obtained the name of, The Ship.' It may be, that the Indians called it Argha, from whence the Greeks formed their Argo. It certainly can have no connection with the Grecian fable, except the real history from which they were both derived2; for no part of it was visible from any Grecian observatory. The next in magnitude was the Bull3, or rather, according to the Scholiast on Homer, the forepart only of the bull, with his mystic horns; next in importance came the Fishes, and Orion, and the Centaur, who may either represent the ship in another form, in the same way as a Venetian galley is called Bucentaur, or, what is perhaps more probable, he was the son of Saturn or Noah: the Greeks called him Chiron. He is in the act of sacrificing, for near him is Ara, the altar, and the Triangle, the Egyptian symbol of divinity, and the beast to be sacrificed, improperly called Lupus, since Ptolemy uses the word Inpion, a beast, and the Arabic name is rendered by Hyde fera: then there is Hydra, which has been interpreted of the inundation of the Nile, and the diluvian Eridanus, from which Orion is

1 In Ulugh Beg's table of the stars, it is called Stella navis. 2 L'imagination des poëtes n'a pu dépasser un évènement, dont la mémoire effrayait encore; mais ils aimaient à tout s'approprier sans s'embarasser des époques, et, sans respecter la vérité, ils embellissaient leurs descriptions de tous les récits que la tradition avait pu leur transmettre. – De Tressan, Myth. comp. à l'Hist. ii. 93. 3 44 stars in Taurus. - Ptolemy.

4 Ο ταῦρος σῶος οὐκ ἀνηστέρισται, ἀλλ ̓ ἕως τῶν ἰσχίων. — Ι. vi. 486.

5 Maurice's Indian Antiquities, p. 32.

emerging, and the Crater or cup of libation', and Corvus the raven, that was sent forth from the ark. The relation of the dog to this subject has been already explained. Cetus, the monster of the sea, from which the Celtic Ked has been derived, was an emblem of the ark, as I shall have occasion hereafter to show, and Lepus is perhaps derived from the equivocal meaning of the Hebrew original, Arnbeth, which certainly signifies a hare, but may also be interpreted, Aron Beth 2, the mansion of the ark. The prolific character of that animal too may have furnished an additional feature of resemblance, in the same way as the all-prolific cow is a production ascribed to the churning of the ocean, i.e. to the deluge, in Hindoo mythology. The hare has always had a certain degree of sanctity attached to it in the Levant, and, even to this day, so far has superstition survived all changes of empires and manners, that it is never used for food. Formerly some of the islands were so overrun by those animals, that a famine was apprehended; for the inhabitants would not kill them, till they had consulted the oracle, and received the sanction of a divine command. The only remaining constellation known to the ancients in the southern hemisphere was Corona Australis. Now, the first use of the crown in sacrifice is universally referred to the Patriarch; for Pherecydes says, that Saturn was the first man

2

The Crater beneficus Osiridis of the Egyptians.

.is domus בת ,is Arca ארון ארנבת

3

crowned.' Pliny says the same of Dionusus 2; and Athenæus numbers it among the inventions of Janus. If it were worth while, the same might be proved of most, if not of all, the asterisms in the zodiac, even where there is the least apparent connection. Thus the lion was the Egyptian hieroglyphic for the inundation of the Nile; and a scorpion or crocodile signified any thing hostile or destructive. I decline the common notion, that the hieroglyphic was taken from the sign; partly because, in the latter case, it does not hold good, and partly because other myths connected with the Arkite worship exhibit the lion in a mysterious character, wholly independent of the Nile or zodiac. The Avatar of Vishnu in Nara Sinha, exhibits him springing like a lion from the centre of a pillar, to vindicate it from the insults of those who denied that a deity resided there. In another chapter, I shall have occasion to show how intimately the worship of pillars is connected with the deluge. Then the Chinese Sakya, who is undoubtedly the same with

1 Pherecydes Saturnum primum coronatum refert. Tertull. de Cor. Mil.

2 Plinius primum hominem Liberum patrem coronam imposuisse capiti ex hedera scribit, lib. xvi. c. 4. - Hoffman. 3 Inter Jani bifrontis ponitur inventa et usurpata est olim in sacrificiis. Apud Athen. 1. xv. Lactantius, 1. vii. c. 6.

4 Horus Apollo, translated out of Egyptian into Greek, by Philippus. In the Egyptian zodiac, Scorpio is a man with a double fish tail. The man, who holds Libra, has a crescent on his head. Pisces is a human figure, with a fish's tail. Cancer is a crocodile, called Campsa, i. e. the Ark. Aries is a man with horns on his head. The soffit of the gate of the temple at Palmyra presents a zodiac, the signs of which are the same as ours.

Sir W. Jones, iv. 252.

Satyaurata, i. e. Menu, i. e. Noah, was entitled Sinha, the lion, and Hercules is always invested with a lion's skin. It will not be contended, that the lion of the tribe of Judah' had any thing to do with the zodiac or the Nile: it was the emblem of a person, or of a family; but what person, or what family is designed by any emblem, must depend upon collateral circumstances. Since then it is most certain, that memorials of the deluge are to be found abundantly in the heavens as well as upon earth, it will not be unreasonable to refer to that source the names of the Hyads and Pleiads, if their history contains allusions to that era; especially if there is an indistinctness and confusion in that history, which savours strongly of a remote antiquity, and at the same time betrays a common origin. In the first place, both those asterisms, both the stars on the front of the bull, and those on his back, are in the form of the letter 2; in other words, they are both like a pair of horns; straighter indeed than those which form the crescent, but a very common variety of that sacred emblem. In the next place, Timæus makes them all sisters; all the daughters of a mountain, and granddaughters of Japhet by one parent, and of the Ocean by the other. They had a brother Hyas, who being

1 Gen. xlix. 9. The lion is supposed to have been the banner of the tribe.

2 Καλοῦνται Υάδες διὰ τὴν προς τὸ υ στοιχεῖον ὁμοιότητα. liast. in Hom. Il. xviii. 486.

Scho

3 Ατλαντι γὰρ τοῦ Ιαπετοῦ καὶ "Αιθρᾳ τῇ Ὠκεανοῦ θυγατέρες δώδεκα,

καὶ ὑιὸς Ὕας. Ibid.

killed by a serpent, five of them died for grief, and became Hyades, and were placed among the stars. The other seven obtained the same honour at their death, under the name of Pleiades. Again the Hyades are said to have been nymphs of Dodona, the nurses of Dionusus, when he issued from the Meru of Jupiter', i.e. Ararat. But the priestesses of Dodona were called Peleiades 2, and the daughters of Atlas, flying from Orion, were changed into Peleiades, doves, and therefore called Pleiades.3 Pherecydes makes them the nurses of Dionusus ; but Dionusus and Hyas were one and the same; at least Plutarch says, that the Greeks called him Hyes, as the Lord of moist nature. The Argives, who knew more about the matter, invited him out of the water, and fabled that he was born of a cow. This Dionusus he owns to be no other than Osiris, whose ark the Egyptians say is the ship among the stars called Argo by the Greeks. Upon the whole then it appears, 1st, that the Hyades have quite as good, if not a better right than their sisters, to be the representatives of Ash; 2dly, that the two asterisms being so much confounded in popular belief, it is not likely that both would be mentioned separately, and, therefore, that though both the names occur in

1 Ἐκ τοῦ μηροῦ γεννηθέντα.
2 See Hesychius. Πελειάδες.

3 Hoffman.

Scholiast, in Hom. Il. xviii. 486.

4 Τῆς ὑγρᾶς φύσεως. iv. 493. βουγενὴς ἐπίκλην ἐστίν. 495. 5 Ουκ ἕτερον ὄντα τοῦ Οσίριδος, 494. De Iside et Osiride. 6 Τὸ πλοῖον ὅ καλοῦσιν Ἕλληνες ̓Αργὼ τῆς Οσίριδος νεὼς ἔίδωλον ἐπὶ TIμй KATNOTEρIOμévov. 475. which ship is, in other places of the same treatise, called Aapvat, an ark, and σopos, a coffin, or chest.