The Week 49 



destruction in social cataclysms, and also tends to lessen the 

 antagonism of classes. 



From this primeval high civilisation, antecedent to that 

 deluge, we derive I think, besides this significant lesson, the 

 weekly cycle, the Great Pyramid, the Sanscrit language, the 

 Zodiacal signs and constellations, if not the symbols 

 of both — the still extant esoteric system of Freemasonry — 

 Chaldaean and Indian astronomy — the Aryan race and civil- 

 ising instinct — and in fact the germs of civilisation generally. 

 It may be said that the invention of the week belongs to a 

 very early period and rude condition in the history of 

 Astronomy; being probably but a subdivision of the lunar 

 cycle. Doubtless so it is. But that marks some progress 

 made, especially as I think the week was a subdivision of 

 the sidereal revolution of the moon in 27*32166 days, not of 

 the sy nodical one of 29 "5 305 9 days ; which is the more 

 obviously observable cycle, though not approximately divi- 

 sible by four ; and which forms the apparent basis of the 

 Julian and other months of 30 and 31 days. The Kelts, I 

 find, had not only the seven-day week but twelve months 

 also ;* and I have met with a statementf with regard to 

 astronomy, to the effect that Rudbeck calculated from the 

 displacement of a festival recorded as being anciently fixed 

 at 20 days from the winter solstice, that the Swedes 2,300 

 years B.C. knew the right number of days in the year, 

 though they had not provided the intercalation necessary to 

 compensate for the fractional excess. Nevertheless, the 

 coincident order of the Scandinavian days, and the 

 Aryan roots in the Keltic languages, prove their indebted- 

 ness to the same stock as the Indian and Chaldsean civilisa- 

 tions. For further instance, it can scarcely be a mere 

 coincidence that the British measure of capacity — the 

 quarter — that of which it is a quarter having otherwise 

 completely eluded research, corresponds closely with the 

 cubic measure of which the standard is extant in the ante- 

 chamber of the Great Pyramid, and which is an exact 

 QUABTEE of the contents of the great coffer or sarcophagus 

 in the King's Chamber, j Professor Piazzi Smyth considers 

 that he has identified many other interesting items of our 

 inheritance in the Great Pyramid. 



* See Toland's History of the Druids. 



t Bailly's Histoire de V Astronomie Ancienne, p. 324. 



% See Plate II. p. 27. 



E 



