412 COSMOS. 



date further back than the tenth century. Even upon stones 

 with Gnostic inscriptions they are not met with. Subsequent 

 transcribers have, however, added them to Gnostic and 



tions the metals consecrated to the planets without planetary 

 signs ; the other, however, (No. 2329) which, according to 

 the writing, is of the fifteenth centuiy, (a kind of chemical 

 dictionary,) combines the names of the metals with a small 

 number of planetary signs. (Hofer, Histoire de la Chimie, 

 torn. i. p. 250.) In the Paris manuscript, No. 2250, quick- 

 silver is attributed to Mercury, and silver to the Moon, while, 

 on the contrary, in No. 2329, quicksilver belongs to the Moon, 

 and tin to Jupiter. Olympiodorus has ascribed the latter 

 metal to Mercury. Thus indefinite were the mystic relations 

 of the cosmical bodies to the metallic powers. 



This is also the appropriate place to mention the planetary 

 hours and the planetary days in the small seven -day period 

 (the week), concerning the antiquity and diffusion of which 

 among remote nations more correct views have only recently 

 been established. The Egyptians had originally no short 

 periods of seven days, but periods of ten days, similar to the 

 week, as has been proved by Lepsius ( Chronologie der ^Eg. 

 p. 132), and as is also testified by monuments which date back 

 to the most remote times of the erection of the large pyramids. 

 Three such decades formed one of the twelve months of the 

 solar year. On reading the passage in Dio Cassius (lib. 

 xxxvii. cap. 18): " That the custom of naming the days 

 after the seven planets was first adopted by the Egyptians, 

 and had, in no very long time, been communicated by them 

 to all other nations, especially the Romans, with whom it 

 was then already quite familiarized," it must not be for- 

 gotten that this writer lived in the later period of Alexander 

 Severus, and that since the first irruption of the Oriental astro- 

 logy under the Caesars, and in consequence of the early and 

 extensive commerce of so many races of people in Alexandria, 

 it was the fashion among western nations to call everything 

 Egyptian which appeared ancient. The seven-day week was 

 undoubtedly the earliest and most diffused among the Semitic 

 nations; not only among the Hebrews, but even among the 

 nomadic Arabians long before the time of Mohammed. 



