746 



the equinoxes, becomes an historical monument 

 of high antiquity, may have taken birth far from 

 Thebes, and from the sacred valley of the Nile- 

 In the zodiacs of the New World, in the Mexi- 

 can for instance, of which we discover the ves- 

 tiges in the signs of the days, and the periodical 

 series which they compose, there are also signs 

 of rain and of inundation corresponding to the 

 Chou (Rat) of the Chinese # and Thibetan cycle 

 of Tse, and to the Fishes and Aquarius of the do- 

 decatemorion. These two Mexican signs are 

 Water (Atl) and Cipactli, the sea monster fur- 

 nished with a horn. This animal is at once the 

 Antelope-fish of the Hindoos, the Capricorn of 

 our zodiac, the Deucalion of the Greeks, and 

 the Noah (Coxcox) of the Aztecks-f-. Thus we 



* The figure of water itself is often substituted for that of 

 the Rat (Arvicoia) in the Tatar zodiac. The Rat takes the 

 place of Aquarius. (Gaubil, Obs. mathem., vol. iii, p. 33.) 



+ Coxcox bears also the denomination of Teo-Cipactli, in 

 which the root god or divine is added to the name of the sign 

 Cipactli. It is the man of the fourth age ; who, at the fourth 

 destruction of the world (the last renovation of nature), saved 

 himself with his wife, and reached the mountain of Colhuacan. 

 According to the commentator Germanicus, Deucalion was 

 placed in Aquarius ; but the three signs of the Fishes, Aqua- 

 rius, and Capricorn (the antelope-fish), were heretofore inti- 

 mately linked together. ee The animal, which, after having 

 long inhabited the waters, takes the form of an antelope, and 

 climbs the mountains, reminds people, whose restless imagi- 

 nation seizes the most remote similitudes, of the ancient tra- 

 ditions of Menou, of Noah, and of those Deucalion s cele- 



