120 ON THE RKVOLtlTIONS OF 



quently two signs earlier than at the present day, and that the temple 

 had stood at least 4000 years *. 



He, at the same time, assigned an antiquity of 7000 years to that 

 of Esne, although it is not known how he meant to make these num- 

 bers agree with what was known of the precession of the equinoxes. 



The late Lalande, seeing that the Crab was repeated on the two 

 bands, imagined that the solstice passed through this constellation ; 

 but as it was so in the sphere of Eudoxus, he concluded that some 

 Greek might have represented this sphere on the ceiling of an Egyp- 

 tian temple, without knowing that he was depicting a state of the 

 heavens which had for a long time ceased to exist f . It was, as we 

 may perceive, a very different inference from that of M. Burkard. 



Dupuis was the first who deemed it necessary to seek for confirma- 

 tion of this idea, and he in some sort confidently adopted, that it was 

 the solstice that was denoted ; he found then, for the great zodiac of 

 Dendera, in the globe at the apex of the pyramid, and in many emblems 

 placed near different signs, and which sometimes, according to the 

 ancient authors, such as Plutarch, Horus Apollo, or Clemens Alexan- 

 drinus ; sometimes, according to his own conjectures, he imagined to 

 represent phenomena which could have really been those of the sea- 

 sons aflfected at each sign. 



Besides, he maintained that this state of the heavens gives the date 

 of the monument, and that they had, at Dendera, the original, and not 

 a copy of the sphere of Eudoxus, which would relate to 1468 years 

 befoi'e Christ, in the reign of Sesostris. 



But the number of nineteen boats placed under each band gave him 

 the idea that the solstice might have been in the nineteenth degree of 

 the sign, which would make an addition of 288 years J. 



Mr. Hamilton §, having remarked that, at Dendera, the Scarabseus 

 on the side of the ascending signs is smaller than that on the other side, 

 an English author 1| has thence concluded that the solstice may have 

 been nearer the actual point that the middle of Cancer, which would 

 take us back to a period of 1000 or 1200 years before Christ. 



The late Nouet, judging that this globe, the rays, and the horned 

 head or Isis, represent the heliacal rising of Sirius, pretended that 

 they intended to denote an epoch of the sothaic period, but that they 



* M. Grobert's Description of the Pyramids of Geza, p. 117. 



f Connaissance des Temps, for the j'ear XIV. 



+ Obsesvations on the Zodiac of Dendera, in the Philosophical and Literary Re- 

 view, in 1806, 2d division, p. 257, et seq. 



§ jEgyptiaca, p. 212. 



]| See British Review, Feb. 1817, p. 136, et seq. Article vi, on the Origin and 

 Antiquity of the Zodiac. It is translated at the end of Swartz's Critical Let- 

 ters on Zodiacomania. 



