ANCIENT ARABIAN AND PERSIAN TRADITIONS.

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THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ZODIAC AND PLANISPHERE OF DENDERA 1.

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Tapestry of the Planisphere of Dendera A Painting from the original in the Museum of the Louvre at Paris, was exhibited in London in the year 1823, of which lithographed copies were sold at the exhibition room, Spring Gardens. From one of these given by the exhibitor to the late Wm. Hone the annexed lithograph has been made.      In the explanatory paper circulated with the lithograph in 1823 it is said, "The figures carved and painted on the four sides of this chamber could not be seen without the aid or torches, the smoke of which had covered the zodiac, and hid it for ages. The appearance of this valuable monument, as exposed at Paris on the floor of the Museum of the Louvre, is that of a very large antique bronze medallion. This zodiac is the only astronomical monument of ancient Egyptians yet discovered which has a circular form." "Its centre is occupied by a fox or chacal." "It is thought that two emblems exactly opposite to each other, in a line pa...
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URSA MAJOR AND MINOR, CALLED THE GREAT AND LESSER BEAR.

p. 29. URSA MAJOR and MINOR, CALLED THE GREAT AND LESSER BEAR.      It has been remarked by Oriental scholars that the Arab astronomy abounds with allusions to cattle, but without observing that the camel, the peculiar possession of the desert tribes, does not exist among the emblems. Only once, if at all, does even the name occur among the more obscure names of minor stars, as it is said to do in Cancer. Were proof needed that astronomy did not originate in Arabia, this circumstance would afford it. The cattle with which the nomenclature of the stars abounds are the lamb and the kid of sacrifice, the flock of the shepherd, the sacrificial ram and bull of the zodiac, where the western nations still behold them: but besides these are the magnificent emblems of the greater and lesser sheepfolds, with their sheep, long obscured by fable and misconstruction of the names by which they were originally distinguished - names perverted by the Greeks and Romans, but still t...
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