NOTES, 
period, the Egyptians, from the fear of being deserted 
by the Sun, give themselves up to grief, tear their 
hair, and rend their clothes, at the moment when the 
Sun was in the zenith, and darted its fiercest fires. 
This is not probable. Achilles Tatius has been too 
laconic on this point, for us to comprehend this pre- 
tended custom of the Egyptians. If the festival took 
place every year on the same day, it was absurd during 
fourteen ages and a half of a sothic period ; if it took 
place only on the year of the renewal of the period,, 
why in preference on that year r and finally, if the 
festival was advanced a day every four years, we must 
admit, that the Egyptians lamented unnecessarily the 
approaching disappearance of the Sun, since at Thebes^ 
at the winter solstice, it was an elevation of about 
forty degrees. 
You have drawn a comparison between the Mexi- 
can years and days, and the names of the signs of the 
Tartar zodiac and the different zodiacs of the old con- 
tinent, You have shown, that at Mexico they said, 
rabbit, tiger, or ape day, 8ic. ; as in Asia they said 
hare, tiger, and ape month, &c. : you have shown also, 
that several of these animals are equally unknown in 
Tartary and in Mexico ; and this last remark leaves 
room to think, that the use of the periodical series for 
the calculation of time, common tothe Mexicans and 
the Asiatics, as well as these denominations, might 
come from a very different and very distant country. 
These questions are highly interesting ; but I shall 
hefe confine myself to the resemblance of one of the 
signs of the Aztecks, that of Cipactliy with the Capri-- 
corn of the Greek, or rather Egyptian zodiac : this is 
the only one of the twenty names of Mexican days 
that affords this analogjq Is it not remarkable, that 
