OBJECTIONS SOMETIMES URGED AS TO THE ORIGIN AND MEANING OF THE NAMES AND FIGURES OF THE ANCIENT CONSTELLATIONS.

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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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THE ANCIENT COPTIC NAMES OF THE TWELVE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC, ACCORDING TO ULUGH BEIGH.

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Note: Coptic is the language of the Copts, which represents the final stage of ancient Egyptian. It now survives only as the liturgical language of the Coptic Church. S.A.F.L.      These names, thus given by Montucla, Hist. des Mathematiques, are considered to represent the ancient Egyptian. Their great antiquity may be seen from the Cubitus Nili, referring to the inundation of the Nile as under Leo, where the summer solstice, at which it takes place, only remained till about B.C. 2000: also from there being no allusion to the Scarabaeus, where it afterwards was introduced to mark the recession of the solstice to Cancer, which occurred about the time of the Christian era, Cancer being here called Statio Typhonis, station of Typhon, the enemy who smites and is smitten, to whom was consecrated the ass, mentioned in Gen. xlix. 14, and borne afterwards on the standard of the tribe of Issachar. Typhon was anciently figured by the Egyptians as having serpents for legs an...
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THE TWELVE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC, AS CONNECTED WITH THE PRIMITIVE PROPHECIES.

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p. 9. THE antiquity and wide diffusion of these emblems, and the mystic veneration in which they were ever held, are traced in the accompanying pages: it is also shown that the notion of the signs having any reference to the seasons is of comparatively late origin, and could not at any time have been sustained consistently with the times and climates of their well-known previous existence. 1 .      It was not till the diffusion of the light of Christianity had cast into shade these dim foreshowings of its great events, that the vague awe with which these emblems were formerly regarded gave place to indifference and neglect, or was only preserved in the reveries of astrology. This reverence 2 , in some cases leading even to idolatry, indicated a tradition that their message was divine. They each represented an action, still to be traced in the fables connected with them 3 , a type, of which the true antitype is to be found in the great subject of the ancient prophecies ...
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