PLATES XIX. AND XX.
In [Plate XIX., fig. 1], it is the constellation known in the Grecian sphere as Hercules that claims our attention. At the date and latitude above named, this constellation, if then it had already been imagined, culminated gloriously on the northern meridian at midnight of the spring equinox. The head of the hero, or demi-god, touched the very zenith, and with his club brandished aloft he must have seemed well fitted to triumph over, not only the dragon coiled beneath his feet, but over every opposing power.
As was said at p. 223 about Bootes, 6000 B.C., so it may here be repeated of Hercules, 4667 B.C., “never since that date has he held so commanding a position in the sky.”
At the present date of writing, and in our English latitudes, Hercules “will ever rise reversed,”[114] and through the summer and autumn months his kneeling figure is always to be seen hanging head downwards in the southern quarter of the sky.
[114] The Phainomena or “Heavenly Display” of Aratos, done into English verse by Robert Brown, Jun., F.S.A., line 669.
Grecian writers, some centuries B.C., were already puzzled to account for this “reversed” position of “the Kneeler.” Aratos, from whom I have quoted above, thus further wonders as to this constellation. At line 63 we read:—
“... like a toiling man, revolves
A form. Of it can no one clearly speak,
Nor to what toil he is attached; but, simply,
Kneeler they call him. Labouring on his knees,
Like one who sinks he seems;”
and again at line 614—
“The Kneeler ...
He who is ne’er far distant from the Lyre,
Whoe’er this stranger of the heavenly forms
May be.”[115]
[115] The Phainomena or “Heavenly Display” of Aratos, done into English verse by Robert Brown, Jun., F.S.A., line 669.
4600 B.C. no such difficult speculations could have presented themselves to the minds of those who, in the joyous springtime of the year, beheld in imagination, night after night, the grand and conquering figure of this god or hero, typifying for them, as we may easily suppose, the ever-increasing triumph at that season of the power of light over darkness.
[Plate XIX., fig. 2]. It was perhaps at this same date that the cluster of stars “led round in circle”[116] close to the bow of Sagittarius, and exactly marking the equinoctial colure, was figured as a crown, and that so depicted, as I have contended at page 76, this constellation suggested the symbolic circle, crown, or wreath which sometimes takes the place of the bow in Assur’s hand, and which almost always is present in the hand of Ahura Mazda in Median representations of that figure.
[116] The Phainomena or “Heavenly Display” of Aratos, done into English verse by Robert Brown, Jun., F.S.A., line 401.
At [Plate XX., fig. 1], I have drawn the constellation Hydra as it would have appeared at the date 4667 B.C. At [pages 117], [118], the reasons which led me to suppose that this constellation was then first imagined have been given.
At [Plate XX., fig. 2], it may be seen how 4667 B.C. the figure of Orion very accurately marked the equinoctial colure, and this fact may incline us to suppose that the giant hunter—so often, according to Grecian legend, in conflict with the powers of high Heaven—was depicted about this date by ancient astronomers to represent the strength of the adverse powers which, at the autumnal season in the mythologies of northern nations, appear in combat with, and temporarily triumphant over, the powers of light.
In favour of the high date here claimed for the imagining of Orion’s figure under very much the same form as that still depicted on our globes, there are some indications to be observed in the Sanscrit names of the Nakshatra, which contains the stars, λ φ1 φ2 Orionis—i.e., the stars marking the head of Orion.
This Nakshatra is known in Hindu astronomy under two quite different names—viz., Mṛigashirsha and Agrahayani. The Sanscrit word, Mṛigashirsha, means literally “Wild beast’s head,” and B. G. Tilak, in his work, The Orion; or, Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas, basing his opinion upon many ingenious and recondite arguments, supposes that ancient Indian astronomers gave the name of Mṛigashiras to the stars of Orion, which they imagined portrayed in the sky an “Antelope’s head” transfixed by an arrow—the arrow being marked by the three bright stars so well known to us as Orion’s Belt.
Mṛiga, there can be no doubt, carries often with it in Sanscrit literature the meaning of “antelope”: but Tilak expressly says at p. 97, “Though I have translated the word Mṛigashiras by ‘Antelope’s head,’ I do not mean to imply that Mṛiga necessarily meant ‘an antelope’ in the Vedic literature.” Again, at p. 151, he says: “The word Mṛiga in the Rigveda, means according to Sâyaṇa both a lion and a deer.”
Again, as to the other name of the Nakshatra—Agrahayani—it has the meaning of “first-going” (of the sun) understood. In a long dissertation on this name, Tilak contends that it marked an important point in the annual course of the sun, and then further seeks to derive the Greek name Orion from the Sanscrit word, Agrahayani. Of the value of the etymological arguments advanced, I am quite unable to judge, but on astronomic grounds it would not seem an improbable derivation.
But the acceptance of Tilak’s contention as to the derivation of the name Orion would make it reasonable to suppose that not only the name but also the configuration of the constellation might, in the astronomy of the Greek and Indian nations, resemble each other; and thus we should be more ready to believe that Mṛigashirsha referred to the lion’s head on Orion’s arm, and not to an “antelope’s head”—a head which, as depicted by Tilak at p. 100, would alone have filled nearly all the space in the heavens occupied in the Grecian sphere by the huge figure of the giant hunter known to us as Orion.
The indications furnished by these two Sanscrit Nakshatra names, if they are followed, must lead us to attribute the imagining and naming of the constellation Orion to a time before that when the ancestors of the Greeks and Indians went their separate ways to the west and to the east, and so will strengthen the claim here made for the depicting of the constellation on the sky as early as 4600 B.C.
It will be noted that in the suggestions here offered concerning Hercules, Corona Australis, Hydra, and Orion, a change in the symbolic methods followed by earlier astronomers, 6000 B.C., must be supposed.
It was to the constellations invisibly accompanying the sun that the originators of the Zodiac appear to have directed their attention. But the symbolic figures we have now been studying—there can, it seems to me, be little doubt—were designed to mark visibly, and, therefore, in opposition to the sun, the various seasons of the year.
A great astronomic activity, a sort of astronomic renaissance, in fact, seems to manifest itself as we study the celestial globe at 4600 B.C., and to this date I would attribute the origin of the astronomic myths of many nations.
PLATE XXI.[117]
[117] The figures in this Plate have been drawn from the globe adjusted to the date, 4128 B.C., Lat. 40° N.
In The Median Calendar and the Constellation Taurus I have put forward considerations drawn from Median and Assyrian sources, which seemed to me to lead to the conclusion that at about the date 4000 B.C. very close attention was given to the position of the colures amongst the fixed stars, and that at that date very special honour was given by the ancestors of the Medes to the constellation Sagittarius—the constellation which at the spring equinox was in opposition to the sun, and therefore visible all through the night. I need not here reiterate what was there advanced on this point concerning Median and Assyrian symbolism, but rather I now desire to draw attention to the existence in Egyptian art and mythologic teaching of what I cannot but think is very constant reference to the position of the colures, as they might have been observed—speaking in round numbers—from 4000 down to 2000 B.C.
It will be seen at [Fig. 4] that the equinoctial colure, at the earlier of these dates, touched the confines of the constellation Sagittarius, and might even then, with almost equal right, have been claimed as adjoining those of Scorpio. We can well imagine that the astronomic school which carried out the reformation in method discussed above ([pp. 222], [227]), which resulted in the imagining of the constellations Hercules and Corona Australis, and in the extension, as I suggested, of the boundaries of Sagittarius—we can well imagine that this school would with reluctance admit the baleful image of Scorpio to take the post of leader of the year, so long held by Sagittarius. But from 4000 B.C. onwards to 2000 B.C. the constellations that did actually mark the equinoctial and solstitial colures, were Taurus, Scorpio, Leo, and Aquarius.
Volumes of controversy have been written concerning the astronomic teachings of the ceilings of the temples of Denderah and Edfu, as to the position of the colures amongst the fixed stars, suggested by the arrangement of the figures of the Zodiac in both these temples. The date astronomically referred to in these designs was claimed by some to be about 4000 B.C., but when it was proved that these temples had been restored in Ptolemaic times, and the ceilings probably redecorated then, the high claims put forward for the first imagining of these astronomic designs could no longer with certainty be upheld. A strong reaction in opinion then took place, and it was again and again asserted that the Egyptians were probably not even acquainted with the so-called Grecian twelve-fold division of the ecliptic till after the introduction of European culture into Egypt. To seek for allusions in ancient Egyptian mythology or art to any of the twelve Zodiacal constellations was, therefore, a much discouraged attempt.
But if the testimony of the ceilings of the Denderah and Edfu temples is rendered suspect by their Ptolemaic restoration, the same objection cannot be raised against the evidence borne by the ceiling of an ancient Egyptian building, which has certainly not been restored in Ptolemaic times. In the Description de l’Égypte,[118] we find a careful drawing of a “Tableau astronomique au Plafond de l’un des tombeaux des rois.” In the central portion on either side of this ceiling a monstrous hippopotamus and crocodile are represented, together with various beings depicted on a much smaller scale. In the drawing here given, of one of these central groups, we find, as it seems to me, very clear reference to the four figures—Taurus, Scorpio, Leo, and Aquarius (= Amphora).
[118] Description de l’Égypte, 10 vols., Paris, MDCCCXII.-XXIII., Vol. I., Antiquités, planche 95.
Portion of Ceiling at Bybân-el-Molouk.
[To face p. 233.
The monstrous hippopotamus and crocodile here depicted are, I am strongly inclined to believe, representations, not of any particular constellation, but rather of the solstitial and equinoctial colures; and the four not at all, except astronomically, related figures of the Bull, Scorpion, Lion, and Water-jar, are here very clearly in evidence.
BULL APIS
In Egyptian mythology the Apis Bull held a very important place. “It was regarded as a symbol and incarnation of Osiris, the husband of Isis, and next to Râ, the great divinity of Egypt.” Grecian authorities tell us that the Apis Bull was black, with some distinctive white markings; and on its back (or tongue, according to variant accounts) the figure of a scarabæus was to be observed. From a drawing in Ebers’ Egypt, Vol. I., p. 121, we may, however, gather, as I think I have seen it elsewhere stated, that the Apis Bull was marked by equal areas of black and white. Such equal areas would fitly symbolize the equal day and night of the equinoctial season, and the presence of the scarabæus on the back or tongue of the Bull—if the suggestion made at [p. 218] should prove to be correct—would point to the traditional connexion of that creature with the same equinoctial season.
It has often been assumed that the golden calf set up and worshipped in the wilderness by the Israelites was a representation of the Apis god of Egypt; and that so also were the calves set up by Jeroboam in Bethel and in Dan on his return from Egypt. We read in 1 Kings xii. 32, “And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month.” ... Ver. 33, “So he offered upon the altar which he had made in Bethel the fifteenth day of the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart; and ordained a feast unto the children of Israel: and he offered upon the altar, and burnt incense.”
Now, from our knowledge of the Babylonian calendar, and its correspondence with that in use in Palestine, we may conclude that the “eighth month” (Marchesvan), devised by Jeroboam, was that during which the sun traversed the constellation Scorpio, and during which Taurus was dominantly visible all night; and when in this constellation the full moon of the fifteenth or festival day was to be observed. This mention of the eighth month in connexion with the worship of the golden calves—a worship, as has been supposed, copied from Egyptian practice—greatly strengthens the opinion that the Apis Bull was in Egypt looked upon as a living representative of the Zodiacal Bull—the constellation which in the time of the early dynasties marked, in opposition to the sun, the autumnal equinox.
In Median mythology and art we have seen the great importance of Tauric symbolism: but there is a wide difference between the Tauric symbolism of the Medes and the Egyptians. Mithras, the Median sun-god, again and again triumphs over and slays the Bull. In Egypt, on the contrary, the Sacred Bull is honoured and worshipped during its lifetime, and reverently embalmed, and with all pomp and glory buried after its death.
This difference in the mythologic conceptions of Media and Egypt may be attributed, I think, to the difference of climatic conditions in the two countries.
In Media, spring—in Egypt, autumn—is the joyous and fruitful season of the year. In the early ages, when Median and Egyptian mythologies took their rise, Taurus was at the spring equinox in conjunction with the sun, and was, therefore, slain by its overwhelming brightness; but at the autumn equinox that same constellation, in opposition, rose when the sun set, and all night long was visible. In Median art, it is the Bull immolated by the sun in springtime that is represented. In Egyptian symbolism, it is to the Bull triumphantly traversing the sky by night, in the autumn season, that attention is directed.
In the light of these astronomic considerations, it is interesting to think of the fanatical act of Cambyses in slaying the Apis Bull, as one prompted not only by fury at seeing the high honour paid to the Egyptian god, but also by an insane pride, which made him desire to imitate the triumph of Mithras—the Persian sun-god—over the Bull in the heavens, by killing its earthly representative, the Apis Bull.
In the days of Cambyses, when Apis worship prevailed in Egypt, and even still earlier when the children of Israel, in imitation of this worship, set up the golden calf in the wilderness, the raison d’être for the honour paid to Taurus as a star mark of the autumnal season no longer existed; for we know that about 1800 B.C., the equinoctial colure had left that constellation, and had entered the eastern degrees of the constellation Aries. Egyptian history assures us, however, that the institution of the Apis worship was effected by some king of the first dynasty in the far back ages when Taurus, Scorpio, Leo, and Aquarius did actually preside over the four seasons of the year. Moreover, the recent discoveries of the tombs of kings and other personages, in the first Egyptian dynasty, lead us back to the remote date of 4000 B.C., when the very earliest observations of the colures in the four above-named constellations could have been made.
In these ancient tombs, amongst other objects, have been found slate slabs of various shapes—some of them, in their general outline, as it appears to me, representing in the flat the form of a jar or vase. In the accompanying cuts, a proposed restoration of the broken-off top of one of the slates is given, and is distinguished from the existing portion of the slate by being drawn in dotted lines. Both sides of these slabs are covered by finely executed carvings, not incised but in relief. The subjects of the reliefs are very varied, but prominent amongst them, and exactly repeated more than once, is the figure of a bull trampling under his feet, and preparing to gore with his horns, a fallen human foe. Lions are also portrayed in many attitudes, and on one slate, where in the upper register this triumphing bull is represented, below it in a crenellated cartouche a lion and an urn or jar are to be seen in close proximity to each other. On another slate, a scorpion is delineated above a crenellated cartouche; and representations of scorpions carved in relief on mace-heads and on jars, and scorpions carved in the round, have been met with in great numbers in the excavations at Hierakonpolis—the site also of the discovery of one of the most important of the carved slates here described.
It is difficult, I think, to resist the conclusion that we have in the carvings on these ancient slate objects references not to merely terrestrial bulls, lions, scorpions, and water jars, but rather to the constellations, already imagined under those forms, whose stars, at the date when these carvings were made, marked in conjunction with, and in opposition to, the sun, the four seasons of the year.[119]
[119] In the centre of many, if not of all, of the slates under our notice, there is carved on the obverse a ring surrounding a depression. “Mr Quibell’s theory, which is still adhered to by Professor Petrie, is that this ring was intended to receive the green paint with which it is supposed the earliest Egyptians painted their faces,” but Mr Legge in his Paper, from which I have here quoted (contributed to the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, May 1900, pp. 137, 138), puts forward a different view, which, if it is correct, would lend support to the astronomic interpretation above proposed for some of the carved representations. Mr Legge considers that the rings represented the sun, and that “it is quite possible that this significance was heightened by the introduction of some bright substance, such as gold foil.” He points out that the composite monsters of the slates, all of which are represented on certain ivories, which he names, are always associated with the sun-disk. He believes these figures to have a symbolic meaning, though he does not in his Paper claim the especial astronomic interpretations I have above advocated.
Outlines of two carved slates drawn from Plates I. and III. in The Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology for May 1900.
[To face p. 236.
PLATE XXII.[120]
[120] This plate has been drawn from the globe adjusted to the dates and latitudes of 5744 B.C. Lat. 18° N., and of 3588 B.C., Lat. 23° N.
In Grecian legend Cepheus, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, the sea-monster (Cetus), and Perseus are associated together, and on the Grecian sphere five neighbouring constellations represent the actors of the legend.
Studying these constellations as they must have appeared to observers of the heavens at different dates, we shall, I think, see some reason to attribute the imagining of the figure of the hero Perseus to a later age than that of the other members of the group, and, on the other hand, there are considerations which may make us hesitate whether we should not place the origin of the constellation Andromeda at an even earlier date than those of Cepheus, Cassiopeia, and the sea-monster.[121] One point in the legend, however, finds strong astronomic support from a study of the precessional globe—namely, the fact that Cepheus and Cassiopeia were personages of Ethiopian—i.e., of tropical provenance.
[121] See below at [p. 246], and [pp. 242], [243].
It will be seen in [Plate XXII., fig. 1], that only in a latitude as far South as 18° N. could the figure of Cassiopeia—even at the early date of 6000 B.C.—have been imagined as that of a queen seated in royal dignity, and visible in the northern quarter of the heavens.
By referring to [Plate XV.], we may learn that in Lat. 45° N. at that date, Cassiopeia would have appeared in the southern quarter of the sphere, head downwards, while the figure of Cepheus could only have been observed by turning first to one and then to the other quarter of the sky. As, however, the head of Cepheus would have marked so exactly the solstitial colure 6000 B.C., it seemed to me only right to seek for a latitude in which his figure and that of his queen should appear upright and in the same quarter of the heavens—a latitude, therefore, in which it might be possible to suppose these constellations had been originated as star-marks of the solstitial season. To attain this object it was necessary to set the globe to the very low latitude of 18° N.
To suppose at 6000 B.C. so wide a diffusion, not only of the human race, but also of astronomical science and authority, seemed to involve an historical unlikelihood. Moreover, even if for the sake of suitably establishing the dignity of this regal pair one were tempted to suppose the great improbability of schools of astronomy existing, and with equal authority instituting constellations as star-marks for the year, in regions as far north as Lat. 45° N. and as far south as 18° N.—even so, I do not think the position of the constellations themselves in relation to the solstitial colure as shown in the diagram is by any means so convincingly symmetrical as to force us to accept the date 6000 B.C. for their origin. The head only of Cepheus appears on the meridian, his figure and the whole constellation of Cassiopeia lie considerably to the east of that line.
Under these circumstances it is satisfactory to find at a later, and therefore at a more historically probable date, and still in an Ethiopian (tropical) latitude, a meridian line on and about which the constellations Cepheus, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, and Cetus form a well-balanced group.
This meridian, it is true, is not that of a solstice or an equinox; but it is one which marked a very important astronomical moment—namely, the commencement of the calendrical year—the year counted from the entry of the sun into the constellation Aries. (See [Plate XXII., fig. 2].)
Of the high calendrical importance attached through thousands of years to this point in the sun’s annual course by the Accadian and Babylonian nations and by the Hindus down to the present day, astronomic records testify. Egyptian mythology and Chinese traditions also, as I have claimed, refer to it: it need not, therefore, surprise us to find constellations imagined to mark the beginning of a year counted from that point, even at a date when this beginning did not coincide either with solstice or equinox.
3500 B.C. is the approximate date I would suggest in a latitude not far from 23° N. for the origin of the constellations Cepheus, Cassiopeia, and probably also for that of Cetus.
The legend tells us that Cassiopeia by boasting of her own or of her daughter’s surpassing beauty incurred the enmity of the nereids. She is
“... that starr’d Ethiop queen that strove
To set her beauty’s praise above
The sea-nymphs, and their power offended.”[122]
[122] Milton, Il Penseroso.
It seems to me that for this legend, as for many others, an astronomic basis may be assigned. 3500 B.C. the solstitial colure passed through the constellation Aquarius. The stars of that constellation might then not unfitly have been likened to sea divinities, and rival schools of astronomers and calendar keepers may have exalted the praise, on the one hand, of the stars that marked a calendrical, and, on the other hand, of those that marked a solstitial year.
A curious fact as to the lines in which Aratos refers to the constellation Cassiopeia must here be noted.
Aratos versified “the Phainomena of the astronomer Eudoxos, who lived cir. B.C. 403-350.” It has often been pointed out that the facts concerning the constellations which Aratos and Eudoxos record “are to a great extent traditional and archaic, and belong to another and far earlier epoch.” What is said of Cassiopeia is a case in point; for thus the poet deplores her pride and its punishment at line 654 et seq.—
“And now she, too, her daughter’s form pursues,
Sad Kassiepeia; nor seemly still
Show from her seat her feet and knees above;
But she head foremost like a tumbler sits:
With knees divided: since a doom must fall
On boasts to equal Panopê and Doris.”[123]
[123] The Phainomena or “Heavenly Display” of Aratos, ub. supr.
Now in Eudoxos’ time and in his latitude, though Cassiopeia’s head did by a few degrees extend into the southern heavens, yet her position was not so deplorably ignominious as the poem would suggest. Three thousand years earlier the pity for her expressed by Aratos would have been more appropriate, for then her whole figure for observers in lat. 35° N. would have been visible in the southern quarter of the sky, and her feet, not her head (as at Lat. 23° N.), would have been on the zenith.
These considerations may lead us to suppose that the idea of Cassiopeia’s pride, and the fit punishment of it—i.e., her reversed position in the heavens, must have assumed form in northern latitudes almost at as early a date as the constellation figures were first imagined in tropical latitudes.
If this be so, it is indeed curious to find a legend which embodied the animus of astronomic rivalry 3500 B.C. handed down for thousands of years, and repeated in what professed to be a somewhat scientific treatise at a date between 400 and 300 B.C., when the astronomic facts no longer tallied with those narrated in the legend.
As to Andromeda, the classic story describes her as the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia; but the constellation itself—except on legendary grounds—might equally well have marked the beginning of a solstitial year 6000 B.C., or of a non-solstitial and calendrical year 3500 B.C.
The terrible prevalence of human sacrifices in ancient times, and at the solstices especially, may make us almost fear that the representation of a chained human victim had its place in the sphere at the earlier (solstitial) date.
The chains which bind Andromeda’s arms are fastened by staples to the sky. They appear (at [fig. 1]) at 6000 B.C. as though driven into two important astronomic lines—i.e., one of them into the line of the equator, the other into that of the solstitial colure. This may, of course, be a mere coincidence, and should not be allowed to weigh at all heavily in the almost evenly adjusted balance of probabilities regarding the date of the origin of the constellation Andromeda. Her story is so interwoven, not only with that of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, but also with that of the sea-monster Cetus, that we should not hastily attempt to dissociate the members of this group.
The very interesting question as to what southern people first depicted the Ethiopic king and queen on the sphere cannot be answered on astronomic grounds. We know that the latitude in which these figures were imagined must have been tropical, if the date of their imagining was as early as 3500 B.C. But we cannot learn from the celestial globe what was the longitude of the land in which they were so imagined. Ethiopia proper, and parts of Arabia and India, lie within the tropics, and the term Ethiopia, in classic writings, embraces all these countries.
Etymologists are, I believe, divided in opinion as to what language the rather un-Grecian names, Cepheus and Cassiopeia, were derived from. Some writers have suggested for their origin the Sanscrit names Capuja and Cassyape: and if, as I have already urged, the Aries-year was followed in ancient Vedic times in India, the Sanscrit derivation suggested will seem not an unlikely one. Nor under these suppositions would it be difficult to propose a possible Sanscrit origin for the name Andromeda, though for this purpose we should have to deprive the legend of all its classic and romantic charm. Cassyape, in Sanscrit story, is not the name of a gloriously beautiful queen, but of a “sage,” and it might be that the constellation Andromeda also, for ancient Indian astronomers, represented merely a human sacrifice, not that of the beautiful daughter of a beautiful mother. Though in the Rig Veda there is no legend of the sacrifice of a woman, yet in it we meet with seven consecutive hymns referring to the sacrifice, real or symbolical, of Sunahśepas, the son of a rishi or sage, who, according to the commentators, had consented to yield his son up to this cruel fate. The prayers of the victim, addressed to many gods, at last result in his deliverance.
Two other hymns in the Rig Veda relate to the great ceremony of the sacrifice, real or symbolical, of a horse. I give at [p. 252] some of the considerations which have convinced me that the praises of the winged steed—i.e., of the constellation Pegasus, and not merely the praises of an earthly horse, are the subject of these two hymns. The ceremony in question bore the name of Aswamedha, literally Horse-Sacrifice.
In reading and comparing these two series of sacrificial hymns, some points of contact present themselves, and, observing this, it occurred to me that some Sanscrit word ending in Medha—i.e., sacrifice, and conveying the meaning of human sacrifice, might by ancient Indian astronomers have been attached to the constellation, which for us represents the hapless Andromeda: for if we suppose that the constellations Cassiopeia and Cepheus were imagined in India, but adopted with an appropriate legend into the Grecian sphere—the names of the personages in the legend at the same time suffering a Grecian change—it would be easy further to suppose that the Indian name of the constellation near to them, transformed and misunderstood, came to represent in Grecian story not merely a human sacrifice, but that of the much-to-be-pitied daughter of the proud Cassiopeia.
Whether these fanciful speculations concerning the names of the actors in the ancient legend be adopted or not need not affect our judgment as to the reasonableness, or otherwise, of the date, 3500 B.C., and of Lat. 23° N. for the origin of the constellational group here discussed.
PLATE XXIII.[124]
[124] The figures in this plate have been drawn from the globe adjusted to the following dates and latitudes. [Figs. 1] and [2], 3589 B.C., Lat. 35° N. [Fig. 3], 3050 B.C., Lat. 35° N. [Fig. 4], 1443 B.C., Lat. 40° N.
The probable dates for the first imagining of four constellations are here given—namely, for the Centaur, Ophiuchus, Auriga, and Perseus.
For the Centaur the date in round numbers of 3500 B.C. ([fig. 1]) is suggested: at that date his huge figure would have well marked, in opposition, the beginning of the calendrical Aries-year; or, in conjunction with the sun, the beginning of the seventh month of the same year. It is not necessary, at that date, to attribute a low latitude to the astronomers who designed this figure: in that of 35° N., as shown in the diagram, the whole constellation would then have been well above the horizon. The much earlier epoch of 6000 B.C. might perhaps be claimed for the Centaur. At that date, as I have assumed, the calendrical and the solstitial year coincided. (Compare [Plate XVII.] and [Plate IX.]) As between 6000 and 3500 B.C. I have often hesitated, but on the whole I have come to think the later date, as here given, the more probable.
[Fig. 2].—Again at the date 3500 B.C. and in the latitude 35° N. I have drawn the constellation Ophiuchus as it would have appeared in opposition to the sun at the season of the spring equinox; triumphing over the powers of darkness—namely, the scorpion on which he treads and the serpent which he crushes with his hands. Although at the date in question Hercules’ position in the northern heavens was not quite so commanding and symmetrical as it was a thousand years earlier (see [Plate XIX.]), yet in the lower latitude given here ([Plate XXIII., fig. 2]) the heads of Hercules and of Ophiuchus would have been on the zenith, and these brothers might have been seen, one of them in the northern and the other in the southern quarter of the sky, strongly combating and conquering the forces of winter and darkness at the season of the spring equinox.
[Fig. 3].—For Auriga, I have suggested the later date of 3000 B.C., for then the bright star Capella, the most important star in the constellation and one of the brightest in that part of the sky, was on the meridian in conjunction with the sun at noon of the spring equinox—and in opposition at mid-night of the autumn equinox.
The star Capella has, by several writers, been identified with the star “Icu of Babylon” mentioned in many of the Babylonian astrological texts. If this identification of Capella and “Icu of Babylon” should be established as correct, we ought, I suppose, to credit Babylonian astronomers with the delineation of the figure Auriga.
[Fig. 4].—Unless we adopt on the authority of the Cepheus, Cassiopeia, and Andromeda legend the date 3500 for Perseus, it will seem, I think, almost necessary to attribute the much later one of 1433 B.C. for the designing of this constellation. At the earlier date the position of Perseus—see [Plate XXII., fig. 2]—militates against the likelihood of its having then been imagined; as part of the figure of Perseus would have been visible in the northern and part in the southern hemisphere.
In favour of the later date we may note the way in which the figure of Perseus has been fitted in, as it were, between already-named constellations, so that though restricted to a small space it still retains heroic proportions.
The star Algol, whose strange alternations of magnitude may well have suggested to the ancients the winking of the eye of some malignant monster, was imagined by the astronomers who drew the figure of Perseus, as on the brow of the Gorgon Medusa. It will be seen in the [Plate] how, at the date there given, this mysterious star exactly marked the equinoctial meridian.
The northern latitude 40° N., suitable for the imagining of this constellation, and its name Perseus, seem to point to an Iranian school of astronomers as the probable originators of this figure.