mithras, Serapis, Adonis, and the rest (and naturally 

 ascribed later to such teachers as Zoroaster, Gatitama, Plato, 

 and others), we may at once find an explanation of Virgil's 

 reference when we note that at the time to which all his 

 astronomical passages must be referred, the sun — who was 

 leaving Taurus in spring — was entering Virgo at mid- 

 summer. 



I might consider a number of similar matters, many of 

 them of much interest, but that I should thus leave little 

 space for the special discovery which I wish here chiefly to 

 consider. 



Tlie celestial eqttator drawn for the year 3400 B.C. runs 

 along the whole length of Hydra, the great sea-serpent, 

 from his Heart, marked by the star Alphard (or the Soli- 

 tary, known also as Co?- Ilydrm) to the tip of his tail. The 

 head and neck are reared above the equator, that is, on its 

 northern side, which for Egypt and Babylon would of 

 course be above, and the two small constellations, the Raven 

 and the Cup, which, though undoubtedly very ancient, were 

 as undoubtedly parts of the Sea-serpent as well as inde- 

 pendent constellations, rise above the equator, as if the body 

 of the Sea-serpent showed here slightly above the ocean 

 level. 



This peculiarity of the starry skies of the time we are 

 considering, recalls the old idea that around the heavens as 

 around the earth is coiled a mighty serpent, associated with 

 the ocean waves surrounding the frame of the earth. In 

 the description of the constellations in the shield of Herakles 

 we find (following Elton's translation) what corresponds 

 closely with this peculiarity :■ — • 



Rounding the utmost verge the ocean How'd 

 As in full swell of waters, and the shield 

 All variegated with whole circle bound. 



Remembering that the same poem describes the Dragon as 

 " coil'd "— 



. . . full in the central field, 



With eyes oblique retorted that askant 



Cast gleaming tire, 



which corresponds precisely with the polar position of the 

 Diagon at the time we are considering, we see that the 

 rounding of the utmost verge by the ocean " swell of waters " 

 may fairly be regarded as extremely significant. It matters 

 not in the least whether we adopt or reject the idea, thrown 

 out Ijy me eighteen years ago, that the original description 

 of both the shield of Herakles and the shield of Achilles 

 (two unquestionably solar heroes) related to the dome of a 

 zodiac temple for the worship of the sun. It suffices that in 

 each case the poem speaks definitely of the constellations. Each 

 shield contained them, so that the object originally described 

 undoubtedly presented the constellations as on a dome or 

 hemisphere, or in a chart, and my sole contention here is 

 that the reference to the Dragon as the polar constellation, 

 and the sea waves as bounding the circuit of the constella- 

 tions, indicates the period to which the picturing of the 

 constellations belonged. In passing, however, I may remark 

 that the identity of many lines in the two descriptions 

 shows that in each we have part only of what was originally 

 a much longer poem ; and, while it is unlikely enough that 

 objects like the constellations would be selected for the 

 adornment of a warrior's shield, and improbable that in a 

 grottp of songs like those composing the " Iliad, ' so long a 

 description would be devoted to a mere shield (unless a 

 poem already extant provided convenient material), it is 

 utterly incredible that a poem so long as the original from 

 which both " shields " were deriveJ, should ever have related 

 to such a subject as a mortal warrior's shield, or have been 

 but part of a single book of an epic poem. The shield of 

 Jove himself in the " Iliad " is described in four lines ; the 

 poem from which the shields of Herakles and of Achilles 



