In the temple at Denderah, according to Dr. Young, Leo may be intended to represent the leading sign of the zodiac, or the sign pre ceding that in which the sun wa.4 on the first day of the annua ragas (year of 365 days); and on this supposition it would follow, from the known rate at which the place occupied by the sun in the ecliptic at the commencement of such year retrogrades, and also from the fact that the year of 365 days began on the day of the vernal equinox in the year 130 B.C., that the epoch of the planisphere is between 11 B.C. and 103 s.o., or in an ago earlier by 1500 years. If Virgo were the leading sign, as it may be supposed to be in the small temple at Esne, the epoch of the zodiac would be the year 900 B.C., or 1500 years earlier.
It has been ascertained by MM. Champolliou and Letronne from the Greek inscriptions on the temples of Denderah and Esne, that those edifices were constructed, or finished, during the times of the Roman emperors (' Précis du Systeme Hieroglyphique, Recherches, &c.'); yet, as it is known that during the reigns of the Ptolemies, and even after the conquest of the country by the Romans, the Egyptians continued to build temples, which they consecrated to their deities, with decora tions similar to those which were executed in more ancient times, it may be presumed that the present sculptured zodiacs are copies of others which were the works of the earliest artists ; so that though they determine nothing respecting the time of the construction of the temples, they may still serve as indications of the manner in which the heavens were represented in the East in the infancy of astronomical science. The circular planisphere which once adorned the interior of the temple at Denderah was removed to France in 1821.
The country from whence the Greeks derived the figures of the con stellations is not with certainty known : that all the extra-zodiacal signs in their descriptions of the heavens did not, from the first, receive their designations from subjects connected with the Greek mythology is evident. since in the notices given by the earliest writers on &A/e nemy, two of them, which subsequently received the appellations of Hercules and Cygnus, have the general names lv 7tfraoLY, a kneeling figure, and Spins, a bird; and that some of the figures were borrowed from the Chaldnans is probable, since in the time of Herodotue it was supposed that the Greeks acquired from the Babylonians the know ledge of the polio, (saSaos), the gnomon or style, and the division of the day into twelve parts. (Herod., ii. c. 109.) It may be imagined that, from the intercourse between the Egyptians and Greeks in very early times, a great resemblance should be found among the figures employed by the two people to represent the groups of stars ; but that they differed in some respects from one another may be inferred from the testimony of Achilles Tstius, who states that the Egyptians had not the constel lations Draco, Cepheus, and Cassiopeia; and it follows that these must have been introduced by the Greeks, or at least that the latter people substituted them for corresponding figures in the Egyptian sphere. It
may be remarked, however, that in the oldest descriptions of the Greek zodiac auopidor and xnaat, the scorpion and the claws, make one con stellation ; whereaa in the Egyptian zodiacs the corresponding part of the heavens is divided between the scorpion and the balance, the latter occupying the pLice of the claws. Now in a work on the" constellations," ascribed to Eratosthenes, who lived in the time of Ptolemy Euergetes, it is stated that the great length of the constellation caused astrono mers to divide it into two parts ; and in a poem attributed to a certain Manetho, supposed to be the priest of that name, and dedicated to one of the Ptolemies, it is expressly stated that "the claws of Scorpio' were by the priests changed into " the balance." It would seem there fore that the Egyptians, in or before the time of Manetho, adopted in their zodiac a name which had been given by the Greeks : yet as an argument in favour of the great antiquity of the sign it may be observed that, according to Ptolemy, the Chaldmans designated by a word signi fying a balance the constellation called by the Greeks xnaal : it may be, however, that he alluded then to the Chaltheans of his own time.
The designations which are given to the constellations in the writings of the Greeks apparently indicate persons or objects connected with the Argonautic expedition ; and it is reasonable to suppose that, about the epoch of that expedition, the Greeks, having acquired a knowledge of the manner in which the Chaldmans or Egyptians represented the visible heavens, transformed such of the figures as they did not reject into others having relation to the actions of their own Weroes. On this hypothesis it has been assumed that Aries represents the ram whose golden fleece was the object of the expedition; Taurus, the bull or bulls which were tamed by Jason ; Gemini, Castor and Pollux, and so on. The ship, among the southern constellations, is supposed to be the Argo ; and Ursa Major, the nymph Callisto. The history of Perseus is imagined to be represented by Perseus, Andromeda, Cepheus, Cas siopeia, and Cetus ; and the labours of Hercules, by Draco, Leo, and the constellation bearing the name of that hero. Newton, in his Chronology,' appears however to assume too much when he considers that Chiron, whom he supposes to have given the names to the con stellations, disposed Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricornus so that the equinoctial and eolsticial colures passed through their middle points ; the precise determination of these points was beyond the science of the Greeks long subsequently to the age of Chiron.