NOTES. lix 



supposed the existence of some sort of cosmical cloudiness, subject to internal 

 movements, depending on causes of which we are ignorant." (Compare 

 Arago in the Annuaire pour 1842, p. 350 353.) 



( 216 ) p. 112. In Muhamedis Alfragani chroiiologica et astronbmica 

 elementa, ed. Jacohus Christmannus, 1590, cap. 22, p. 97, it is said, 

 " stella ruffa in Tauro Aldebaran ; stella ruffa in Geminis quse appellatur 

 Hajok, hoc est Capra." But Alhajoc, Aijuk, are, in the Arabo-Latin 

 Almagest, the usual names of Capella. Argelander also remarks justly that 

 Ptolemy in the astrological work (Trp/3i/3\o triVra^ig), vouched as 

 genuine by style and ancient testimony, connects planets and stars according 

 to similarity of colour, and thus joins together Capella and Martis stella, 

 (quse urit sicut congruit igneo ipsius colori,) with Aurigee stella. (Compare 

 Ptol. quadripart. construct, libri iv. Basil 1551, p. 383). Riccioli (Almages- 

 tum novum ed. 1650, T. i. Pars 1, lib. 6, cap. 2, p. 394) also reckons 

 Capella, with Antares, Aldebaran, and Arcturus, among the red stars. 



( 217 ) p. 113. See Chronologie der ^Egypter, by Richard Lepsius, Bd. i. 

 1849, S. 190195, and 213. The complete construction of the Egyptian 

 calender is placed in the earliest part of the year 3285 before the Christian 

 era z". e. about a century and a half before the building of the great pyramid 

 of Cheops- Chufu, and 940 years before the epoch usually assigned to the 

 Deluge. (Compare Kosmos, Bd. ii. S. 402, English edition, p. xxvii., Note 

 146). In the calculations which have been made in reference to the circum- 

 stance, that the inclination of the narrow subterranean passage leading into 

 the interior of the pyramid, measured by Colonel Vyse, corresponds very 

 nearly to the angle 26 15', which, in the time of Cheops- Chufu, the star 

 a Draconis which marked the pole attained at its inferior culmination at 

 Gizeh, the epoch of the building of the pyramid is taken, not at 3430 B.C., 

 as given in Kosmos from Lepsius, but at 3970 B.C. as in the Outlines of Astr. 

 319. This difference of 540 years is the less opposed to the assumption 

 of a Draconis having been the pole-star, as in 3970 its polar distance was 

 still 3 44'. 



( 218 ) p. 113. I have taken what follows from letters of Professor Lepsius 

 to myself (February 1850) : " The Egyptian name of Sirius, marked as a 

 female star, is Sothis ; hence, in Greek, rj 2w3ie is identified with the goddess 

 Sote (oftener Sit in hieroglyphics), and in the temple of the great Ramses 

 at Thebes with Isis-Sothis. (Lepsius, Chronol. der JEgypter, Bd. i. S. 119 

 and 136). The signification of the root is found in Coptic, and allied with a 

 numerous family of words, the different members of which, though apparently 



