Janus is represented with two heads, sometimes even with four, “to typify the seasons of the year.” The _full moon_ in Sagittarius 4,000 B.C. marked the season of the spring equinox--the sun then being in _conjunction_ with the stars marking the horn tips of the Bull. The _new moon_ in Sagittarius at the same date marked the autumn equinox. The _half waning moon_ in Sagittarius marked the season of the winter solstice: and the half moon of the _crescent or waxing moon_ marked the season of the summer solstice. The four heads of Janus may thus have referred to the four seasons marked by the moon in Sagittarius. The fact that the Indian archer Rudra (= Siva) and the Grecian archer Artemis, were represented as crowned by the _half_, not the _full moon_, would refer these myths to an Indo-Iranian, not to a somewhat later Iranian source. It was not to the reformed Iranian equinoctial year that they pointed, but to the sun’s triumph at the solstitial season. In the Roman Janus myth we may rather detect the later Median influence, and suppose that it referred to a year beginning with the _full moon_ in Sagittarius, a year opening in the spring, when the _sun_ was in conjunction with the “gilded horns” of “the bright Bull.” All these mythological indications, derived from Median, Assyrian, Indian, and classical sources, though each of them looked at separately may not speak with much insistence, yet considered together seem to point us more and more clearly as we study them, to the fact that about 4,000 B.C. a very important and authoritative observation of the colures (amongst the Zodiacal constellations) was made, and that upon this observation much of the mythology of ancient nations was founded. VII ANCIENT INDIAN ASTRONOMY [Reprinted from the _Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, February 1900] It is only on Talmudic authority, I think, that astronomy can be denied a place, and indeed an important place, in researches connected with Biblical Archæology. On Talmudic authority we are told that, as a protest against the sun-, moon-, and star-worship of surrounding nations, the Hebrews were not permitted to calculate in any way beforehand, or by scientific methods based on the movements of the heavenly bodies, their days, their months, or their years. The end of the day and beginning of the night could only be definitely ascertained when three stars were visible to the observer. The moon must have shown its pale sickle to some watcher of the heavens, before the first of the month could be announced. The beginning of the year, we are also told, was dependent on the earliness or lateness of the agricultural season, for three ears of corn, in a sufficiently advanced state of growth, were to be presented to the priest and waved before the Lord _on a fixed day of the first month_ of the year.