The sun now (1893 A.D.) is, at the season named, in the constellation Aquarius; but if we calculate back to a date anywhere between 1,400 and 1,100 B.C., we shall find (see Plate III.) that when Rameses II. dedicated this temple to Amen-Ra, the sun when it penetrated into the shrine of the temple at Aboo Simbel was in conjunction with the first stars of the constellation _Aries_, and this fact must, it would seem, encourage us to adopt the opinion put forward above concerning the desire of Rameses II. to honour that constellation in connexion with the god Amen. [Illustration: PLATE III. Relating to the Orientation of a Temple to Amon-Ra. [_To face p. 40._] It would seem then that there are indications in the mythology and in the history of the Egyptians, of honour paid to the constellation Aries, and as we further study the records of antiquity, now within our reach, it will, I believe, become evident that not only the Egyptians, but also all the great civilized nations of the East, had traditions of a year beginning when the sun and moon entered the constellation Aries--such a year as that in use amongst the Babylonians during their long existence as a nation, and such as that which is used by the Hindus in India to this present day. If we allow weight to these considerations, it will be difficult to think that such a method of reckoning the year--involving, as it did, the recognition of the ecliptic star-groups under the fanciful figures of the Zodiac--should have been arrived at by each of these nations independently. Whether one nation borrowed these ideas from another, or whether some “earlier race of men” bequeathed this knowledge to their many descendants, is still an open question. Scholars have not unanimously awarded the palm of seniority in civilization to any one nation, and we are not at variance with proved facts, if we elect to adopt the theory of a common stock, from which the divergent races sprang. If, then, it should appear that these races possessed and incorporated into their mythologies a knowledge of the Zodiac, and of the first degree of Aries as its initial point, their separation from the parent stock must have been subsequent to the formation of the scheme that dealt with a calendar based on an observation of the colure of the winter solstice at that point, and under this supposition the date of 6,000 B.C. becomes a foothold for the chronology of ancient history. We should also be led to think of the common ancestors of the civilized races not as ignorant barbarians, but rather as men graced with high intellectual gifts--men whose teachings have been handed down through all the ages to this present day, and of whose imaginings the Zodiac remains as the most ancient monument of the work of intelligent man. III [Illustration] (_GU_), ELEVENTH CONSTELLATION OF THE ZODIAC [Reprinted from the _Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, February 1896_]