Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/45

 of the position of these signs, and calculating precession at the usual rate, arrived at a conclusion that the earliest of them date from 4000 B.C. M. Fourier, in his &apos;Recherches sur la Science,' makes the representation at Esne 1800 years older than M. Dupuis." Mr. McLellan is here more than half a century behind his age. Every tourist on the Nile in possession of Murray's Handbook, knows that both Dupuis and Fourier were ludicrously mistaken. The Zodiacal representations in question, far from being of great antiquity, belong to the very latest period of Egyptian workmanship; they are not anterior to the Christian era or the Roman domination; they were borrowed from the Greeks, and were entirely unknown to the ancient Egyptians.

It is not sufficient to be in possession of trustworthy witnesses; it is also necessary to know the limit within which alone their evidence is really available. I am obliged, therefore, to say something about Egyptian chronology, especially as the current opinions on the subject are very vague and inaccurate. I shall not, however, detain you by entering into any of the questions which are still at issue between learned men who have given their attention to them, but will simply explain to you the nature of the undisputed evidence