Recourse has therefore been had to arguments of another kind. It has been pretended that, independently of the knowledge which these nations may have acquired, they have left monuments which bear a date fixed by the state of the heavens which they represent, and one that refers to a very remote antiquity. The zodiacs sculptured in two temples of Upper Egypt, are adduced as furnishing proofs perfectly demonstrative of this assertion. They present the same figures of the zodiacal constellations as are employed at the present day, but distributed in a manner peculiar to themselves. The state of the heavens at the period when these monuments were delineated, is imagined to have been represented by this distribution, and it has been thought that it would be possible from it to infer the precise period at which the edifices containing them were erected[212]. But to arrive at the high antiquity which is supposed to be deducible from this, it must, in the _first_ place, be supposed, that their division has a determinate relation to a certain state of the heavens, dependent upon the precession of the equinoxes, which causes the colures to make the tour of the zodiac in 26,000 years; that it indicated, for example, the position of the solstitial point; and, _secondly_, that the state of the heavens represented was precisely that which took place at the period when the monument was erected,--two suppositions which themselves, as is evident, suppose a great number of others. In point of fact, are the figures of these zodiacs the constellations,--the true groups of stars which at present bear the same names, or merely what astronomers call signs, that is to say, divisions of the zodiac proceeding from one of the colures, whatever place this colure occupies? Is the point at which these zodiacs have been divided into two bands, necessarily that of a solstice? Is the division of the side next the entrance, necessarily that of the summer solstice? Does this division indicate, even in general, a phenomenon dependent upon the precession of the equinoxes? Does it not refer to some period the rotation of which would be less; for example, to the moment of the tropical year when such or such sacred years of the Egyptians commenced, which, being shorter than the true tropical year by nearly six hours, would make the tour of the zodiac in 1508 years? Lastly, whatever signification it may have had, has it been intended by it to mark the time when the zodiac was sculptured, or that when the temple was built? Has not the object been to record a previous state of the heavens at some period which was interesting in a religious point of view, whether it had been actually observed, or inferred from a retrograde calculation?