It is difficult to assign the antiquity of the Chinese astronomy with any approach to definiteness. Their earliest records appear to have been total eclipses of the sun, going back nearly 2,200 years before the Christian era; and nearly a thousand years earlier the Hindu astronomy sets down a conjunction of all the planets, concerning which, however, there is doubt whether it was actually observed or merely calculated backward. Owing to a colossal misfortune, the burning of all native scientific books by order of the Emperor Tsin-Chi-Hwang-Ti, in B. C. 221, excepting only the volumes relating to agriculture, medicine, and astrology, the Chinese lost a precious mass of astronomical learning, accumulated through the ages. No less an authority than Wells Williams credits them with observing 600 solar eclipses between B. C. 2159 and A. D. 1223, and there must have been some centuries of eclipses observed and recorded anterior to B. C. 2159, as this is the date assigned to the eclipse which came unheralded by the astronomers royal, Hi and Ho, who had become intoxicated and forgot to warn the Court, in accord with their duty. China was thereby exposed to the anger of the gods, and Hi and Ho were executed by his Majesty's command. It is doubtful if there is an earlier record of any celestial phenomenon. CHAPTER III PYRAMID, TOMB, AND TEMPLE Inquiry into the beginnings of astronomy in ancient Egypt reveals most interesting relations of the origins of the science to the life and work and worship of the people. Their astronomers were called the "mystery teachers of heaven"; their monuments indicate a civilization more or less advanced; and their temples were built on astronomical principles and dedicated to purpose of worship. The Egyptian records carry us back many thousands of years, and we find that in Egypt, as in other early civilizations, observation of the heavenly bodies may be embraced in three pretty distinct stages. Awe, fear, wonder and worship were the first. Then came utility: a calendar was necessary to tell men when "to plow and sow, to reap and mow," and a calendar necessitated astronomical observations of some sort. Following this, the third direction required observations of celestial positions and phenomena also, because astrology, in which the potentates of every ancient realm believed, could only thrive as it was based on astronomy. Sun worship was preeminent in early Egypt as in India, where the primal antithesis between night and day struck terror in the unformed mind of man. In one of the Vedas occurs this significant song to the god of day: "Will the Sun rise again? Will our old friend the Dawn come back again? Will the power of Darkness be conquered by the God of Light?"