The monstrous hippopotamus and crocodile here depicted are, I am strongly inclined to believe, representations, not of any particular constellation, but rather of the solstitial and equinoctial colures; and the four not at all, except astronomically, related figures of the Bull, Scorpion, Lion, and Water-jar, are here very clearly in evidence. In Egyptian mythology the Apis Bull held a very important place. “It was regarded as a symbol and incarnation of Osiris, the husband of Isis, and next to Râ, the great divinity of Egypt.” Grecian authorities tell us that the Apis Bull was black, with some distinctive white markings; and on its back (or tongue, according to variant accounts) the figure of a scarabæus was to be observed. From a drawing in Ebers’ _Egypt_, Vol. I., p. 121, we may, however, gather, as I think I have seen it elsewhere stated, that the Apis Bull was marked by _equal_ areas of black and white. Such equal areas would fitly symbolize the equal day and night of the equinoctial season, and the presence of the scarabæus on the back or tongue of the Bull--if the suggestion made at p. 218 should prove to be correct--would point to the traditional connexion of that creature with the same equinoctial season. It has often been assumed that the golden calf set up and worshipped in the wilderness by the Israelites was a representation of the Apis god of Egypt; and that so also were the calves set up by Jeroboam in Bethel and in Dan on his return from Egypt. We read in 1 Kings xii. 32, “And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month.” ... Ver. 33, “So he offered upon the altar which he had made in Bethel the fifteenth day of the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart; and ordained a feast unto the children of Israel: and he offered upon the altar, and burnt incense.” Now, from our knowledge of the Babylonian calendar, and its correspondence with that in use in Palestine, we may conclude that the “eighth month” (Marchesvan), devised by Jeroboam, was that during which the sun traversed the constellation Scorpio, and during which Taurus was dominantly visible all night; and when in this constellation the full moon of the fifteenth or festival day was to be observed. This mention of the _eighth_ month in connexion with the worship of the golden calves--a worship, as has been supposed, copied from Egyptian practice--greatly strengthens the opinion that the Apis Bull was in Egypt looked upon as a living representative of the Zodiacal Bull--the constellation which in the time of the early dynasties marked, in opposition to the sun, the autumnal equinox.