Some of these proofs have already been pointed out in the foregoing Papers. Attention will be drawn to others in the consideration of the diagrams here given.
In Plates [XV.], [XVI.], [XVII.], and [XVIII.], the positions of the solstitial and equinoctial colures amongst the constellations are given at the date 5744 B.C. Had it been possible, I should have liked to have drawn these diagrams as at 6000 B.C.—not only because it is easier to deal with and to remember a round number such as that, but also because at that date the solstitial colure passed through the ecliptic only one degree distant from the initial point of the Indian Zodiac—a point which there seems good reason to believe was the initial point of many, other than Indian, ancient Zodiacs.
Owing to the mechanical restrictions of the precessional globe, it was not possible to adjust it to any more accurate date than that of 5744 B.C.
It will not be necessary here to reiterate the considerations in favour of the opinion already advanced that the calendrical importance of the constellation Aries in some nations, and its symbolical importance in the mythology of others, may best be explained by the supposition that the choice of this constellation as “Prince and Leader” of the signs was made not when its stars marked the spring equinox, but when they marked the winter solstice.
Let us rather take this opinion as a working hypothesis, and turn our attention to the importance, in ancient symbolism, of the four constellations—Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricornus—which, according to this hypothesis, marked the four seasons, and the cardinal points 6000 B.C.
Next in this order to Aries comes Cancer, The Crab (see [Plate XVI.]). In Babylonia, it seems to be established that a tortoise, not a crab, represented the fourth constellation of the Zodiac. In Egypt, as we learn from the Zodiacs of Esneh and Denderah, it was the scarabæus beetle that held the place given to the crab in the Grecian sphere.
There is a sort of outward resemblance between these three creatures, wide apart as they are anatomically from each other. They are all hard-shelled, creeping, and insignificant-looking animals. Why under any of these three forms a constellation of the Zodiac should have been depicted, it is difficult to conjecture; but if we have to admit that in Egyptian astronomy the beetle played the important part of marking as a constellation one of the quarters of the ecliptic circle, this admission will furnish us with an adequate reason for the extraordinary honour paid in Egyptian symbolic art to this lowly, and in itself unattractive, insect.
The scarabæus, according to our hypothesis, marked in ancient calendrical tradition the spring equinox when in conjunction with the sun, and the autumn equinox in opposition to it. And it was as presiding visibly in opposition that we may reasonably suppose it gained such honour in Egypt. For the autumn, not the spring, is in that land the time when vegetation begins to burst into life, and when all Egypt rejoices. I think, moreover, that facts connected with the worship of the Apis Bull will further strengthen the opinion that the Egyptians considered the constellations in opposition to the sun to be those which presided over particular seasons and months.[110]
[110] See below, [pp. 234], [235].
To trace allusions in the symbolic art of Egypt to Libra—the third in order of the constellations we are now discussing (see [Plate XVII.])—is, it must be confessed, not so simple a matter, and it is with some diffidence that I put forward the following suggestion—i.e., that we may perhaps find in the “two feathers,” so prominent in Egyptian mythologic imagery, a reference to the two scales of the Balance (Libra).