The rising of the Nile in Egypt coincides very closely with the season of the _summer solstice_. At the date of Rameses II.--a date not yet unanimously agreed on by scholars, but which may be safely placed between 1,400 and 1,100 B.C.--the sun at the season of the _summer solstice_ was in the constellation Cancer (see Plate II.), and two months later its place in the ecliptic was a few degrees to the west of a point exactly opposed to the first stars of Aries and to the initial point of the Indian Zodiac. On the evening, therefore, of the 29th day of the second month of the inundation, when the sun had now sunk behind the Libyan hills, and daylight had faded sufficiently to allow them to show their light,[20] the first stars of Aries rose above the eastern horizon, and at midnight attained to the southern meridian. [20] When the sun is about 7° below the western horizon, stars in the opposite quarter of the heavens begin to be visible. [Illustration: PLATE II. Relating to “the Feast-day of Amon, the Father.” Position of sun on first of fixed Thoth varied by about one degree in two hundred years. [_To face p. 36._] Thus at the season of all the year, when Aries specially dominated the ecliptic, the statue of the god Amen was, as we learn, brought out of his dark temple shrine and carried in procession to the Nekropolis, from whence the constellation Aries--not hidden by obstructing walls and columns--was fully visible; and there honour was done and sacrifice offered to “Amon Father.” But it may be said that we should understand “the second month of the inundation” to refer to the second month of the Egyptian sidereal year counted from the 1st Thoth (fixed) and marked by the heliacal rising of Sirius. At the date of Rameses the beginning of this sidereal year fell, as may be proved, a fortnight after the _summer solstice_ (see Plate II.), and still on the 29th of the second month of this sidereal year the stars of Aries might be seen rising in the east--no longer only its first stars, but nearly the whole constellation then becoming visible--and at about midnight its brightest stars, α and β Arietis, culminated on the meridian. Whether, therefore, the “Feast of the Valley” was held at the end of the second month of the actual inundation, or of the second month of the sidereal year, the stars of Aries presided over its “nocturnal” solemnities.