THEORY OF THE EAHTH. 201 



The Astronomical Monuments left by the Ancients do 

 not bear the excessively remote dates which have 

 been attributed to them. 



Recourse has therefore been had to arguments 

 of another kind. It has been pretended that, in- 

 dependently of the knowledge which these na- 

 tions may have acquired, they have left monu- 

 ments which bear a date fixed by the state of the 

 heavens which they represent, and one that refers 

 to a very remote antiquity. The zodiacs sculp- 

 tured in two temples of Upper Egypt, are ad- 

 duced as furnishing proofs perfectly demonstrative 

 of this assertion. They present the same figures 

 of the zodiacal constellations as are employed at 

 the present day, but distributed in a manner pe- 

 culiar to themselves. The state of the heavens 

 at the period when these monuments were de- 

 lineated, is imagined to have been represented by 

 this distribution, and it has been thought that it 

 would be possible from it to infer the precise pe- 

 riod at which the edifices containing them were 

 erected *. 



* Thus at Dendera, the ancient Tentyris, a city below 

 Thebes, in the portico of the great temple, the entrance of 

 which faces the north, there are seen on the ceiling the 

 signs of the zodiac marching in two bands, one of which 



