12 
THE MEXICAN ZODIAC. 
maximum, like the Orinoco, in the month of August.* The 
Nile is two months later, either on account of some local 
circnmstanees in the climate of Abyssinia, or of the length 
of its course, from the country of lierber, or 17’5° of lati- 
tude, to the bifurcation of the delta. The Arabian geogra»- 
phers assert, that in Sennaar and in Abyssinia the Nile 
begins to swell in the month of April (nearly as the Orinoco) ; 
the rise, however, does not become sensible at Cairo till 
toward the summer solstice; and the water attains its greatest 
height at the end of the month of Septernber.f The river 
keeps at the same level till the middle of October ; and is at 
its minimum in April and May, a period when the rivers of 
O-uiana begin to swell anew. It may be seen from this 
rapid statement, that, notwithstanding the retardation caused 
by the form of the natural channels, and by local climatic 
circumstances, the great phenomenon of the oscillations of 
the rivers of the torrid zone is everywhere the same. In 
the two zodiacs vulgarly called the Tartar and Chaldean, or 
Egyptian (in the zodiac which contains the sign of tlie Bat, 
and in that which contains those of the Fisfics and Aqua- 
rim), particular constellations are consecrated to the 
periodical overflowings of the rivers. Iteal cycles, divisions 
of time, have been gradually transformed into divisions of 
space ; but the generality of the phy.sical phenomena of the 
risings seems to prove that the zodiac which has been trans- 
mitted to us by the Greeks, and which, by the precession of 
the equinoxes, becomes an hi.storical 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 Mexican, for instimce, of which we discover 
the vestiges in the signs of the days, and the periodical 
si'ries which they compose — there arc .also signs of rain and 
of inundation corre.sponding to the Chou (Rat) of the 
OhineseJ and Thibetan cycle of Tse, and to the Fishes and 
Aquarius of the dodecatemorion. These two Mexican signs 
are Water {AtT) and Oipactli, the sea-moiister furnished with 
* Nearly forty or fifty days after the summer solstice. 
t Nearly eighty or ninety dciys after the summer solstice. 
J The figure of water itself is often substituted for that of the Rat 
{Arvicola) in the Tartar zodiac. The Rat takes the place of Aquartut, 
^Gaubil, Ohs. Mathim., vol. iii, p. 33.) 
