ON THE EMBLEMS OF EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY.
Of all the mythology of the children of Adam, the leading, the governing idea is the prophetic declaration, "He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel." The word [ ] peculiarly denotes bruising by biting, or bruising, as the reptile the heel of the man. A human figure (frequently with divine attributes) repeatedly occurs in the hieroglyphics of Egypt, as in those of India, with the foot on the serpent's head. In those of Egypt the victory is generally so represented, the victory of Him who cometh, over the serpent foe, by the action of the bruising. The implement of the bruising, the flail, is frequently held by this figure (Isa. xxviii. 28), who has also on his head what has been called a pestle and mortar: these also are implements of bruising (Prov. xxvii. 22), "He shall bruise" is the import of these figures. Such also is that of a ploughshare, which breaks or bruises the ground, [ ] from [ ], he cometh.
Those figures here explained to signify he cometh, have the hitherto inexplicable appendage of a tail, the tail of an animal of the beeve kind, whose Egyptian name Ba, signifies, as in the cognate dialects Hebrew, &C., Greek, also the verb to come; while the tail, [ ], would signify "this cometh, or is caused to come." [ ], this, [ ] caused to come, sent forth; the tail is bound on with a girdle, [ ], round the waist of the walking, or coming human figure: [ ], a girdle or girded, signifying power, strong.
That the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head, and the serpent should bruise His heel, was the prediction. The Seed of the woman, a divine person with no human father, born to die, was also to conquer the enemy of man, the evil one, emblematized by the serpent. This prophetic promise is the foundation of all mythology, from Egypt to Polynesia; while in the astronomy of every ancient nation the signs of the zodiac are preserved nearly the same as they are here delineated in that of Egypt. The woman bearing the seed, the ear of corn, or branch, is most remarkable in all, as the sign Virgo. A human figure, whose foot is on a serpent, is figured in the Chaldean sphere 8, in the sign Scorpio; in the Egyptian and Indian there is only the Scorpion. Still in the decans or accompanying constellations, the conqueror, as in the hieroglyphic names, is seen. In the Egyptian sphere, here delineated, He always appears as the conqueror, the triumphant, sometimes enthroned, but mostly as walking, coming. In the first sign, Aries, called in Egyptian, Tametouris Ammon, the reign of Amman, or the Lamb, He is seated, dwelling, and as one meaning of the name may be, established; in all the others, He is coming. The Scarabseus, which has taken the place of the sign between Gemini and Leo, has in the long zodiac 9 the wings extended as flying. That in the original sign was the "strong ass" of Issachar, the animal held by the Egyptians to be dedicated to Typhon, their personification of evil, is to be inferred from the Coptic name of the sign, Statio Typhonis: Typhon being who smites or is smitten.
In the planisphere of Dendera, as in other delineations of the starry heavens, the twelve signs of the zodiac are evidently the chief objects, to which the other figures are in subordination. Their forms are so little different from those on modern globes as to be easily recognized. The ancient Coptic names, supposed to be the ancient Egyptian, are given from Ulugh Beigh.
The same emblems in the same order are given in the catalogue of Hipparchus, drawn up about 130 years B.C. Ptolemy, who transmits that catalogue added the figure of the half-horse above Pegasus. Perhaps he did this to keep up the number of forty-eight, after the disappearance below the horizon of the north temperate zone, of the Southern Cross, no longer seen there in his time. This precedent seems to have suggested the additions that embarrass our modern globes with air-pumps, easels, and other incongruities. Some of the names of the fixed stars wee transmitted through the early Greeks, but many more by the Arabs. These were first communicated to the western nations by the Arab astronomers invited by Alphonsus, king of Castile, to assist in drawing up the Alphonsine tables. The Tartar prince and astronomer Ulugh Beigh about the year 1420 drew up his celebrated tables, which give Arabian astronomy as it had come down to his time, also transmitting the ancient Coptic or Egyptian names as here given. A much earlier authority, however, is found in Albumazer, the great Arab astronomer of the caliphs of Granada, early in the ninth century, and in Aben Ezra, his commentator, in the thirteenth 1.
In the long zodiac the decans appear between the twelve signs that they accompany; the three decans attributed to each sign come to the meridian with it, though a slight allowance must be made for the changed position of the pole, which, at the first arrangement of these emblems, would be in Alpha Draconis, the bright star in the head of the dragon, surrounding the pole. The absence of closer similarity between the forms of these Egyptian figures representing the thirty-six ancient constellations, and by which the Arabian and Greek sphere denoted them, is, however, supplied by the coincidence in the names. For instance, the hieroglyphic name of Bootes is Bau: Bau in the ancient Egyptian, having the meaning of "He cometh," and also of cattle, beasts, so coinciding with the purport of the emblem "He cometh," and the office attributed to Him of a herdsman, a keeper of cattle 2. The common origin of mankind, their descent from the one ancestor, Noah, will fully account for similarity, and the confusion of the lip at Babel for differences. Those who hold that remains of human beings are found in positions indicating a far superior antiquity, should be reminded that the book of Genesis only records the history of the children of Adam, and neither asserts nor denies that a race of beings of similar bodily proportions might have previously existed. If such did exist, all we know of them is that they died. "He who was to come," the great theme of ancient prophecy and ancient astronomy, did not come through them; He was to come, and did come of the race of Adam; the Seed of the woman, bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh.
This ancient zodiac, or map, of the stars of heaven, has, however, been considered to refer to dates perfectly consistent with that usually assigned to the creation of Adam. 1730 B.C. has repeatedly been given as deducible from its figures.
In a recent periodical it is supposed an essential of the Christian faith to believe that "the serpent was Satan." Is it not rather that the enemy took possession of the natural body of the serpent, through which to communicate with the woman 3?
Kirchner says, "A serpent 4 with the tail in the mouth was the hieroglyphic for the year" (and probably for other cycles).
"A serpent was the hieroglyphic by which the course of the stars was explained." (Sir W. Drummond).
In some Egyptian monument it is said that the figure 5 in Gemini had one, the moon, the other, the sun, on their heads: thus perhaps accounting for one of them being feminine in the planisphere. This might imply that one was of earth, the other of heaven, as Castor and Pollux.
"The leg and hoof of a goat was a Punic emblem" as well as an Egyptian, [ ], a hawk, an emblem of God, according to Clemens Alex.
"A plough which bruises, occurs frequently on the breasts of mummies." (Dr. Clarke.)
Ammonius says, "The Egyptians had a custom of naming the Moon in the feminine."
Manetho, as cited by Dio, Laert., says that the Egyptians taught that the moon was eclipsed by falling into the earth's shadow.
The Arabian geographer, Abdraschid, A.D. 1403, calls Saturn, Rephan, Mars, Melockh, and Jupiter, PiCheus. To him were doubtless well known the learning of the astronomers Al Makrisi and Al Fargani, patronized in the ninth century by the Caliph of Bagdad, Al Mamon, the son of Al Raschid, who caused to be made from Greek into Arabic, those translations of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin writers, by which they are in some instances preserved for Europe. (French Institute.)
It has been supposed that the Dendera zodiac contained a horoscope, but inserted upon an ancient planisphere, as is the case with modern horoscopes. There is a human figure near Cancer, without divine or mystical attributes, who might be what is called "the native," the person for whom the horoscope is drawn.
The date of this or any other zodiac may be calculated from the place of the solstices. The sun's place at the solstice recedes from west to east about one sign in two thousand years. According to the usually received chronology, when Noah left the ark it was about the middle of Aquarius, where it is recorded to have been observed in China. In antediluvian times it had just quitted Pisces. The headless horse, type of the ascending node or winter solstice, in the Dendera planisphere appears to be over the figure of Aquarius, perhaps at its middle or fifteenth degree. This indicates the origin of this zodiac to have been in times when its position was in Aquarius: but the position of the summer solstice had been since altered to suit the precession of the equinoxes, by inserting a scarabseus, beetle, or crab, in the position where the summer solstice began to take place about 2000 B.C. 4000 B.C. it had been where the signs of Leo 6 and Virgo join, being according to tradition, at the time of the creation of Adam, the first observer of the heavens. Such, common sense tells that he must have been, even if tradition had not so called him. The insertion of the crab or scarabseus, to mark the recession of the solstice, indicates a date less than 2000 B.C., consequently later than that indicated by the position of the headless figure over Aquarius. In the smaller zodiac, the summer solstice is in many ways marked as in Cancer, in that part nearest to Gemini. Therefore it is of a later date than the circular. The Scarabseus, passing its early existence as a worm in the earth, and issuing thence a winged denizen of heaven, was held sacred by the Egyptians as an emblem of the resurrection of the body, in which they firmly believed, and from which they derived their custom of preserving it as a mummy 7.
The figures of this planisphere tend to show, that the primeval religion of Egypt was that revealed to Adam, and transmitted by Noah. That the Seed or offspring of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent, the enemy, and that it should bruise His heel, is the earliest manifestation of that religion on record, and the most universal - still to be traced in the traditions of all nations, but most evidently in the wide-spread monuments of astronomy, the emblems of the twelve signs of the zodiac marking out the way of Him who should come, depart, and come again, as the sun, His recognized type in the heavens.
On this planisphere the twelve signs are represented nearly as described by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus (B.C. 125), long before the supposed erection of the temple on which the planisphere is carved. The Greeks allowed that their astronomy came to them from Egypt; the Egyptians attributed theirs to Chaldea. Abraham, to whom his descendants referred the origin of their astronomy, being a Chaldean and a temporary resident of Egypt, through him they might derive the astronomy transmitted from the antediluvian patriarchs, to whom tradition refers the invention of the science. This would make part of the wisdom of Egypt of which Moses was in possession. The ram or lamb, the bull, the goat or kid, were from the beginning sacrificial animals, typifying the one great sacrifice. Cattle, flocks, and herds, the earliest possession of mankind, represented His people, His purchased possession; while the human figure showed the nature in which He should come for their redemption, the lion showing His coming to victory over His enemies - He who was bruised in the heel coming to bruise the head. Even in lands where the lion was unknown, that figure was pre-eminent as in this zodiac; for the lion was a Chaldean, not an Egyptian animal. The figure of the sheep was in the far East supplied by the goat or antelope. The serpent was every where as universal as the wiles of him whom it represents, or as the stars to which these emblems were annexed.
If, as has been urged, God has spoken, the records of what He has said ought to be search out. The message of the Book and of the symbols may be shown clearly to agree. The traditions 8 of the nations, like sunbeams on a rapid stream, however broken and confused, yet reflect the primeval light.
Ancient writers have said that the religion of Egypt was derived from the constellations, but not that the constellations were derived from that religion.
Those who invented the emblems of the constellations of course gave names to them, and probably also to their principal stars. Arabian tradition asserted that these names were transmitted unchanged in Arab astronomy. Names are not, as is sometimes supposed, mere arbitrary combinations of letters. All names have meanings explicable by the roots which they contain. The Holy Scriptures occasionally explain the names there recorded from their roots in the Hebrew language, also to be found in the other cognate dialects. All the ancient names of the stars that have reached us have meanings in those dialects suitable to the import of the emblems connected with which they are found. These correspondences furnish strong evidence that the design of the inventors was to transmit to their descendants immortal and life-giving truths.
Evidence of the antiquity of these emblems may be found by those internal traces in the records of the science of astronomy, by which some modern astronomers are led to refer its origin to about 4000 years ago, but those here pointed out refer rather to 6000, the age of Seth and Enoch, whom ancient traditions name as the first astronomers.
The testimony of the ancient Egyptians to this antiquity is preserved by the Greek writers, in the ancient books of the Persians, and by Josephus, the historian of the Jews.
The coincidence of Arab astronomy with the Chaldean and Egyptian traditions and monuments is well known.
The suitability of the names preserved by the Arabs and other ancients, when explained by the Noetic roots found in all languages, to the emblems of the Egyptian zodiacs, indicates a common origin. The name of Seth or Thoth, given by all tradition as that of the inventor of astronomy and the Sothaic period, the wonderful perfection of which is acknowledged by modern astronomers, and attributed to the earliest race of mankind, testifies to this assertion.
Of "the great year" of Josephus, the Sothaic period of six hundred years, Cassini says, "This period, of which we find no intimation in any monument of any other nation, is the finest that ever was invented; for it brings out the solar year more exactly than that of Hipparchus and Ptolemy, and the lunar months within about one minute of what is determined by modern astronomers."
The figures of the constellations only including the stars visible in the latitudes between the sources of the Euphrates and the Nile, indicate their origin or early adoption in those districts.
It is said that "the Egyptians learnt from Hermes 9 the canicular cycle of 1461 years, at the end of which their solar year of 365 years (the deficiency of which they were not allowed to make up by intercalation) had receded through every season, and returned to the same sidereal point of commencement, namely, the rising of the dogstar on the 1st of Thoth. This cycle they called the great year. But there was another great year in more general use, which was the Neroe, or cycle of 600 years, to which Josephus refers, Ant. i. 3, and which was that most employed at Babylon; this being one of the cycles on the great stone in the India House. The Saros was another cycle, of, according to Suidas, eighteen years and six months, nearly corresponding with the Metonic lunar cycle of nineteen years. This also being inscribed in stone at the India House, will come under consideration at a future opportunity." (Cullimore on the Origin of the Primitive Sphere of the Greeks, in the Morning Watch, vol. vi. p. 389.)
The sphere described by Endoxus, Aratus, and Hipparchus, is said by Cullimore to be proved to have been from Egypt; and that Sir Isaac Newton and all others who refer its emblems to the Argonautic voyage, are obliged to reject either historical or astronomical evidence, but agrees with Sir Isaac Newton's placing of the colures.
"Psammeticus, with whom the catalogue of the great Paite family, preserved by Herodotus, commences, began to reign B.C. 672, the first year of the Graeco-Egyptian intercourse, and was, according to the Egyptian annals of Manetho, preceded by Stephinathes, Nicepsos, and Nechao I., the father of Psamneticus, according to Herodotus, who reigned respectively seven, six, and eight years. To King Nicepsos, and his contemporary, the philosopher Petosiris, are ascribed the latest innovations or improvements in the Herniate astronomy of Egypt. They were celebrated astronomers and astrologers, and constructed a sphere into which the decani or decennary divisions of the zodiac were first introduced. Julius Firmicus calls them, divini viri atque omni admiratione digni., Nicepsos reigned from B.C. 686 to B.C. 672." The Greek sphere then originated with Thales, whose disciple, Anaximander, first constructed it.
"The zodiacal signs are undeniably of the highest antiquity before the times to which heathen history ascends. Some of them are alluded to in the book of Job, which, if by Moses, was the earliest of his writings, and even in the East these signs remain unchanged, unencumbered by their elephants and monsters." "On the testimony of Berosus, corroborated by internal evidence in the zodiac itself, we believe these signs to have been invented by the first Hermes, about 2400 B.C., and when at the vernal equinox the sun was in, or near the Pleiades. The second Hermes perfected what the first had only designed, having ascertained the true length of the year, and fixed the seasons by the solstices and equinoxes. This took place about 1500 B.C., when the sun at the vernal equinox stood in the cloud whence Taurus emerges; and it was near the time of the Exodus, Hermes being contemporary with Moses. The signs so fixed by the second Hermes have passed into all countries where astronomy is known, with no other variation than that occasioned by remoteness of latitude, where the Chaldean animal of some of the signs was supplied by an animal better known in the remote regions of the earth, or by some grotesque form, unlike any thing in nature. Aries passes into the goat or deer in India, and Gemini and Virgo take the Oriental costume; Leo also, though retaining its name and place in the Indian zodiac, has assumed a form as rude as in the heraldic paintings of the middle ages. These facts demonstrate that the zodiac was not invented in India, but in a country where the lion and other animals were commonly known, such as Egypt or Assyria, and the transport of astronomy to India is further evidenced by Virgo being seated in a ship or chariot in the Cingalese and some other Oriental zodiacs. The forms in the Greek and Roman zodiacs were become wholly arbitrary, and bore no reference to the positions of the stars. But we generally find Aries and Taurus turned from each other, indicating the division to be between Aries and Taurus, as stated above. The fixed zodiac, commencing with Aries, seems not to have been generally adopted till the time of Hipparchus, when the vernal equinox stood near the head of Aries, and the autumnal near Spica Virginis. Ptolemy himself declares that he altered the forms of some of the constellations to give the figures a better proportion, and stars which the older astronomers had placed in the shoulders were thus brought down to the sides of Virgo. He says: - 'Multis ergo in locis accommodatiora ipsis figuris attribuentes vocabula, priscorum usum immutavimus, sicut, verbi gratia, figures quas Hipporohus in humeris Virginis locat, nos in costis ejus sites esse dicimus, quoniam distantia earum ad Stellas quse in capite sunt major apparet, quam ad eas quse in extremitatibus manuum collocantur, hoc autem sicut et costis accommodatur.' Bayer turned the backs of the figures to the spectator instead of the faces, and Albert Durer, or some German, put them all into Gothic costume, in which they remained till the time of Flamstead. He revised, or rather re-constructed the forms of the constellations, and first laying down the stars themselves correctly, drew the figures according to that part of the body in which the several stars were said to be placed by Hipparchus and Ptolemy."
While in ancient Egypt the signs of the zodiac were thus engraven on their temples, in India and Arabia from time immemorial the signs and the Lunar Mansions have been interwoven with science and poetry, with public worship and private economy, the figures being embodied in the forms of idols, and the appellations transmitted in the names of children. In Scandinavia they have been claimed by Olaus Rudbeck, as having there originated. In Mexico they are still to be traced. The Burmese have preserved them well: the Polynesians have not totally forgotten them. Wherever the posterity of Noah, the children of Seth, are found, there are recognized some vestiges of this their ancestral science. When the study of astronomy was merged in that of astrology, during the dark ages of Europe, it flourished in the East, cultivated by Al Fergani at the court of the Caliph of Bagdad, Haroun Alraschid, in the ninth century, and at that of the Moors in Spain by Albumazer about the same time, whose works were commented on by Aben Ezra in the twelfth. He has transmitted to us accounts of the ancient Persian, Indian, and Egyptian spheres. Ulugh Beigh, the Tartar prince and astronomer, grandson of Tamerlane, has preserved the ancient Coptic names of the signs, supposed to have been those of the ancient Egyptians, and also many names of the fixed stars, which appear to have come through the Arabs 1. The Lunar Mansions, and the divisions into Decans of the thirty-six constellations beyond the zodiac, which appear on the planisphere and long zodiac of Dendera, were by them enumerated and described.
These are some of the leading ancient astronomers who have preserved and transmitted to us such important evidence of the antiquity of these emblems, and of the unity of design in the ancient division and nomenclature of the starry heavens. The interpretations here given are assimilated as closely as possible to their concurring testimony separated by ages of time, by distance of habitation, by language, and by religion: where they agree, surely it must be in the truth.
As the Jews have guarded for us in their precious integrity the Hebrew Scriptures, so Mahometan, or rather patriarchal Arabs have transmitted to us the names which so remarkably correspond with the language of those Scriptures, when setting forth the glory of Him not then revealed to either of those nations - children of Abraham according to the flesh, who will one day hail their long unrecognized kinsman-Redeemer, when the flocks of Kedar and the rams of Nebaioth shall be gathered unto the Lord, and His glory shall have arisen upon them.
Another chain of evidence has descended to us through the Greeks. Hesiod, about 1000 years B.C., treats of the rising and setting of the constellations, whose names and emblems he transmits as from immemorial antiquity. So speaks Homer of those which he mentions. Aratus, a Greek at the court of Antigonus, king of Macedonia, about 277 B.C., in his poem on astronomy, describes much more particularly the constellations, in number, name, and figure nearly as now represented. Hipparchus, the celebrated Greek astronomer, who died 126 years B.C., enumerated and is said to have given names to the stars, but Hesiod, Homer, and Aratus having previously recorded them by name, this can therefore only mean that he made of them a regular enrolment. Hyginus, a freedman of Augustus, gives the names and figures as his predecessors, and relates of them the various fables in his time vaguely attached to the constellations, of the uncertainty of which he frequently speaks, - thus making more remarkable the invariable certainty of the appellations and symbols. Ptolemy of Alexandria, in the time of Antoninus, made the celebrated catalogue of the fixed stars, describing the constellations as we now have them, particularly the remarkable union of some with others, by reckoning the same star in each; as the foot of Aries with the band of Races and head of Cetus; the foot of Auriga with the horn of Taurus; the cup and raven with the serpent Hydra. From him we have derived them without variation, till the English astronomer, and adversary of Newton, Flamstead, in the time of Queen Anne, unfortunately took it into his head, in attempting to give names to the stars not reckoned in the ancient constellations, to mingle with these mystic and significant emblems such senseless figures as the fox and goose, or such unimportant ones as the shield of Sobieski and bull of Pomintowski, which now disfigure the modern sphere. He did not even suspect they had any meaning: therefore it is evident that this great astronomer had not in the course of his studies met with any account of their possible signification which appeared to him worthy of notice. It is in Jewish antiquity alone that we find any vestige of a received meaning being attached to them.
Ancient as these zodiacs are, and particularly the circular one, we have a record of much more ancient astronomy in the blessing of Jacob, in which he describes the signs as borne on the banners of Israel, about 1700 B.C.
Great modern authorities in geological science seem now to have agreed, that in every new creation traced in the fossilized chronicles of by-gone ages, the first were the grandest of the formation. The physical constitution of the antediluvian, the first race of man, framed to last near a thousand years, most have been in every respect superior to that now existing, or any of which we can form an idea. If the intellectual, the purely spiritual, were not so too, yet the instruments by which that intellect worked being so far superior, would give an incalculable advantage to its exercise.
The perfection to which these father, these kings 2 of men, carried their astronomy, as testified by the famous period of 600 years, affords sufficient proof of the superiority of their organs of sight. Those eyes were to them what the last and greatest telescope has been to their less naturally gifted descendants. The most ancient names of the nebulae prove that to them was known, what is at last recently acknowledged, that these clouds of light are indeed starry assemblages 3, multitudes.
The Egyptian zodiac as represented in the annexed planisphere of Dendera, though in the main agreeing with that apparently known to Jacob and his family, differs from it in two of the signs. On Issachar's standard was borne the strong ass, still to be recognized in the stars of Cancer, where two stars are called the northern and southern ass, and in the name Statio Typhonis, the ass having been an emblem of Typhon. Also the Egyptian zodiac has in Libra the scales, surmounted by a figure whose finger is on his lips, over whom are two others, a fox or wolf, and a man holding a flail; and it is well known that Libra, the scales or balance, was not borne on any standard of Israel, the place of Levi, to whom it would have fallen, being with Simeon in the blessing of Jacob, and with the tabernacle in the encampment of Israel and the blessing of Moses; the emblem of the scales not being used by Jacob, but the place where it might be looked for, after the serpent or basilisk of Dan, being devoted by the dying prophet to the memorial of that salvation for which he had waited, and which was typified in the balance of redemption, the cross, the victim, and the crown. These were no human attributes, and to none did he appoint them. The figure enclosed in a circle has been called Harpocrates, a name which may be referred to the primitive roots [ ], He who cometh, [ ] the Egyptian article masculine before [ ] or [ ], cut in pieces as a sacrifice (Jer. xxxiv. 18, &c); He who cometh to be a sacrifice. He has a finger on the lip ([ ] being the lip, and [ ] to bruise), referring to one first great and universal prophecy as to Him who should come, that He should bruise the head of the enemy and be Himself bruised in the heel; the fox or wolf, Shual or Zeeb, expressing "He who cometh;" the figure with the flail expressing "He shall bruise," also "He shall return," as the flail on the corn. The decans of this sign are the cross, being represented by the lion, who rends a figure with the face and horns of a lamb, the victim; and the enthroned figure with the face and horns of a lamb, the victim; and the enthroned figure with the flail and the crown.
That the Seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head, and it should bruise His heel, is the foundation on which is constructed the whole of this planisphere, with those of the Indians, Persians, Arabs, or, as in fact these all are, the Chaldean. Abraham was a Chaldean, and traditional history has said a great astronomer, and Chaldean astronomy is continually appealed to as the original of the science. It has been supposed that Melchisedek, the righteous king, was Shem in person; if so, he must have known all that Noah knew on the subject, and Noah must have known what Adam, Seth, and Enoch are traditionally said to have transmitted as to the names and positions of the stars of heaven. But with the Chaldean astronomy, which his in fact ours, the Egyptian does not always agree. The Egyptians had derived their science from Noah before Abraham came among them, and in this planisphere we have the records of it, for the headless figure, where Aquarius joins on Pisces, refers to a time long before Abraham; another headless figure with the horns of Aries, more immediately under Pisces, may have originally been intended to refer to the winter solstice having receded from Aries into Pisces before the earliest era in tradition. This might be the figure which led some French astronomers to attribute an antiquity far beyond Scripture chronology, a time when the winter solstice would be in Aries, if the heavenly bodies then existed. In the Egyptian and Chaldean spheres, and those of Persia and India as described by Albumazer, the twelve signs are exactly alike; and in the other constellations, the thirty-six decans 4, there is sufficient resemblance to show that all had one origin; the astronomy of which all tradition, and particularly the Egyptian, calls Seth the originator. The traditional names Hermes, and Hermes Trismegistus, seem to refer to Seth, as Hermes, the great one, and Adam, Seth, and Enoch, as the three great ones who originated the science.
In the different ancient spheres the number and purport of the emblems are the same, and similar meanings are traceable in their names by the aid of the Noetic roots preserved in the Hebrew Scriptures.
In the annexed tables, the names said to have been obtained from the planisphere are so explained, and references given to the parts of the Hebrew Scriptures where the Noetic roots are used in the sense here given to them.
Authorities have been asked for the inference that the twelve signs and other constellations of Egyptian astronomy symbolize the prophecies concerning Him who was to come, the Messiah, frequently personified as Osiris and Horus, the Prince and the Divine Infant. It is answered that the inference is made on the authority of the ancient traditions connected wit the emblems, and the meanings conveyed by the ancient but yet extant names, - as Osiris, the Prince; "Sir," in Isa. ix., born of no human father, born to die, and revive again; Isis, or Isha, wife of Osiris, mother of Orus or Horus, He who cometh, who shall come; Typhon, the evil one, the smitten or wounded, or the smiting or wounding. The great authority here is the meaning of the names and similarity of the traditionary characters. Osiris reigns, but dies and lives again; Horus comes to rule and live; Typhon smites, and is smitten.
In the figures of Egyptian astronomy one foot of the conqueror is on the head of the serpent, the other held up as wounded, bruised. The astronomy of the Egyptians is not corrupted like their mythology.
8 The sphere now in use among ourselves is here referred to as the Chaldean.
9 For this zodiac, see Hamilton's Egyptiacs.
1 This Commentary is in the British Museum, and has been much made use of in "Mazzaroth."
2 Zech. xiii. The Egyptian figure having the head of a beeve.
3 Sharon Turner, Sac. Hist., vol. ii. p. 265, - "It is a curious fact, that the Mexicans had a tradition of the history of Eve, and a representation of it, in their symbolical paintings. Humboldt thus mentions the circumstance. In describing the hieroglyphical paintings of the Mexicans in the Borghian Museum at Veletri, he says 'that No. 1, Cod. Borg vol. ii represents the mother of mankind, the serpent-woman, the Eve of the Mexicans' - Humb. Researches, vol. ii. p. 834. Of the Codex Vaticanus he mentions, 'the group No. 2 represents the celebrated serpent-woman, Cibux-cohuatl, called also Quilatzi, or Tonacacihua, woman of our flesh. She is the companion of Tonacateuctli. The Mexicans considered her as the mother of the human race. After the god of the celestial paradise, Ometeuctli, she held the first rank among the divinities of Aushuac. We see her always represented with a great serpent.' - Humb. ib. vol. i. p. 195. 'Their Adam is called Tonacateuctli, or Lord of our flesh; he is represented in the Cod. Borg. fol. 9.' - Humb. ib. 226."
4 These figures of serpents or snakes connected with time, have a narrow-pointed head, as the innoxious species always have; the enemy has the broad obtuse head of the venomous ones as the cobra, &c.
5 It is possible the long-robed figure may have been intended as priestly, the Egyptian priest being robed in a long linen garment called Calasiris, Heb. the clothing of the Prince.
6 The Egyptian astronomers taught that at the Creation the sun rose in Leo, the moon in Cancer; these signs have always been called their houses. The very ancient science of astrology also gave each of the planets their houses or signs, Aries being called the house of Mars, Virgo of Mercury, Sagittarius of Jupiter, Libra of Venus, Capricorn of Saturn. If at, or soon after, Adam's creation, these planets were in these signs, such might be the origin of this appropriation.
7 The male Scarabaei are smaller than the female; the male typifying the sun setting to rise again, also, the resurrection of man; the female, the renewed year.
8 Maimonides says, that according to Jewish tradition the first man who introduced the worship of the stars asserted that it was derived from prophecy.
9 Much has been said of the first and second Hermes, and more of Hermes Trismegistus; Hermes being taken as a proper name, not considering it, as it is, an epithet, [ ], the great, with the common Egyptian affix of [ ]. It may refer to Seth or Enoch as the great astronomers.
1 Montucla, &c. p. 2.
2 The ten kings before the flood" have been spoken of in very ancient writers. Josephus gives as a reason for the long life of the antediluvians, that they might complete their discoveries in astronomy.
3 See the Tables in Part II., for the Pleiades, Cancer, Orion, and Andromeda. Sephina in Argo is also probably the nebula in that place, visible to antediluvian eyes, if not to ours.
4 Note "on Decans."
5 Apion accused the Jews of worshipping an ass in the temple. Did they confound Athon, an ass with ink, "Him who cometh?"
6 [ ] bound.
Those figures here explained to signify he cometh, have the hitherto inexplicable appendage of a tail, the tail of an animal of the beeve kind, whose Egyptian name Ba, signifies, as in the cognate dialects Hebrew, &C., Greek, also the verb to come; while the tail, [ ], would signify "this cometh, or is caused to come." [ ], this, [ ] caused to come, sent forth; the tail is bound on with a girdle, [ ], round the waist of the walking, or coming human figure: [ ], a girdle or girded, signifying power, strong.
That the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head, and the serpent should bruise His heel, was the prediction. The Seed of the woman, a divine person with no human father, born to die, was also to conquer the enemy of man, the evil one, emblematized by the serpent. This prophetic promise is the foundation of all mythology, from Egypt to Polynesia; while in the astronomy of every ancient nation the signs of the zodiac are preserved nearly the same as they are here delineated in that of Egypt. The woman bearing the seed, the ear of corn, or branch, is most remarkable in all, as the sign Virgo. A human figure, whose foot is on a serpent, is figured in the Chaldean sphere 8, in the sign Scorpio; in the Egyptian and Indian there is only the Scorpion. Still in the decans or accompanying constellations, the conqueror, as in the hieroglyphic names, is seen. In the Egyptian sphere, here delineated, He always appears as the conqueror, the triumphant, sometimes enthroned, but mostly as walking, coming. In the first sign, Aries, called in Egyptian, Tametouris Ammon, the reign of Amman, or the Lamb, He is seated, dwelling, and as one meaning of the name may be, established; in all the others, He is coming. The Scarabseus, which has taken the place of the sign between Gemini and Leo, has in the long zodiac 9 the wings extended as flying. That in the original sign was the "strong ass" of Issachar, the animal held by the Egyptians to be dedicated to Typhon, their personification of evil, is to be inferred from the Coptic name of the sign, Statio Typhonis: Typhon being who smites or is smitten.
In the planisphere of Dendera, as in other delineations of the starry heavens, the twelve signs of the zodiac are evidently the chief objects, to which the other figures are in subordination. Their forms are so little different from those on modern globes as to be easily recognized. The ancient Coptic names, supposed to be the ancient Egyptian, are given from Ulugh Beigh.
The same emblems in the same order are given in the catalogue of Hipparchus, drawn up about 130 years B.C. Ptolemy, who transmits that catalogue added the figure of the half-horse above Pegasus. Perhaps he did this to keep up the number of forty-eight, after the disappearance below the horizon of the north temperate zone, of the Southern Cross, no longer seen there in his time. This precedent seems to have suggested the additions that embarrass our modern globes with air-pumps, easels, and other incongruities. Some of the names of the fixed stars wee transmitted through the early Greeks, but many more by the Arabs. These were first communicated to the western nations by the Arab astronomers invited by Alphonsus, king of Castile, to assist in drawing up the Alphonsine tables. The Tartar prince and astronomer Ulugh Beigh about the year 1420 drew up his celebrated tables, which give Arabian astronomy as it had come down to his time, also transmitting the ancient Coptic or Egyptian names as here given. A much earlier authority, however, is found in Albumazer, the great Arab astronomer of the caliphs of Granada, early in the ninth century, and in Aben Ezra, his commentator, in the thirteenth 1.
In the long zodiac the decans appear between the twelve signs that they accompany; the three decans attributed to each sign come to the meridian with it, though a slight allowance must be made for the changed position of the pole, which, at the first arrangement of these emblems, would be in Alpha Draconis, the bright star in the head of the dragon, surrounding the pole. The absence of closer similarity between the forms of these Egyptian figures representing the thirty-six ancient constellations, and by which the Arabian and Greek sphere denoted them, is, however, supplied by the coincidence in the names. For instance, the hieroglyphic name of Bootes is Bau: Bau in the ancient Egyptian, having the meaning of "He cometh," and also of cattle, beasts, so coinciding with the purport of the emblem "He cometh," and the office attributed to Him of a herdsman, a keeper of cattle 2. The common origin of mankind, their descent from the one ancestor, Noah, will fully account for similarity, and the confusion of the lip at Babel for differences. Those who hold that remains of human beings are found in positions indicating a far superior antiquity, should be reminded that the book of Genesis only records the history of the children of Adam, and neither asserts nor denies that a race of beings of similar bodily proportions might have previously existed. If such did exist, all we know of them is that they died. "He who was to come," the great theme of ancient prophecy and ancient astronomy, did not come through them; He was to come, and did come of the race of Adam; the Seed of the woman, bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh.
This ancient zodiac, or map, of the stars of heaven, has, however, been considered to refer to dates perfectly consistent with that usually assigned to the creation of Adam. 1730 B.C. has repeatedly been given as deducible from its figures.
In a recent periodical it is supposed an essential of the Christian faith to believe that "the serpent was Satan." Is it not rather that the enemy took possession of the natural body of the serpent, through which to communicate with the woman 3?
Kirchner says, "A serpent 4 with the tail in the mouth was the hieroglyphic for the year" (and probably for other cycles).
"A serpent was the hieroglyphic by which the course of the stars was explained." (Sir W. Drummond).
In some Egyptian monument it is said that the figure 5 in Gemini had one, the moon, the other, the sun, on their heads: thus perhaps accounting for one of them being feminine in the planisphere. This might imply that one was of earth, the other of heaven, as Castor and Pollux.
"The leg and hoof of a goat was a Punic emblem" as well as an Egyptian, [ ], a hawk, an emblem of God, according to Clemens Alex.
"A plough which bruises, occurs frequently on the breasts of mummies." (Dr. Clarke.)
Ammonius says, "The Egyptians had a custom of naming the Moon in the feminine."
Manetho, as cited by Dio, Laert., says that the Egyptians taught that the moon was eclipsed by falling into the earth's shadow.
The Arabian geographer, Abdraschid, A.D. 1403, calls Saturn, Rephan, Mars, Melockh, and Jupiter, PiCheus. To him were doubtless well known the learning of the astronomers Al Makrisi and Al Fargani, patronized in the ninth century by the Caliph of Bagdad, Al Mamon, the son of Al Raschid, who caused to be made from Greek into Arabic, those translations of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin writers, by which they are in some instances preserved for Europe. (French Institute.)
It has been supposed that the Dendera zodiac contained a horoscope, but inserted upon an ancient planisphere, as is the case with modern horoscopes. There is a human figure near Cancer, without divine or mystical attributes, who might be what is called "the native," the person for whom the horoscope is drawn.
The date of this or any other zodiac may be calculated from the place of the solstices. The sun's place at the solstice recedes from west to east about one sign in two thousand years. According to the usually received chronology, when Noah left the ark it was about the middle of Aquarius, where it is recorded to have been observed in China. In antediluvian times it had just quitted Pisces. The headless horse, type of the ascending node or winter solstice, in the Dendera planisphere appears to be over the figure of Aquarius, perhaps at its middle or fifteenth degree. This indicates the origin of this zodiac to have been in times when its position was in Aquarius: but the position of the summer solstice had been since altered to suit the precession of the equinoxes, by inserting a scarabseus, beetle, or crab, in the position where the summer solstice began to take place about 2000 B.C. 4000 B.C. it had been where the signs of Leo 6 and Virgo join, being according to tradition, at the time of the creation of Adam, the first observer of the heavens. Such, common sense tells that he must have been, even if tradition had not so called him. The insertion of the crab or scarabseus, to mark the recession of the solstice, indicates a date less than 2000 B.C., consequently later than that indicated by the position of the headless figure over Aquarius. In the smaller zodiac, the summer solstice is in many ways marked as in Cancer, in that part nearest to Gemini. Therefore it is of a later date than the circular. The Scarabseus, passing its early existence as a worm in the earth, and issuing thence a winged denizen of heaven, was held sacred by the Egyptians as an emblem of the resurrection of the body, in which they firmly believed, and from which they derived their custom of preserving it as a mummy 7.
The figures of this planisphere tend to show, that the primeval religion of Egypt was that revealed to Adam, and transmitted by Noah. That the Seed or offspring of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent, the enemy, and that it should bruise His heel, is the earliest manifestation of that religion on record, and the most universal - still to be traced in the traditions of all nations, but most evidently in the wide-spread monuments of astronomy, the emblems of the twelve signs of the zodiac marking out the way of Him who should come, depart, and come again, as the sun, His recognized type in the heavens.
On this planisphere the twelve signs are represented nearly as described by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus (B.C. 125), long before the supposed erection of the temple on which the planisphere is carved. The Greeks allowed that their astronomy came to them from Egypt; the Egyptians attributed theirs to Chaldea. Abraham, to whom his descendants referred the origin of their astronomy, being a Chaldean and a temporary resident of Egypt, through him they might derive the astronomy transmitted from the antediluvian patriarchs, to whom tradition refers the invention of the science. This would make part of the wisdom of Egypt of which Moses was in possession. The ram or lamb, the bull, the goat or kid, were from the beginning sacrificial animals, typifying the one great sacrifice. Cattle, flocks, and herds, the earliest possession of mankind, represented His people, His purchased possession; while the human figure showed the nature in which He should come for their redemption, the lion showing His coming to victory over His enemies - He who was bruised in the heel coming to bruise the head. Even in lands where the lion was unknown, that figure was pre-eminent as in this zodiac; for the lion was a Chaldean, not an Egyptian animal. The figure of the sheep was in the far East supplied by the goat or antelope. The serpent was every where as universal as the wiles of him whom it represents, or as the stars to which these emblems were annexed.
If, as has been urged, God has spoken, the records of what He has said ought to be search out. The message of the Book and of the symbols may be shown clearly to agree. The traditions 8 of the nations, like sunbeams on a rapid stream, however broken and confused, yet reflect the primeval light.
Ancient writers have said that the religion of Egypt was derived from the constellations, but not that the constellations were derived from that religion.
Those who invented the emblems of the constellations of course gave names to them, and probably also to their principal stars. Arabian tradition asserted that these names were transmitted unchanged in Arab astronomy. Names are not, as is sometimes supposed, mere arbitrary combinations of letters. All names have meanings explicable by the roots which they contain. The Holy Scriptures occasionally explain the names there recorded from their roots in the Hebrew language, also to be found in the other cognate dialects. All the ancient names of the stars that have reached us have meanings in those dialects suitable to the import of the emblems connected with which they are found. These correspondences furnish strong evidence that the design of the inventors was to transmit to their descendants immortal and life-giving truths.
Evidence of the antiquity of these emblems may be found by those internal traces in the records of the science of astronomy, by which some modern astronomers are led to refer its origin to about 4000 years ago, but those here pointed out refer rather to 6000, the age of Seth and Enoch, whom ancient traditions name as the first astronomers.
The testimony of the ancient Egyptians to this antiquity is preserved by the Greek writers, in the ancient books of the Persians, and by Josephus, the historian of the Jews.
The coincidence of Arab astronomy with the Chaldean and Egyptian traditions and monuments is well known.
The suitability of the names preserved by the Arabs and other ancients, when explained by the Noetic roots found in all languages, to the emblems of the Egyptian zodiacs, indicates a common origin. The name of Seth or Thoth, given by all tradition as that of the inventor of astronomy and the Sothaic period, the wonderful perfection of which is acknowledged by modern astronomers, and attributed to the earliest race of mankind, testifies to this assertion.
Of "the great year" of Josephus, the Sothaic period of six hundred years, Cassini says, "This period, of which we find no intimation in any monument of any other nation, is the finest that ever was invented; for it brings out the solar year more exactly than that of Hipparchus and Ptolemy, and the lunar months within about one minute of what is determined by modern astronomers."
The figures of the constellations only including the stars visible in the latitudes between the sources of the Euphrates and the Nile, indicate their origin or early adoption in those districts.
It is said that "the Egyptians learnt from Hermes 9 the canicular cycle of 1461 years, at the end of which their solar year of 365 years (the deficiency of which they were not allowed to make up by intercalation) had receded through every season, and returned to the same sidereal point of commencement, namely, the rising of the dogstar on the 1st of Thoth. This cycle they called the great year. But there was another great year in more general use, which was the Neroe, or cycle of 600 years, to which Josephus refers, Ant. i. 3, and which was that most employed at Babylon; this being one of the cycles on the great stone in the India House. The Saros was another cycle, of, according to Suidas, eighteen years and six months, nearly corresponding with the Metonic lunar cycle of nineteen years. This also being inscribed in stone at the India House, will come under consideration at a future opportunity." (Cullimore on the Origin of the Primitive Sphere of the Greeks, in the Morning Watch, vol. vi. p. 389.)
The sphere described by Endoxus, Aratus, and Hipparchus, is said by Cullimore to be proved to have been from Egypt; and that Sir Isaac Newton and all others who refer its emblems to the Argonautic voyage, are obliged to reject either historical or astronomical evidence, but agrees with Sir Isaac Newton's placing of the colures.
"Psammeticus, with whom the catalogue of the great Paite family, preserved by Herodotus, commences, began to reign B.C. 672, the first year of the Graeco-Egyptian intercourse, and was, according to the Egyptian annals of Manetho, preceded by Stephinathes, Nicepsos, and Nechao I., the father of Psamneticus, according to Herodotus, who reigned respectively seven, six, and eight years. To King Nicepsos, and his contemporary, the philosopher Petosiris, are ascribed the latest innovations or improvements in the Herniate astronomy of Egypt. They were celebrated astronomers and astrologers, and constructed a sphere into which the decani or decennary divisions of the zodiac were first introduced. Julius Firmicus calls them, divini viri atque omni admiratione digni., Nicepsos reigned from B.C. 686 to B.C. 672." The Greek sphere then originated with Thales, whose disciple, Anaximander, first constructed it.
"The zodiacal signs are undeniably of the highest antiquity before the times to which heathen history ascends. Some of them are alluded to in the book of Job, which, if by Moses, was the earliest of his writings, and even in the East these signs remain unchanged, unencumbered by their elephants and monsters." "On the testimony of Berosus, corroborated by internal evidence in the zodiac itself, we believe these signs to have been invented by the first Hermes, about 2400 B.C., and when at the vernal equinox the sun was in, or near the Pleiades. The second Hermes perfected what the first had only designed, having ascertained the true length of the year, and fixed the seasons by the solstices and equinoxes. This took place about 1500 B.C., when the sun at the vernal equinox stood in the cloud whence Taurus emerges; and it was near the time of the Exodus, Hermes being contemporary with Moses. The signs so fixed by the second Hermes have passed into all countries where astronomy is known, with no other variation than that occasioned by remoteness of latitude, where the Chaldean animal of some of the signs was supplied by an animal better known in the remote regions of the earth, or by some grotesque form, unlike any thing in nature. Aries passes into the goat or deer in India, and Gemini and Virgo take the Oriental costume; Leo also, though retaining its name and place in the Indian zodiac, has assumed a form as rude as in the heraldic paintings of the middle ages. These facts demonstrate that the zodiac was not invented in India, but in a country where the lion and other animals were commonly known, such as Egypt or Assyria, and the transport of astronomy to India is further evidenced by Virgo being seated in a ship or chariot in the Cingalese and some other Oriental zodiacs. The forms in the Greek and Roman zodiacs were become wholly arbitrary, and bore no reference to the positions of the stars. But we generally find Aries and Taurus turned from each other, indicating the division to be between Aries and Taurus, as stated above. The fixed zodiac, commencing with Aries, seems not to have been generally adopted till the time of Hipparchus, when the vernal equinox stood near the head of Aries, and the autumnal near Spica Virginis. Ptolemy himself declares that he altered the forms of some of the constellations to give the figures a better proportion, and stars which the older astronomers had placed in the shoulders were thus brought down to the sides of Virgo. He says: - 'Multis ergo in locis accommodatiora ipsis figuris attribuentes vocabula, priscorum usum immutavimus, sicut, verbi gratia, figures quas Hipporohus in humeris Virginis locat, nos in costis ejus sites esse dicimus, quoniam distantia earum ad Stellas quse in capite sunt major apparet, quam ad eas quse in extremitatibus manuum collocantur, hoc autem sicut et costis accommodatur.' Bayer turned the backs of the figures to the spectator instead of the faces, and Albert Durer, or some German, put them all into Gothic costume, in which they remained till the time of Flamstead. He revised, or rather re-constructed the forms of the constellations, and first laying down the stars themselves correctly, drew the figures according to that part of the body in which the several stars were said to be placed by Hipparchus and Ptolemy."
While in ancient Egypt the signs of the zodiac were thus engraven on their temples, in India and Arabia from time immemorial the signs and the Lunar Mansions have been interwoven with science and poetry, with public worship and private economy, the figures being embodied in the forms of idols, and the appellations transmitted in the names of children. In Scandinavia they have been claimed by Olaus Rudbeck, as having there originated. In Mexico they are still to be traced. The Burmese have preserved them well: the Polynesians have not totally forgotten them. Wherever the posterity of Noah, the children of Seth, are found, there are recognized some vestiges of this their ancestral science. When the study of astronomy was merged in that of astrology, during the dark ages of Europe, it flourished in the East, cultivated by Al Fergani at the court of the Caliph of Bagdad, Haroun Alraschid, in the ninth century, and at that of the Moors in Spain by Albumazer about the same time, whose works were commented on by Aben Ezra in the twelfth. He has transmitted to us accounts of the ancient Persian, Indian, and Egyptian spheres. Ulugh Beigh, the Tartar prince and astronomer, grandson of Tamerlane, has preserved the ancient Coptic names of the signs, supposed to have been those of the ancient Egyptians, and also many names of the fixed stars, which appear to have come through the Arabs 1. The Lunar Mansions, and the divisions into Decans of the thirty-six constellations beyond the zodiac, which appear on the planisphere and long zodiac of Dendera, were by them enumerated and described.
These are some of the leading ancient astronomers who have preserved and transmitted to us such important evidence of the antiquity of these emblems, and of the unity of design in the ancient division and nomenclature of the starry heavens. The interpretations here given are assimilated as closely as possible to their concurring testimony separated by ages of time, by distance of habitation, by language, and by religion: where they agree, surely it must be in the truth.
As the Jews have guarded for us in their precious integrity the Hebrew Scriptures, so Mahometan, or rather patriarchal Arabs have transmitted to us the names which so remarkably correspond with the language of those Scriptures, when setting forth the glory of Him not then revealed to either of those nations - children of Abraham according to the flesh, who will one day hail their long unrecognized kinsman-Redeemer, when the flocks of Kedar and the rams of Nebaioth shall be gathered unto the Lord, and His glory shall have arisen upon them.
Another chain of evidence has descended to us through the Greeks. Hesiod, about 1000 years B.C., treats of the rising and setting of the constellations, whose names and emblems he transmits as from immemorial antiquity. So speaks Homer of those which he mentions. Aratus, a Greek at the court of Antigonus, king of Macedonia, about 277 B.C., in his poem on astronomy, describes much more particularly the constellations, in number, name, and figure nearly as now represented. Hipparchus, the celebrated Greek astronomer, who died 126 years B.C., enumerated and is said to have given names to the stars, but Hesiod, Homer, and Aratus having previously recorded them by name, this can therefore only mean that he made of them a regular enrolment. Hyginus, a freedman of Augustus, gives the names and figures as his predecessors, and relates of them the various fables in his time vaguely attached to the constellations, of the uncertainty of which he frequently speaks, - thus making more remarkable the invariable certainty of the appellations and symbols. Ptolemy of Alexandria, in the time of Antoninus, made the celebrated catalogue of the fixed stars, describing the constellations as we now have them, particularly the remarkable union of some with others, by reckoning the same star in each; as the foot of Aries with the band of Races and head of Cetus; the foot of Auriga with the horn of Taurus; the cup and raven with the serpent Hydra. From him we have derived them without variation, till the English astronomer, and adversary of Newton, Flamstead, in the time of Queen Anne, unfortunately took it into his head, in attempting to give names to the stars not reckoned in the ancient constellations, to mingle with these mystic and significant emblems such senseless figures as the fox and goose, or such unimportant ones as the shield of Sobieski and bull of Pomintowski, which now disfigure the modern sphere. He did not even suspect they had any meaning: therefore it is evident that this great astronomer had not in the course of his studies met with any account of their possible signification which appeared to him worthy of notice. It is in Jewish antiquity alone that we find any vestige of a received meaning being attached to them.
Ancient as these zodiacs are, and particularly the circular one, we have a record of much more ancient astronomy in the blessing of Jacob, in which he describes the signs as borne on the banners of Israel, about 1700 B.C.
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The perfection to which these father, these kings 2 of men, carried their astronomy, as testified by the famous period of 600 years, affords sufficient proof of the superiority of their organs of sight. Those eyes were to them what the last and greatest telescope has been to their less naturally gifted descendants. The most ancient names of the nebulae prove that to them was known, what is at last recently acknowledged, that these clouds of light are indeed starry assemblages 3, multitudes.
The Egyptian zodiac as represented in the annexed planisphere of Dendera, though in the main agreeing with that apparently known to Jacob and his family, differs from it in two of the signs. On Issachar's standard was borne the strong ass, still to be recognized in the stars of Cancer, where two stars are called the northern and southern ass, and in the name Statio Typhonis, the ass having been an emblem of Typhon. Also the Egyptian zodiac has in Libra the scales, surmounted by a figure whose finger is on his lips, over whom are two others, a fox or wolf, and a man holding a flail; and it is well known that Libra, the scales or balance, was not borne on any standard of Israel, the place of Levi, to whom it would have fallen, being with Simeon in the blessing of Jacob, and with the tabernacle in the encampment of Israel and the blessing of Moses; the emblem of the scales not being used by Jacob, but the place where it might be looked for, after the serpent or basilisk of Dan, being devoted by the dying prophet to the memorial of that salvation for which he had waited, and which was typified in the balance of redemption, the cross, the victim, and the crown. These were no human attributes, and to none did he appoint them. The figure enclosed in a circle has been called Harpocrates, a name which may be referred to the primitive roots [ ], He who cometh, [ ] the Egyptian article masculine before [ ] or [ ], cut in pieces as a sacrifice (Jer. xxxiv. 18, &c); He who cometh to be a sacrifice. He has a finger on the lip ([ ] being the lip, and [ ] to bruise), referring to one first great and universal prophecy as to Him who should come, that He should bruise the head of the enemy and be Himself bruised in the heel; the fox or wolf, Shual or Zeeb, expressing "He who cometh;" the figure with the flail expressing "He shall bruise," also "He shall return," as the flail on the corn. The decans of this sign are the cross, being represented by the lion, who rends a figure with the face and horns of a lamb, the victim; and the enthroned figure with the face and horns of a lamb, the victim; and the enthroned figure with the flail and the crown.
That the Seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head, and it should bruise His heel, is the foundation on which is constructed the whole of this planisphere, with those of the Indians, Persians, Arabs, or, as in fact these all are, the Chaldean. Abraham was a Chaldean, and traditional history has said a great astronomer, and Chaldean astronomy is continually appealed to as the original of the science. It has been supposed that Melchisedek, the righteous king, was Shem in person; if so, he must have known all that Noah knew on the subject, and Noah must have known what Adam, Seth, and Enoch are traditionally said to have transmitted as to the names and positions of the stars of heaven. But with the Chaldean astronomy, which his in fact ours, the Egyptian does not always agree. The Egyptians had derived their science from Noah before Abraham came among them, and in this planisphere we have the records of it, for the headless figure, where Aquarius joins on Pisces, refers to a time long before Abraham; another headless figure with the horns of Aries, more immediately under Pisces, may have originally been intended to refer to the winter solstice having receded from Aries into Pisces before the earliest era in tradition. This might be the figure which led some French astronomers to attribute an antiquity far beyond Scripture chronology, a time when the winter solstice would be in Aries, if the heavenly bodies then existed. In the Egyptian and Chaldean spheres, and those of Persia and India as described by Albumazer, the twelve signs are exactly alike; and in the other constellations, the thirty-six decans 4, there is sufficient resemblance to show that all had one origin; the astronomy of which all tradition, and particularly the Egyptian, calls Seth the originator. The traditional names Hermes, and Hermes Trismegistus, seem to refer to Seth, as Hermes, the great one, and Adam, Seth, and Enoch, as the three great ones who originated the science.
In the different ancient spheres the number and purport of the emblems are the same, and similar meanings are traceable in their names by the aid of the Noetic roots preserved in the Hebrew Scriptures.
In the annexed tables, the names said to have been obtained from the planisphere are so explained, and references given to the parts of the Hebrew Scriptures where the Noetic roots are used in the sense here given to them.
Authorities have been asked for the inference that the twelve signs and other constellations of Egyptian astronomy symbolize the prophecies concerning Him who was to come, the Messiah, frequently personified as Osiris and Horus, the Prince and the Divine Infant. It is answered that the inference is made on the authority of the ancient traditions connected wit the emblems, and the meanings conveyed by the ancient but yet extant names, - as Osiris, the Prince; "Sir," in Isa. ix., born of no human father, born to die, and revive again; Isis, or Isha, wife of Osiris, mother of Orus or Horus, He who cometh, who shall come; Typhon, the evil one, the smitten or wounded, or the smiting or wounding. The great authority here is the meaning of the names and similarity of the traditionary characters. Osiris reigns, but dies and lives again; Horus comes to rule and live; Typhon smites, and is smitten.
In the figures of Egyptian astronomy one foot of the conqueror is on the head of the serpent, the other held up as wounded, bruised. The astronomy of the Egyptians is not corrupted like their mythology.
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NOTE ON THE SCARABAEUS.
The metamorphosis of insects has often been considered to typify the resurrection of the human body. "We see therein the resurrection painted before our eyes, and exemplified so as to be examined by our hand," was aid by the celebrated naturalist Swammerdam.
The larva, caterpillar, or grub, was thought to represent the state of man in life, the pupa or chrysalis the dead body, the perfect insect the resurrection. The Egyptians held the immortality of the soul, and the future resurrection of the body, to be reunited to the soul, and enjoy with it a more glorious and heavenly existence. This patriarchal truth they afterwards encumbered with the notion that the preservation of the body was necessary to this future reunion; and hence the national practice of forming it into a mummy. There is a likeness between the chrysalis and the mummy which might suggest the shape of the mummy: the Scarabaeus often on its breast; let us hope, a token of patriarchal faith yet surviving the darkness of heathenism.
The Scarabaeus seems to have been introduced into the later zodiacs, not being among the more ancient Coptic names, as emblematizing the sun in his re-ascending state, completed when he reached the summer solstice in Cancer about 1500 years before the Christian era. Such seems to have been the popular interpretation of the emblem; but that there was a higher meaning, even that of resurrection, is evidenced by the figure of the Scarabaeus on the breast of mummies, and by the representation of it as ascending on high with figures below in attitudes of wonder and adoration; a remarkable instance of this may be seen on the sarcophagus, called that of Alexander, in the British Museum.
The Scarabaeus does not occur among the thirty-six decans, either in their figures or their hieroglyphic names, but the figure in the planisphere called the Crab is a beetle, having no tail, and attennae not pincers, though somewhat more resembling a crab than the figure in the smaller zodiac, which is evidently a beetle, and on the long zodiac, there is a Scarabaeus with its wings extended, with the smaller and less definite figure of a beetle, not however a crab.
One of the hieroglyphic names in Cancer being Fent-har, the serpent's enemy, may have led to the introduction of the Scarabaeus, as typifying a conqueror, and also the sun victorious over darkness.
NOTE ON MANETHO.
Manetho, or Manethos, was High Priest of Heliopolis, under Ptolemy Philadelphus, 304 B.C. His history written in Greek, is lost, but his dynasties are preserved by Eusebius, and fragments of his history in Josephus' work against Apion. The subject-matter he asserts to have been extracted from the sacred pillars of the first Hermes Trismegistus, from inscriptions made in the sacred language of Thoth, translated after the Flood, written in the sacred character, and deposited in the sacred recesses of Egypt. His first book was history of heroes and demigods, his second of eight dynasties, and his third of twelve.
It should be borne in mind, that Manetho, though beginning his record of the traditional history of Egypt in a remote and shadowy antiquity, lived only three hundred years before Christ, when not only inspired but uninspired records were in existence, and familiarly appealed to by the Jews, who in addition to their own holy books had brought with them from Babylon much of the wisdom of the Chaldeans, among which the Rabbins lament to recon that "Astrology," which they say obscured the light of the ancient Jewish Astronomy. Still they appealed to the blessing of Jacob and standards of the tribes as of undoubted authority, and with unshaken veneration.
(Josephus against Apion 5, Book I.)
"What is set down by the Greeks is now but of yesterday. But among the Egyptians, Chaldees, and Phoenicians, the memory of their writings is ancient and infallible."
"Manethon, an Egyptian born, skilful in the Greek tongue (for he writ in Greek), compiling a history of the customs and religion of his forefathers, collected (as himself reporteth) out of the Egyptian holy writings, often reprehendeth Herodotus, who being indeed ignorant, did much help the Egyptians." "This Manethon," he goes on to say, "among other things, speaks of a nation called Hycsos, which signifies kings, shepherds, for Hyc, in the sacred tongue, signifies a king, and Sos, a shepherd or shepherds." But Josephus adds that Hie, or Mac, in the Egyptian tongue, signifies a captive 6.
"Manethon reporteth those kings and shepherds to have ruled Egypt 511 years, after which they were expelled." "Further, in another book of Egyptian affairs, Manethon saith that in the holy writings he findeth these shepherds called captives."
Manethon gives the descent of kings after the expulsion of the Shepherds, down to Egyptus and Danaus. "Thus far Manethon."
"Berosus, a Chaldean born, in the Grecian tongue, did write astronomy and the Chaldees' philosophy. He writeth of the Deluge."
"Manethon confesseth himself to have gathered the Egyptian history out of their holy writings."
"Manethon, while he followed the ancient writers, did not much err."
"I have opposed myself against Manetho, Chaeremon, and others." Manetho saith that he Jews departed out of Egypt about the time of Tethmosis, 396 years before Danaus fled out of Greece. The name Manetho is used by some translators, Manethon by others.
"In my opinion profound minds are the most likely to think lightly of the resources of human reason; and it is the pert, superficial thinker who is generally strongest in all kinds of unbelief. The deep philosopher sees chains of causes and effects so wonderfully and strangely linked together, that he is usually the last person to decide upon the impossibility of any two series of events being independent of each other; and in science so many natural miracles, as it were, have been brought to light, that the physical inquirer is seldom disposed to assert confidently on any abstruse subjects belonging to natural things, and still less so on those relating to the more mysterious relations of moral events and intellectual natures." (Sir H. Davy, Salmonia, p. 150.)
Socrates says that he learnt from a book by Anaxagoras, that "it is intelligence that sets in order all things:" to which he himself added, "in such a way as shall be best." He also says, "The soul is imperishable and immortal."
Jamblicus states that the Egyptians acknowledged a spirit superior to nature, and an Intelligence superior to that soul by whom the world was created.
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"Manethon reporteth those kings and shepherds to have ruled Egypt 511 years, after which they were expelled." "Further, in another book of Egyptian affairs, Manethon saith that in the holy writings he findeth these shepherds called captives."
Manethon gives the descent of kings after the expulsion of the Shepherds, down to Egyptus and Danaus. "Thus far Manethon."
"Berosus, a Chaldean born, in the Grecian tongue, did write astronomy and the Chaldees' philosophy. He writeth of the Deluge."
"Manethon confesseth himself to have gathered the Egyptian history out of their holy writings."
"Manethon, while he followed the ancient writers, did not much err."
"I have opposed myself against Manetho, Chaeremon, and others." Manetho saith that he Jews departed out of Egypt about the time of Tethmosis, 396 years before Danaus fled out of Greece. The name Manetho is used by some translators, Manethon by others.
"In my opinion profound minds are the most likely to think lightly of the resources of human reason; and it is the pert, superficial thinker who is generally strongest in all kinds of unbelief. The deep philosopher sees chains of causes and effects so wonderfully and strangely linked together, that he is usually the last person to decide upon the impossibility of any two series of events being independent of each other; and in science so many natural miracles, as it were, have been brought to light, that the physical inquirer is seldom disposed to assert confidently on any abstruse subjects belonging to natural things, and still less so on those relating to the more mysterious relations of moral events and intellectual natures." (Sir H. Davy, Salmonia, p. 150.)
Socrates says that he learnt from a book by Anaxagoras, that "it is intelligence that sets in order all things:" to which he himself added, "in such a way as shall be best." He also says, "The soul is imperishable and immortal."
Jamblicus states that the Egyptians acknowledged a spirit superior to nature, and an Intelligence superior to that soul by whom the world was created.
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8 The sphere now in use among ourselves is here referred to as the Chaldean.
9 For this zodiac, see Hamilton's Egyptiacs.
1 This Commentary is in the British Museum, and has been much made use of in "Mazzaroth."
2 Zech. xiii. The Egyptian figure having the head of a beeve.
3 Sharon Turner, Sac. Hist., vol. ii. p. 265, - "It is a curious fact, that the Mexicans had a tradition of the history of Eve, and a representation of it, in their symbolical paintings. Humboldt thus mentions the circumstance. In describing the hieroglyphical paintings of the Mexicans in the Borghian Museum at Veletri, he says 'that No. 1, Cod. Borg vol. ii represents the mother of mankind, the serpent-woman, the Eve of the Mexicans' - Humb. Researches, vol. ii. p. 834. Of the Codex Vaticanus he mentions, 'the group No. 2 represents the celebrated serpent-woman, Cibux-cohuatl, called also Quilatzi, or Tonacacihua, woman of our flesh. She is the companion of Tonacateuctli. The Mexicans considered her as the mother of the human race. After the god of the celestial paradise, Ometeuctli, she held the first rank among the divinities of Aushuac. We see her always represented with a great serpent.' - Humb. ib. vol. i. p. 195. 'Their Adam is called Tonacateuctli, or Lord of our flesh; he is represented in the Cod. Borg. fol. 9.' - Humb. ib. 226."
4 These figures of serpents or snakes connected with time, have a narrow-pointed head, as the innoxious species always have; the enemy has the broad obtuse head of the venomous ones as the cobra, &c.
5 It is possible the long-robed figure may have been intended as priestly, the Egyptian priest being robed in a long linen garment called Calasiris, Heb. the clothing of the Prince.
6 The Egyptian astronomers taught that at the Creation the sun rose in Leo, the moon in Cancer; these signs have always been called their houses. The very ancient science of astrology also gave each of the planets their houses or signs, Aries being called the house of Mars, Virgo of Mercury, Sagittarius of Jupiter, Libra of Venus, Capricorn of Saturn. If at, or soon after, Adam's creation, these planets were in these signs, such might be the origin of this appropriation.
7 The male Scarabaei are smaller than the female; the male typifying the sun setting to rise again, also, the resurrection of man; the female, the renewed year.
8 Maimonides says, that according to Jewish tradition the first man who introduced the worship of the stars asserted that it was derived from prophecy.
9 Much has been said of the first and second Hermes, and more of Hermes Trismegistus; Hermes being taken as a proper name, not considering it, as it is, an epithet, [ ], the great, with the common Egyptian affix of [ ]. It may refer to Seth or Enoch as the great astronomers.
1 Montucla, &c. p. 2.
2 The ten kings before the flood" have been spoken of in very ancient writers. Josephus gives as a reason for the long life of the antediluvians, that they might complete their discoveries in astronomy.
3 See the Tables in Part II., for the Pleiades, Cancer, Orion, and Andromeda. Sephina in Argo is also probably the nebula in that place, visible to antediluvian eyes, if not to ours.
4 Note "on Decans."
5 Apion accused the Jews of worshipping an ass in the temple. Did they confound Athon, an ass with ink, "Him who cometh?"
6 [ ] bound.
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