between them, and that sometimes they encroach upon each other. Thus,
between the last star of Scorpio, and the first of Sagittarius,
there is an interval of 6⅔ degrees. On the other hand, the last
of Capricorn is more advanced by 14° in longitude, than the first
of Aquarius. Hence, even independently of the inequality of the
sun’s motion, the constellations would afford a very unequal and
very erroneous measure of the year and its months. The signs of 30°
furnish a more convenient and less defective one. But the signs are
merely a geometrical conception; they can neither be distinguished
nor observed; and they are continually changing place from the
retrogradation of the equinoxial point.
“We have at all times been able to determine, in a rough manner,
the equinoxes and solstices; at the long run it has been remarked,
that the appearance of the heavens was no longer exactly the same
that it anciently was at the times of the equinoxes and solstices.
But we have never been able to observe exactly the heliacal rising
of a star, being always necessarily some days wide of it; and people
frequently speak of it, without possessing a fixed datum on which
to count. Before Hipparchus, we find nothing, either in books or
in traditions, that can be submitted to calculation; and it is
this which has given rise to so many systems. Controversies have
arisen without a sufficient knowledge of the subject. Those who are
not astronomers may form ideas as beautiful as they please of the
knowledge of the Chaldeans, Egyptians, &c.; no real inconvenience
will result. The enterprise and knowledge of the moderns may be lent
to these nations, but nothing can be borrowed from them; for they
have either had nothing, or they have left nothing. Astronomers will
never derive from the ancients any thing that can be of the slightest
utility. Let us leave to the learned their vain conjectures, and
confess our utter ignorance respecting things of little use in
themselves, and of which no monument remains.
“The limits of the constellations vary according to the authors which
we consult. We find these limits extend or contract, as we pass
from Hipparchus to Tycho, from Tycho to Hevelius, from Hevelius to
Flamstead, Lacaille, Bradley, or Piazzi.
“I have said elsewhere, the constellations are good for nothing,
unless at the most to enable us to mark the stars with more ease;
whereas the stars in particular afford fixed points to which we
can refer the motions, whether of the colures or of the planets.
Astronomy commenced only at the period when Hipparchus made the first
catalogue of the stars, measured the revolution of the sun, that of
the moon, and their principal inequalities. The rest presents nothing
but darkness, uncertainty, and gross error. The time would be lost
that were occupied in attempting to reduce this chaos to order.
“I have given, with the exception of a few particulars, the whole
of my opinion on this subject. I am nowise anxious about making
converts, for it gives me little concern whether my ideas be adopted
or not; but, if my reasons be compared with the reveries of Newton,
Herschell, Bailly, and so many others, it is not impossible but that,
in time, these more or less brilliant chimeras will no longer be
relished.
“I have attempted to determine the extent of the constellations,
according to the catasterisms of Eratosthenes; but the thing is
really impossible. The matter would be still worse were we to
consult Hygin, and especially Firmicus. The following is what I have
made out from Eratosthenes.
CONSTELLATIONS. DURATIONS.
Years.
Aries, 1747
Taurus, 1826
Gemini, 1636
Cancer, 1204
Leo, 2617
Virgo, 3307
The Talons, 1089[219]
Scorpio, 1823
Sagittarius, 2138
Capricorn, 1416
Aquarius, 1196
Pisces, 2936
“As to the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Chinese, and Indians, there is no
want of reveries among them. One can absolutely make nothing of
them. My opinion with regard to them may be seen in the preliminary
discourse of my History of the Astronomy of the Middle Age, p. xvii
and xviii. See also the note affixed to the Report on the Memoirs of
M. de Paravey, vol. viii. of the Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, and
republished by M. de Paravey in his Summary of his Memoirs upon the
Origin of the Sphere, p. 24, 31-36. See further the Analysis of the
Mathematical Labours of the Academy in 1820, p. 78 and 79.
“DELAMBRE.”
* * * * *
It would still have to be ascertained at what period the observers
ceased to place the constellation in which the sun entered after the
solstice, at the head of the descending signs, and whether this was
done as soon as the solstice had retrograded sufficiently to touch
the preceding constellation.
Thus MM. Jollois and Devilliers,--to whose unremitting zeal we are
indebted for an accurate knowledge of these famous monuments, always
considering the division towards the entrance of the porch as the
solstice, and judging that the Virgin must have been regarded as the
first of the descending constellations, insomuch as the solstice had
not receded at least so far as the middle of the constellation of the
Lion; and, believing that they saw farther, as we have mentioned,
that the Lion is divided in the great zodiac of Esne, have not
given to that zodiac a more remote antiquity than 2160 years before
Christ.[220]
Mr Hamilton, who was the first that observed this division of the
sign of the Lion, in the zodiac of Esne, reduced the distance of
the period at which the solstice occurred there, to 1400 years
before Christ. A great many other opinions have appeared on the same
subject. M. Rhode, for example, has proposed two. The first refers
the zodiac of the portico of Dendera to a period of 591 years before
Christ; the second, to 1290[221]. M. Latreille has fixed the period
of this zodiac at 670 years before Christ; that of the planisphere at
550; that of the zodiac of the great temple of Esne at 2550; and that
of the small one at 1760.
But a difficulty inherent in all the dates, which proceed on the
double supposition, that the division marks the solstice, and that
the position of the solstice marks the epoch of the monument, is the
unavoidable consequence that the zodiac of Esne must have been at
least 2000, and perhaps 3000, years[222] older than that of Dendera,
a consequence which evidently involves the supposition in ruin;
for no one, in any degree acquainted with the history of the arts,
could believe, that two edifices, so similar in their style of
architecture, could have been erected at periods so remote from each
other.
The feeling of this impossibility, joined always to the belief that
this division of the zodiacs indicates a date, has given rise to
another conjecture, namely, that the intention had been to mark the
particular sacred year of the Egyptians, in which the monument had
been erected. As these sacred years consisted only of 365 days, if
the sun, at the commencement of one occupied the commencement of a
constellation, he would be nearly six hours later in returning to the
commencement of the following year, and, after 121 years, he would
only be at the commencement of the preceding sign. It seems natural
enough that the builders of a temple might wish to indicate about
what period of the great, or Sothian year, it had been erected; and
the indications of the sign, by which the sacred year then commenced,
was a good enough means. It will be perceived, that, calculating upon
this assumption, there will be an interval of from 120 to 150 years
between the temple of Esne and that of Dendera. But, in his mode of
solving the problem, there remained to be determined in which of the
great years these buildings had been erected, whether in that which
ended in the year 138 after, or in that which ended in 1322 before
Christ, or in some other.
The late Visconti, who was the first author of this hypothesis,
taking the sacred year, whose commencement corresponded with the sign
of the Lion, and judging from the resemblance of the signs, that they
had been represented at a period when the opinions of the Greeks were
not unknown to the Egyptians, was naturally led to make choice of the
end of the last great year, or the space that elapsed between the
year 12 and the year 138 after Christ[223], which appeared to him to
accord with the Greek inscription, of which, however, he knew little
more than that it was said to make mention of one of the Cæsars.
M. Testa, seeking the date of the monument in another order of ideas,
went so far as to suppose that since the Virgin is seen at Esne, at
the head of the zodiac, it was meant thereby to represent the era of
the battle of Actium, such as it had been established with regard
to Egypt, by a decree of the senate, mentioned by Dion Cassius,
and which commenced in the month of September, the day on which
Alexandria was taken by Augustus.[224]
M. de Paravey considered these zodiacs in a new point of view, which
embraced at once both the revolution of the equinoxes, and that of
the great year. Supposing that the circular planisphere of Dendera
must have been set to the east, and that the axis from north to
south is the line of the solstices, he found the summer solstice at
the second of the Twins, and that of winter at the buttock of the
Sagittary, while the line of the equinoxes would have passed through
the Fishes and the Virgin, from which he obtained for date the first
century of our era.
According to this method, the division of the zodiac of the portico
could no longer refer to the colures, and the mark of the solstice
must be sought for elsewhere. M. de Paravey having remarked that
there are between all the signs figures of women bearing a star upon
their heads, and marching in the same direction, and observing that
the one which comes after the twins, is alone turned in a direction
contrary to the others, judged that it indicates the _conversion_ of
the sun or the tropic, and that this zodiac corresponds in this way
with the planisphere.
By applying the idea of easting to the small zodiac of Esne, the
solstices would be found between the Twins and the Bull, and between
the Scorpion and Sagittary; they would even be marked by the change
of direction of the Bull, and by the winged Rams placed across at
these two places. In the great zodiac of the same city, the marks
would be the cross position of the Bull, and the reversed one of
the Sagittary. There would thus be but a portion of a constellation
traversed between the dates of Esne and those of Dendera, but even
this would be still too long for buildings so closely resembling each
other.
An operation of the late M. Delambre upon the circular planisphere
appears to confirm these conjectures, detracting from its remote
antiquity; for, on placing the stars upon Hipparchus’s projection,
according to the theory of that astronomer, and according to the
positions which he has given them in his catalogue; and augmenting
all the longitudes, so that the solstice might pass through the
second of the Twins, he nearly reproduced this planisphere; and
“the resemblance,” says he, “would have been still greater, had
the longitudes been adopted such as they are in the catalogue of
Ptolemy, for the year 123 of our era. On the contrary, by referring
to twenty-five or twenty-six centuries back, the right ascensions and
the declinations will be considerably changed, and the projection
will assume quite a different figure[225]. All our calculations,”
adds this great astronomer, “lead us to this conclusion, that the
sculptures are posterior to the epoch of Alexander.”
In reality, the circular planisphere having been brought to Paris by
the care of MM. Saunier and Lelorrain, M. Biot, in a work founded
upon precise measurements and calculations full of ingenuity, has
determined that it represents, according to an exact geometrical
projection, the state of the heavens, such as it was 700 years before
Christ; but he by no means concludes that it had been sculptured at
that period[226].
In fact, all these efforts of intellect and science, in so far as
they concern the epoch of the monuments, have become superfluous,
since finishing where they should naturally have begun, if the first
observers had not been blinded by prejudice, people have taken the
trouble of copying and restoring the Greek inscriptions engraved upon
these monuments, and especially since M. Champollion has discovered
the method of decyphering those which are expressed in hieroglyphics.
It is now certain, and the Greek inscriptions agree with the
hieroglyphical inscriptions in proving it, it is certain, we say,
that the temples in which zodiacs have been sculptured, were built
during the time when Egypt was subject to the Romans. The portico
of the temple of Dendera, according to the Greek inscription of its
frontispiece, is consecrated to the safety of Tiberius[227]. On the
planisphere of the same temple we read the title of _Autocrator_ in
hieroglyphical characters[228]; and it is probable that it refers to
Nero. The small temple of Esne, that of which the origin has been
placed on the lowest calculation between 2700 and 3000 years before
Christ, has a column sculptured and painted in the sixth year of
Antonine, 147 years after Christ, and it is painted and sculptured in
the same style as the zodiac which is near it[229].
Further, we have a proof that this division of the zodiac, in such
or such sign, has no reference to the precession of the equinoxes,
or to the displacement of the solstice. A mummy case, lately brought
from Thebes by M. Caillaud, and containing, according to the very
legible Greek inscription upon it, the body of a young man who died
in the ninth year of Trajan, 116 years after Christ[230], presents a
zodiac divided at the same point as those of Dendera[231]; and all
the appearances indicate that this division marks some astrological
theme relative to the individual, a conclusion which may probably
be equally applied to the division of the zodiacs contained in the
temples. It may mark either the astrological theme of the time of
their erection, or that of the prince to whose safety they had
been consecrated, or such another epoch with relation to which the
position of the sun would have appeared of importance to be noticed.
Thus are dissipated for ever the conclusions which people had drawn
from some ill explained monuments, against the newness of the
continents and nations; and we might have dispensed with treating of
them so much in detail had they not been so recent, and had they not
made sufficient impression still to retain their influence over the
minds of some individuals.
_The Zodiac is far from bearing in itself a certain and excessively
remote date._
But there are writers who have maintained that the zodiac bears in
itself the date of its invention, because the names and figures
given to its constellations are an index of the position of the
colures at the time when it was invented; and this date, according
to several, is so evident and so remote, that it is quite a matter
of indifference whether the representations which we possess of this
circle are more or less ancient.
They do not attend to the circumstance that, in this sort of
argument, there is a complication of three suppositions equally
uncertain: the country in which the zodiac is presumed to have been
invented, the signification which is supposed to have been given
to the constellations which occupy it, and the position in which
the colures were with relation to each constellation, when this
signification was attributed to it. According as other allegories
have been imagined, or as these allegories are admitted to have
referred to the constellation of which the sun occupied the first
degrees, or to that of which it occupied the middle, or to that
into which it began to enter, that is to say, of which it occupied
the last degrees; or, lastly, to that which was opposite to him,
and which rose at night; or according as the invention of these
allegories is placed in a different climate, must the date of the
zodiac also be changed. The possible variations in this respect might
comprehend so much as the half of the revolution of the fixed stars,
that is to say, 13,000 years, and even more.
In this manner Pluche, generalizing some indications of the ancients,
has imagined, that the Ram announces the commencement of the sun’s
elevation, and the vernal equinox; that the Cancer indicates his
retrogradation to the summer solstice; that the Balance, the sign of
equality, marks the autumnal equinox[232]; and that the Capricorn, a
climbing animal, indicates the winter solstice, after which the sun
returns to us. According to this method, by placing the inventors
of the zodiac in a temperate climate, we should have rains under
Aquarius, the dropping of lambs and kids under the Gemini, violent
heats under the Lion, gathering of the harvest under the Virgin,
the time of hunting under the Sagittary, &c.; and the emblems would
be appropriate enough. If we should then place the colures at the
commencement of the constellations, or at least the equinox at the
first stars of Aries, we should, in the first instance, arrive at
a period of only 389 years before Christ, an epoch evidently too
modern, and which would render it necessary to recur to a complete
equinoxial period, or 26,000 years. But if the equinox be supposed to
pass through the middle of the constellation, a period of about 1000
or 1200 years higher is obtained, 1600 or 1700 years before Christ;
and this is what several celebrated men have believed to be the true
epoch of the invention of the zodiac, the honour of which they have,
for other reasons not sufficiently weighty, conferred upon Chiron.
But Dupuis, who required for the origin which he endeavoured to
attribute to all religions, that astronomy, and, in particular, the
figures of the zodiac should in some measure have preceded all other
human institutions, has sought another climate for the purpose of
finding other explanations for the emblems, and for that of deducing
another epoch from them. If, assuming the Balance as an equinoxial
sign, but supposing it at the vernal equinox, it be presumed that
the zodiac has been invented in Egypt, other sufficiently plausible
explanations might in fact be found for the climate of that
country.[233] The Capricorn, an animal with the tail of a fish,
would mark the commencement of the rise of the Nile at the summer
solstice; the Aquarius and Fishes, the progress and diminution of
the inundation; the Bull, the time of labouring; the Virgin, the
time of reaping; and they would mark them at the periods when these
operations actually took place. In this system, the zodiac would have
15,000 years[234] for a sun supposed at the first degree of each
sign, more than 16,000 for the middle, and 4000 only, on supposing
that the emblem has been given to the sign at the opposite of which
the sun was[235]. It is to the 15,000 years that Dupuis has attached
himself; and it is upon this date that he has founded the whole
system of his celebrated work.
There are not wanting those, however, who, admitting that the zodiac
has been invented in Egypt, have imagined allegories applicable
to later times. Thus, according to Mr Hamilton, the Virgin would
represent the land of Egypt when not yet fecundated by the
inundation; the Lion, the season when that country is most liable to
be overrun by ferocious animals, and so on[236].
The high antiquity of 15,000 years would besides induce this absurd
consequence, that the Egyptians, those men who represented every
thing by emblems, and who must have attached a great importance to
the circumstance that these emblems were conformable to the ideas
which they were intended to represent, had preserved the signs
of the zodiac thousands of years after they no longer in any way
corresponded with their original signification.
The late M. Remi Raige endeavoured to support the opinion of Dupuis
by an argument of an entirely new kind[237]. Having remarked that
significations more or less analogous to the figures of the signs of
the zodiac, might be found for the Egyptian names of the months, on
explaining them by the oriental languages, and finding in Ptolemy
that _epifi_, which signifies _capricorn_, commences at the 20th of
June, and therefore comes immediately after the summer solstice, he
concluded from thence, that, at the beginning, Capricorn itself was
at the summer solstice, and so of the other signs, as Dupuis had
supposed.
But, independently of all that there is merely conjectural in these
etymologies, Raige did not perceive that it was simply by chance
that, five years after the battle of Actium, in the year 25 before
Christ, at the establishment of the fixed year of Alexandria, the
first day of _Thoth_ was found to correspond with the 29th of the
Julian August, and continued to correspond since that time. It is
only from this epoch that the Egyptian months commenced at fixed days
of the Julian year, and only at Alexandria: even Ptolemy did not the
less continue to employ in his Almagest the ancient Egyptian year
with its vague months[238].
Why might not the names of the signs have been given to the months
at some epoch, or the names of the months to the signs, in the
same arbitrary manner in which the Indians have given to their
twenty-seven months twelve names, selected from among those of their
lunar houses, for reasons which it is impossible at the present day
to determine[239]? The absurdity which there would have been in
preserving for the constellations, during 15,000 years, figures and
symbolical names which no longer presented any relation with their
position, would have been more evident had it been carried so far as
to preserve to the months those same names which were incessantly in
the mouths of the people, and whose inaptitude would be every moment
perceived.
And what, besides, would all these systems come to, had the figures
and the names of the zodiacal constellations been given to them
without any relation to the course of the sun; as their inequality,
the extension of several of them beyond the zodiac, and their
manifest connection with the neighbouring constellations, seem to
demonstrate was the case[240].
What would still happen, if, as Macrobius expressly says[241], each
sign must have been an emblem of the sun, considered in some one of
its effects or of its general phenomena, and without reference to the
months when it passes, whether into the sign, or to its opposite?
Lastly, What if the names had been given in an abstract manner
to the divisions of space or time, as they are now given by
astronomers to what they call the signs, and had not been applied
to the constellations or groups of stars, but at a period
determined by chance, so that nothing could be concluded from their
signification[242]?
In these suggestions there is, without doubt, enough to give an
ingenuous mind a distaste for seeking to find in astronomy proofs
of the antiquity of the nations. But were these alleged proofs as
certain as they are vague and destitute of any satisfactory result,
what could be concluded from them against the great catastrophe,
which has left monuments amply demonstrative in other respects of
its existence? All that can be admitted in this matter is, what some
moderns have thought, that astronomy was among the number of the
sciences preserved by those whom this catastrophe dispersed.
_Exaggerations relative to the Antiquity of certain Mining
Operations._
The antiquity of certain mining operations has also been much
exaggerated. A very late writer has imagined, that the mines of the
island of Elba, judging from the rubbish carried out of them, must
have been wrought for more than 40,000 years; but another author,
who has also examined this rubbish with attention, has reduced the
period in question to a little more than 5000 years,[243] and this
even on the supposition that the ancients did not extract annually
more than a fourth part of the quantity of ore now wrought. But what
reason could there be to suppose that the Romans, for example, who
consumed so much iron in their armies, derived so little advantage
from these mines? Moreover, if these mines had been wrought for even
4000 years only, how should iron have been so little known in the
times of remote antiquity?