Bailly (Astronomy) says, “the Zodiac must have been first divided when the sun at the summer solstice was in 1° Virgo, where the woman's head joins the Lion's tail.”
As to its antiquity there can be no doubt. Jamieson says, “the Lion does not seem to have been placed among the Zodiacal symbols, because Hercules was fabled to have slain the Nemean Lion. It would seem, on the contrary, that Hercules, who represented the Sun, was said to have slain the Nemean Lion, because Leo was already a Zodiacal sign. Hercules flourished 3,000 years ago, and consequently posterior to the period when the summer solstice accorded with Leo.” (Celestial Atlas, p. 40).
There is no confusion about this sign. In the ancient Zodiacs of Egypt (Denderah, Esneh) and India we find the Lion. The same occurs on the [pg 163] Mithraic monuments, where Leo is passant, as he is in Moor's Hindu, and Sir William Jones's Oriental Zodiacs. In Kircher's Zodiacs he is courrant; in the Egyptian Zodiacs he is couchant.
In the Denderah Zodiac he is treading upon a serpent, as shown in Mr. Edward Cooper's Egyptian Scenery.
Plate 39: LEO (the Lion)
Its Egyptian name is Pi Mentekeon, which means the pouring out. This is no pouring out or inundation of the Nile, but it is the pouring out of the cup of Divine wrath on that Old Serpent.
This is the one great truth of the closing chapter of this last Book. It is
The Lion of the Tribe of Judah aroused for the rending of the prey.
His feet are over the head of Hydra, the great Serpent, and just about to descend upon it and crush it.