"It would appear that something of this sort may have taken place at Athens, for we find on the Acropolis the archaic temple, which seems to have been intended originally for a vernal festival, offering its axis to the autumnal sunrise on the very day of the great Panathenaia in August.

"The chryselephantine statue of the Parthenon, which temple followed on the same lines as the earlier Hecatompedon (originally founded to follow the rising of the Pleiades after that constellation had deserted the archaic temple alongside), was lighted up by the sunrise on the feast to the same goddess in August, the Synæcia, instead of some spring festival, for which both these temples seem at first to have been founded.

"The temple at Sunium, already quoted for its October star-heralded festival to Minerva, was oriented also axially to the sun on February 21, the feast of the Lesser Mysteries."

I have had to insist again and again that in the case of the Egyptian temples the stated date of foundation of a temple is almost always long after that in which its lines were laid down in accordance with the ritual. No wonder, then, that the same thing is noticed in Greece.

"In about two-thirds of the cases which I have investigated the dates deduced from the orientations are clearly earlier than the architectural remains now visible above the ground. This is explained by the temples having been rebuilt upon old foundations, as may be seen in several cases which have been excavated, of which the archaic temple of Minerva on the Acropolis of Athens and the temple of Jupiter of Olympius on a lower site are instances. There are temples also of the middle epoch, such as the examples at Corinth, Ægina, and the later temples at Argos and at Olympia (the Metroum at the last-named), of which the orientation dates are not inconsistent with what may be gathered from other sources."

The problem is, moreover, helped in Greece by architectural considerations, which are frequently lacking in Egypt: of two temples it can be shown, on this evidence alone, that one is older than the other. Such an appeal strengthens my suggestion that two of the temples of the Acropolis Hill were oriented to the Pleiades, by showing the older temple to point to an earlier position of the star group. To these Mr. Penrose adds another pair at Rhanmus, where he has found that there are two temples almost touching one another, both following (and with accordant dates) the shifting places of Spica, and still another pair at Tegea.

INDEX.

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