An historical survey of the astronomy of the ancients / by Sir George Cornewall Lewis.
- George Cornewall Lewis
- Date:
- 1862
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: An historical survey of the astronomy of the ancients / by Sir George Cornewall Lewis. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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![reigned from 616 to 600 B.C., and was contemporary with Alcseus and Sappho. Egyptian Thebes was known to Homer, as distinguished for its wealth, and for its hundred gates, through each of which two hundred charioteers went forth to battle. (lG2) The size which the poet intended to ascribe to Thebes in Egypt may be conjectured from the circumstance that Thebes, in Boeotia, was supposed to have only seven gates. (163) According to Herodotus, Babylon had a hundred gates, all of brass. (164) Egypt is alluded to several times in the Odyssey; Menelaus describes at length his visit to its shores. Homer is acquainted with the Nile, which he calls the divine river iEgyptus; (165) but, with the exception of the allusion to the hundred-gated Thebes, there is nothing to indicate that he had heard of any large constructive works in the country. He speaks of the voyage from Greece to Egypt as long and difficult.^66) Taking into consideration all the evidence respecting the buildings and great works of Egypt extant in the time of Hero- dotus, we may come to the conclusion that there is no sufficient ground for placing any of them at a date anterior to the building of the Temple of Solomon, 1012 b.c(1G7) A similar conclusion applies to the walls and great buildings of Ba- (162) Iliad ix. 381—4; Od. iv. 127. Aristotle, in his Meteorologies, i. 14, refers to the mention of Egyptian Thebes by Homer, and speaks of him as quite recent in comparison with the physical changes of Egypt produced by the Nile. 8ri\o7 8e kci\ Op,r]pos ovtco Trpoacparos o>v wj (Itt(Iv Trpos ras TOLavras fxera^oXas. He comments on the silence of Homer re- specting Memphis, and remarks that, being lower down the Nile than Thebes, it was probably of later origin. (163) Iliad iv. 406; Od. xi. 263. (164) i. 179. (165) Od. iv. 477, 48L, xiv. 258, xvii. 427. (166) Od. iv. 483, xvii. 427. In Od. xvii. 448, Egfyptis called niKpr), in reference to the previous story told by Ulysses: ' the country in which you narrowly escaped the lot of a slave.' (167) The building of Solomon's temple occupied 7 years, 1 Kings vi. 38. It was burnt by Nebuchadnezzar in 588 B.C., after having stood about 418 years. The second temple was completed in 516 B.C. This temple, with great enlargements by Herod, was in existence at the siege of Jerusalem by Titus. See the desciiption of Josephus, Bell. Jud. v. 5.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21015855_0454.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
