"The star-table is intended to carry the principle of time into the rigid world of the grave, and represents over the sepulchral vault 'the eternal horizon,' as the ancient Egyptians so aptly styled the grave, an imitation of the sky, a compensation for the sky of the upper world with its time-measuring motion; yet the idea here is bolder, the execution is more artificial and complicated, since the sculptor endeavoured to combine the daily and the annual motion of the celestial vault in _one_ picture; wanted to transfer into the grave the temporal frames in which all human life is enacted. This endeavour to represent by one configuration both motions and both chronological units explains all the peculiarities and imperfections of our star-table. "The simplest means of representing both motions was found in the stars, which circle the earth in the course of a day, and indicate the year by the successive appearance of new stars in the morning twilight. If the same stars were to serve both purposes in one representation, it was necessary to take twenty-four stars which rose at intervals of fifteen days, since only such followed each other at an average distance of 15°, and were therefore useful for showing the hours. "If the calendar-maker really possessed a list of the twenty-four principal (zodiacal) stars, the course of the year was indicated thereby; but since he also wanted to represent the daily motion, he might with some justice have composed each night out of eleven of these stars, since the stars' risings are only visible during the ten middle hours of the night. But ten hours would not have adequately represented the night, since this was thought of as a twelve hours' interval.