Either the whole of the conclusions respecting the pyramid is founded on pure imagination and the whole work upon it thrown away, or we have here another very remarkable proof of the influence of the Pleiades on the reckoning of the year, and a very interesting chapter in the history of the heavens.
Following the guidance of Mr. Haliburton, we shall find still more customs, and names depending in all probability on the influence the Pleiades once exerted, and the observances connected with the feasts in their honour.
The name by which the Pleiades are known among the Polynesians is the "Tau," which means a season, and they speak of the years of the Tau, that is of the Pleiades. Now we have seen that the Egyptians had similar feasts at similar times, in relation to this constellation, and argued that they did not arise independently. This seems still further proved by their name for these stars—the Atauria.
Now the Egyptians do not appear to have derived their signs of the Zodiac from the same source; these had a Babylonian origin, and the constellation in which the Pleiades were placed by the latter people was the Bull, by whatever name he went. The Egyptians, we may make the fair surmise, adopted from both sources; they took the Pleiades to indicate the Bull, and they called this animal after the Atauria. From thence we got the Latin Taurus, and the German Thier.
It is possible that this somehow got connected with the letter "tau" in Greek, which seems itself connected with the sacred scarabæus or Tau-beetle of Egypt; but the nature of the connection is by no means obvious. Mr. Haliburton even suggests that the "tors" and "Arthur's seat," which are names given to British hill-tops, may be connected with the "high places," of the worship of the Pleiades, but of this we have no proof.
Among the customs possibly derived from the ancients, through the Phœnicians, though now adopted as conveying a different meaning in a Christian sense, is that of the "hot cross bun," or "bull cake." It is found on Egyptian monuments, signifying the four quarters of the year, and sometimes stamped with the head and horns of the bull. It is found among ourselves too, essentially connected with the dead, and something similar to it appears in the "soul cake" connected originally with All Souls' Day.
Among the Scotch it was traditionally thought that on New Year's Eve the Candlemas Bull can be seen, rising at twilight and sailing over the heavens—a very near approach to a matter-of-fact statement.
We have seen that among the ancient Indians there was some notice taken of the Pleiades, and that they in all probability guided their year by them or by some other stars: it would therefore behove them to know something of the precession of the equinoxes. It seems very well proved that their days of Brahma and other periods were meant to represent some astronomical cycles, and among these we find one that is applicable to the above. They said that in every thousand divine ages, or in every day of Brahma, fourteen Menus are successively invested with the sovereignty of the earth. Each Menu transmits his empire to his sons during seventy-one divine ages. We may find a meaning for this by putting it that the equinox goes forward fourteen days in each thousand years, and each day takes up seventy-one years.
These may not be the only ones among the various customs, sayings, and names that are due in one way or other to this primitive method of arranging the seasons by the positions of the stars, especially of those most remarkable and conspicuous ones the Pleiades, but they are those that are best authenticated. If the connection between the Pleiades and the festival of the dead, the new year and a deluge, can be clearly made out; if the tradition of the latter be found as universal as that of the former, and be connected with it in the Mosaic narrative; if we can trace all these traditions to the south of the equator, and find numerous further traditions connected with islands, we may find some reason for believing in their theory who suggest that the early progenitors of the human race (? all of them) were inhabitants of some fortunate islands of even temperature in the southern hemisphere, where they made some progress in civilisation, but that their island was swallowed up by the sea, and that they only escaped by making huge vessels, and, being carried by the waves, they landed on continental shores, where they commemorated yearly the great catastrophe that had happened to them, notifying its time by the position of the Pleiades, making it a feast of the dead whom they had left behind, and opening the year with the day, whether it were spring or not, and handing down to their descendants and to those among whom they came, the traditions and customs which such events had impressed upon them.
Whether such an account be probable, mythical, or unnatural, there are certainly some strange things to account for in connection with the Pleiades.