210 THEORY OF THE EARTH. 



Mr Hamilton * having remarked, that, at Den- 

 dera, the Scarabaeus belonging to the side of the 

 ascending signs is smaller than that of the other 

 side, an English author f has concluded from this 

 that the solstice may have heen nearer its actual 

 point than the middle of the Cancer, which would 

 carry us back to a period of 1000 or 1200 years 

 before Christ. 



The late M. Nouet, judging that the globe, 

 the rays, and the horned head, or head of Isis, re- 

 present the heliacal rising of Sirius, supposed that 

 it was intended to mark an epoch of the Sothian 

 period, but that it was intended to mark it by the 

 place which the solstice occupied. Now, in the 

 last but one of, these periods, that which elapsed 

 between 2782 and 1322 before Christ, the solstice 

 had passed from 30 48' of the constellation of the 

 Lion to 13 34' of Cancer. At the middle of this 

 period, it was therefore at 23 34 ; of cancer. The 

 heliacal rising of Sirius happened then some days 

 after the solstice ; and this is nearly what has 

 been indicated, according to M. Nouet, by the re- 



* ^Egyptiaca, p. 212. 



t See in the British Review of February 1817, p. 13. et 

 seq. the article No. vi. upon the origin and antiquity of the 

 zodiac. It is translated at the end of Swartz's Critical Let- 

 ter upon the Zodiacomania. 

 * ^. ttrtkrtitei 



