With all this new work before them, and with a genius like Champollion's among them, it was not long before the French savans compelled the hieroglyphs to give up some of their secrets. First one word gave two or three letters, then another two or three more, and finally an alphabet and syllabary were constructed. So it was not long before some of the inscriptions at Denderah were read. Then it was found that the temple, as it then stood, had certainly been, partly at all events, embellished so late as the time of the Roman Emperors. Naturally there was then a tremendous reaction from the idea of fabulous antiquity which had been urged by the school of Dupuis. There were two radically opposed camps, led by Letronne, a distinguished archæologist, and Biot, one of the most eminent astronomers of his day, and both of these savans brought papers before the Academy of Inscriptions. Biot's first paper was read in 1822, and was replied to by Letronne in 1824; Biot wrote his next paper in 1844, in which he held to everything that he had stated in his first memoir; and this was replied to, the next year, by Letronne.
SIRIUS AND ORION (18TH DYNASTY). (From Brugsch.)
Biot had no difficulty whatever in arriving at the conclusion that, precisely as in the case of the sphere of Eudoxus, a prior bone of contention, however true it might be that, the circular zodiac had been sculptured in the time of the Roman emperors, still it certainly referred to a time far anterior; and he suggested that we have in it sculptures reproducing very old drawings, which had been made long before on parchment or on stone. He pointed out that in the condition of astronomy one would expect to be extant in ancient times, it was far easier to reproduce old drawings than to calculate back what the positions of the stars had been at some prior date, so that in his magnificent summing-up of the case in his last paper, he rested his scientific reputation on the statement that the sculptures of Denderah represent the celestial sphere on a plane round the north pole of the equator at a year not far removed from 700 B.C. More than this, he stated that the time of the year was the time of the summer solstice, and the hour was midnight. He also showed that, calculating back what the position of the stars would have been at midnight on the 20th of June (Gregorian), 700 B.C., the constellations, and even many of the separate stars shown in the medallion, would occupy exactly the places they did occupy in the projection employed.
ASTRONOMICAL DRAWINGS FROM BIBÂN EL-MULÛK (18TH DYNASTY). (From "Description de l'Égypte.")
Let us then, for the moment, assume this to be true. What does it tell us? That 700 years B.C. in Egypt the solstice was recognised; a means of determining the instant of midnight with more or less precision was known; observations of the stars were regularly made; the risings of some of them were associated with the rising of the sun, and many of them had been collected into groups or constellations.
This is a wonderful result. I suppose that Biot is universally held to have proved his case; in fact, Brugsch, who is now regarded as one of the highest authorities in Egyptian history, has shown that almost every detail seen in the zodiac of Denderah reproduces inscriptions or astronomical figures, unearthed since the date of Biot's memoir, which, without doubt, must be referred to the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty—that is, 1700 B.C. or thereabouts; so that practically the Egyptologist has now chapter and verse for many things in the zodiac of Denderah dating 1,000 years before the period assigned to it by Biot.
The next point to notice is connected with the astronomical drawings which have been found in the Ramesseum at Thebes—drawings which also have very obvious connections with the zodiac of Denderah. On these we find the hieroglyphics for the different months—the constellations Orion, Hippopotamus, and Jackal, as we saw them at Denderah, and another form of the constellation of the Thigh. There is certainly the closest connection between the two sets of delineations.
