MAN'S EXISTENCE ON THE GLOBE. 337 



all, it appears, that these zodiacs have nothing to do with the precession of 

 the equinoxes, or with the displacement of the solstice : they are not true 

 zodiacs, nor were the Egyptians profound astronomers. Cuvier observes, 

 that " a mummy-case, lately brought from Thebes, by M. Caillaud, and 

 containing, according to the very legible Greek inscription upon it, the 

 body of a young man, who died in the ninth year of Trajan, 116 years after 

 Christ, presents a zodiac divided at the same points as that of Dendera ; 

 and all the appearances indicate, that this division marks some astro- 

 logical theme relative to the individual ; a conclusion which may, pro- 

 bably, be equally applied to the division of the zodiacs contained in the 

 temples." 



In fact, as already observed, neither the tables of the Chinese and 

 Brahmins,* nor the zodiacs of the Egyptian temples, are worthy of the 

 slightest serious attention. Thus, neither monuments, nor the productions 

 of Man, discovered in tumuli, in the ruins of ancient cities, or mines, 

 worked at an unknown period, such as glass ornaments, weapons, tools of 

 brass or stone, stamped bricks, and the like, nor tradition, extravagant 

 as may be its pretensions, nor history, throw back to a remote eralhe 

 commencement of the existence of the human race ; and the assignment 

 of 6000 years, as the average of the period during which Man has acted 

 his part on the surface of the globe, accords alike with the inferences of 

 the geologists and the cosmogony of the Mosaic writings. f 



* " Mr. Bentley discovered that the tables of Tirvalour, on which the assertion of Bailley (re- 

 specting the great antiquity of the science of astronomy among the Indians) especially rested, must 

 have been calculated about 1281 of the Christian era, or 540 years ago; and that the Surya 

 Siddhanta, which the Brahmins regard as their oldest scientific treatise on astronomy, and which they 

 pretend to have been revealed upward of 20,000,000 of years ago, could not have been composed at 

 an earlier period than about 760 years from the present day." See Bentley's Mem. on Antiq. of 

 Surya Siddhanta, Calcutta Memoirs, vol. vi. ; and on Astron. System of the Indians, ibid. vol. viii. 



t Cuvier, in his Theory of the Earth, has collected together a mass of information on this point, 

 which may be consulted with advantage. 



VOL. I. 2 X 



