MAHOMET’S KNIFE—DEUCALION—JONAH 441 
The place of fish in the Zodiac has been already noticed. 
Apparently the position of the Pisces led Kepler to believe that 
he had discovered the means of determining the true year of 
our Saviour’s birth. From the conjunction of Jupiter and 
Saturn and Mars in 1604, the astronomer working backward 
found that Jupiter and Saturn were in the constellation of the 
Pisces (a fish, be it noted, being the astrological symbol for 
Judea) in the latter half of the year of Rome 747, and were 
joined by Mars in 748. Their first union in the East awoke the 
attention of the Magi, told them that the expected time had 
come, and bade them set forth for Judea. 
Astronomy has been to archeology a most helpful hand- 
maiden in establishing not only this but other dates of ancient, 
especially of Assyrian, history.! 
-If the surmise of Isaak Walton 2 that Seth, the son of Adam, 
taught his son to cast a line, and engraved the mystery of the 
craft on those pillars of which Masons are supposed to know so 
much, or even if the statement that, 
“ Deucalion did first this art invent 
Of Angling, and his people taught the same,” 
could have been verified, how many discussions onthe question— 
formerly almost as hotly combated as some religious doctrine— 
as to what was the first method of fishing would have been 
avoided. Alas! an authoritative answer is even yet to seek. 
The nature of the “ great fish’’ of Jonah will, I fear, no 
longer prove an attractive subject for sermons. Identification 
of ‘‘ the.beast ’’ ranging through all the fishes of Ichthyology, 
from the celebrated “ first, aiblins it was a whale,’’ down to 
“‘ nineteenthly ’’ (whose precise species I forget), willalas! with 
1 Seé antea, p. 388, n. 1. 
2 The Compleat Angler, ch. I. ‘“‘ Others say that he left it (the Art of 
Angling) engraven on those pillars which he erected to preserve the knowledge 
of Mathematicks, Musick, and the rest of those precious Arts, which by God’s 
appointment or allowance, and his noble industry were thereby preserved from 
perishing in Noah’s Floud.” According to Manetho, Syncell Chron., 40, these 
tables engraved with sacred characters were translated into the Greek tongue 
in hieroglyphic characters, and committed to writing and deposited in the 
temples of Egypt. See the Epistle of Manetho, the Sebennyte, to Ptolemeus 
Philadelphus, and I. P. Cory, Ancient Fyagments of Phenician, Egyptian and 
other writings (London, 1832), pp. 168-9, and Eusebius, Chvon.6. Cf. Georgius 
Syncellus, Chronographia (Bonne, 1829), i. pp. 72-3. 
