Essay on the Theory of the Earth

by baron Georges Cuvier

“As to the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Chinese, and Indians, there is no want of reveries among them. One can absolutely make nothing of them. My opinion with regard to them may be seen in the preliminary discourse of my History of the Astronomy of the Middle Age, p. xvii and xviii. See also the note affixed to the Report on the Memoirs of M. de Paravey, vol. viii. of the Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, and republished by M. de Paravey in his Summary of his Memoirs upon the Origin of the Sphere, p. 24, 31-36. See further the Analysis of the Mathematical Labours of the Academy in 1820, p. 78 and 79.

“Delambre.”

It would still have to be ascertained at what period the observers ceased to place the constellation in which the sun entered after the solstice, at the head of the descending signs, and whether this was done as soon as the solstice had retrograded sufficiently to touch the preceding constellation.

Thus MM. Jollois and Devilliers,—to whose unremitting zeal we are indebted for an accurate knowledge of these famous monuments, always considering the division towards the entrance of the porch as the solstice, and judging that the Virgin must have been regarded as the first of the descending constellations, insomuch as the solstice had not receded at least so far as the middle of the constellation of the Lion; and, believing that they saw farther, as we have mentioned, that the Lion is divided in the great zodiac of Esne, have not given to that zodiac a more remote antiquity than 2160 years before Christ.[220]

Mr Hamilton, who was the first that observed this division of the sign of the Lion, in the zodiac of Esne, reduced the distance of the period at which the solstice occurred there, to 1400 years before Christ. A great many other opinions have appeared on the same subject. M. Rhode, for example, has proposed two. The first refers the zodiac of the portico of Dendera to a period of 591 years before Christ; the second, to 1290[221]. M. Latreille has fixed the period of this zodiac at 670 years before Christ; that of the planisphere at 550; that of the zodiac of the great temple of Esne at 2550; and that of the small one at 1760.

But a difficulty inherent in all the dates, which proceed on the double supposition, that the division marks the solstice, and that the position of the solstice marks the epoch of the monument, is the unavoidable consequence that the zodiac of Esne must have been at least 2000, and perhaps 3000, years[222] older than that of Dendera, a consequence which evidently involves the supposition in ruin; for no one, in any degree acquainted with the history of the arts, could believe, that two edifices, so similar in their style of architecture, could have been erected at periods so remote from each other.

The feeling of this impossibility, joined always to the belief that this division of the zodiacs indicates a date, has given rise to another conjecture, namely, that the intention had been to mark the particular sacred year of the Egyptians, in which the monument had been erected. As these sacred years consisted only of 365 days, if the sun, at the commencement of one occupied the commencement of a constellation, he would be nearly six hours later in returning to the commencement of the following year, and, after 121 years, he would only be at the commencement of the preceding sign. It seems natural enough that the builders of a temple might wish to indicate about what period of the great, or Sothian year, it had been erected; and the indications of the sign, by which the sacred year then commenced, was a good enough means. It will be perceived, that, calculating upon this assumption, there will be an interval of from 120 to 150 years between the temple of Esne and that of Dendera. But, in his mode of solving the problem, there remained to be determined in which of the great years these buildings had been erected, whether in that which ended in the year 138 after, or in that which ended in 1322 before Christ, or in some other.

The late Visconti, who was the first author of this hypothesis, taking the sacred year, whose commencement corresponded with the sign of the Lion, and judging from the resemblance of the signs, that they had been represented at a period when the opinions of the Greeks were not unknown to the Egyptians, was naturally led to make choice of the end of the last great year, or the space that elapsed between the year 12 and the year 138 after Christ[223], which appeared to him to accord with the Greek inscription, of which, however, he knew little more than that it was said to make mention of one of the Cæsars.

M. Testa, seeking the date of the monument in another order of ideas, went so far as to suppose that since the Virgin is seen at Esne, at the head of the zodiac, it was meant thereby to represent the era of the battle of Actium, such as it had been established with regard to Egypt, by a decree of the senate, mentioned by Dion Cassius, and which commenced in the month of September, the day on which Alexandria was taken by Augustus.[224]