the reasons which caused the intercalation to be proscribed, no less than the repugnance of the Egyptians for foreign institutions.

of

"Now it is remarkable that the same solar year three hundred and sixty-five days, six hours, adopted by nations so different, and perhaps still more remote in their state of civilization than in their geographical distance, relates to a real astronomical period, and belongs peculiarly to the Egyptians. This is a point which M. Fourier has ascertained in his researches on the zodiac of Egypt. No one is more capable of deciding this question in an astronomical point of view. He alone can elucidate the valuable discoveries which he has made. I shall here observe, that the Persians who intercalated thirty days every hundred and twenty years; the Chaldæans, who employed the era of Nabonassar; the Romans, who added a day every four years; the Syrians, and almost all the nations who regulate their calendar by the course of the sun, appear to me to have taken from Egypt the notion of a solar year of three hundred days. As to the Mexicans, it would be superfluous to examine how they attained this knowledge. Such a problem would not be soon solved; but the fact of the intercalation of thirteen days every cycle, that is, the use of a year of three hundred and sixty-five days and a quarter, is a proof that it was either borrowed from the Egyptians, or that they had a common origin. It is also to be observed, that the year of the Peruvians is not solar, but regulated according to the course of the moon, as among the Jews, the Greeks, the Macedonians, and the Turks. However, the circumstance of eighteen

months of twenty days, instead of twelve months of thirty days, makes a great difference. The Mexicans are the only people who have divided the year in this

manner.

"A second analogy which I have remarked between Mexico and Egypt, is, that the number of weeks, or half lunations of thirteen days, comprehended in the Mexican cycle, is the same as that of the years of the Sothic period, that is, one thousand four hundred and sixty-one. You consider such a relation as accidental and fortuitous; but perhaps it might have the same origin as the notion of the length of the year. If in reality, the year was not of the length of three hundred and sixty-five days, six hours, that is

1461

cycle of fifty-two years would not contain

days, the

4

52 × 1461 4

or thirteen times 1461 days, which makes thirteen periods of 1461 days."

Baron Humboldt adds, "A half-civilized people, the Araucans of Chili, have a year (sipantu), which exhibits a still greater analogy with the Egyptian year than that of the Azteks. Three hundred and sixty days are divided into twelve months (ayen) of equal duration, to which are added at the end of the year, at the winter solstice (huamathipantu), five complementary days. The nycthemeræ, like those of the Japanese, are divided into twelve hours (clagantu)."

Garcilasso de la Vega, in his History of the Incas, distinctly asserts that the Peruvians calculated by cycles of seven days. "The Peruvians," he says, "count their months by the moon, they count their

half months by the increase and decrease of the moon, and compute the weeks by quarters, without having any particular names for the week-days." It does not appear that this circumstance deserves the weight attributed to it by several writers; the cycle of seven days is not an arbitrary, but a natural division of time, it nearly coincides with the phases of the moon, and is approximately the fourth of a lunation. In all ancient nations where the division into weeks was recognised, we find that the observance of the day of new moon was connected with the observance of one day in seven. It was so amongst the Jews, as is manifest from St. Paul's classing them together in his epistle to the Colossians, "Let no man judge you in meat or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or a new moon, or the Sabbath day." It is obvious that though the phases of the moon change almost every seven days, yet the correspondence is not exact enough to produce, in a lapse of several consecutive months, an agreement between the cycle of seven days and the phases of the moon, and hence nations may easily come to forget the origin of this division of time. It appears that another cycle was partially adopted by the Peruvians, that of nine days, the nearest approximation to a third of a lunation. This circumstance sufficiently shews that the cycle of seven days, or of nine days, is not a circumstance sufficient to establish identity, for both are natural divisions of time, and scarcely less likely to be suggested by the observation of the heavenly bodies than a day, a month, or a year. Baron Humboldt follows Acosta in attributing the cycle of seven days to the number of the planets, but he has left the

connexion between the two unexplained. The Bishop of Ohio seems to think that it arose from a tradition of the seven days of creation; but we can discover no traces of the memory of the demi-urgic week in the cosmogonies of America, and assuredly the change of phase in the moon affords a more simple and probable solution. Even amongst the Hebrews the observance of the new moon, as has been already mentioned, appears closely connected with the observance of the Sabbath.

The identity of the zodiacal signs and the common use of intercalation, are of greater importance than the correspondence in the division of the year, month, and week, which are so strongly marked by nature that there is little room for variation, and on these we rest for establishing a probability that the American system of civilization was to a great extent the same as the Asiatic.

This is further confirmed by the clear traditions we find among the Americans, of man's early history, of the flood, and of the dispersion of the human race, -traditions in which the accounts preserved by the Semitic nations of Asia are strangely blended with the Hindoo legends of successive renovations of the universe. Their paintings record four great cycles: at the end of the first, the human race was destroyed by famine; the second was terminated by a conflagration, from which only two human beings escaped; the third by a series of hurricanes; and the fourth by a general inundation, in which all mankind were destroyed, except Coxcox and Xochiquetzal, a man and woman, who saved themselves in the trunk of an ahuehete, or

deciduous cypress. "The Azteks," says Dr. Wiseman, "Mitteks, Flascalteks, and other nations, had innumerable paintings of these latter events. Tezpi, or Coxcox, as the American Noah is called, is seen floating in an ark upon the waters, and with him his wife, children, many animals, and several species of grain. When the waters withdrew, Tezpi sent out a vulture, which being able to feed on the carcasses of the drowned, returned no more. After the experiment had failed with several others, the humming-bird at length came back, bearing a green branch in its little beak. In the same hieroglyphic painting, the dispersion of mankind is thus represented. The first men after the deluge were dumb, and a dove is seen perched on a tree giving to each a tongue, the consequence whereof is, that the families, fifteen in number, disperse in different directions."

The great treasury of Mexican Antiquities, published by the late Lord Kingsborough, at once identifies the Mexican art with that of India and Egypt. We have almost exact copies of the ancient pagodas and cavetemples of Hindoostan; and we have pyramids constructed on the same model as those of Egypt, and apparently designed for the same purpose. We have figures closely enveloped in drapery, so that only the feet below, and the hands on either side, appear, as in Egyptian statues; while the head-dress surrounds the head, and hangs down at each side, pushing forward enormous ears; besides other kneeling figures, where this attire, so characteristic of Egyptian, is still more strongly marked-" so that," as Inca Quirius Visconti has remarked, "they might have been copied from