So much for the temple M. We now proceed to the other one lettered L, the temple of Seti II.

The amplitude of temple L is 63° S. of W., and the date, according to Mariette, 1300 B.C. We find the declination, proceeding as before, and assuming hills 1½° high, to be 53½° S., and about that date the bright star Canopus set on the alignment of the temple.

It will hence be gathered that just as truly as the temple M seems to have been pointed to the northern star γ Draconis rising, the temple L was pointed to the southern star Canopus, setting.

But this is not all. There is another temple to which I have already directed attention—the temple of Khons (T of Lepsius), founded by Rameses III., though as it comes to us it is a Ptolemaic structure, it having been enlarged and restored by the Ptolemies. It is very nearly, but not quite, parallel to the temple of Seti II.

My measures and those of Lepsius give, approximately, amplitudes as under—

Continuing, therefore, the same line of inquiry, and assuming that Mariette was right, and that the temple was really finally completed (and no doubt its axis revised) by the Ptolemies, and that they flourished about 200 B.C., we have the same problem. Was there a star towards which that temple could have been directed, and which could have been seen in that temple with its actual orientation?

Calculation shows that the change of amplitude of Canopus due to the precessional movement between 1300 B.C. and 200 B.C. is almost exactly 1°, the difference in the amplitude of the temples. We seem, then, to have in the temples L and T two temples directed to the same star at different times.

These statements must be taken as provisional only. To render them absolute, careful measurements must be made, on the spot, of the heights of the hills towards which the temples point.

Leaving this for the moment on one side, we get in this manner astronomical dates of the reigns of Seti II. and Rameses III. within a very few years of those given by the Egyptologists.