Note 28:1 — Chapter II

Count de Volney says: "The Deluge mentioned by Jews, Chaldeans, Greeks and Indians, as having destroyed the world, are one and the same physico-astronomical event which is still repeated every year," and that "all those personages that figure in the Deluge of Noah and Xisuthrus, are still in the celestial sphere. It was a real picture of the calendar." (Researches in Ancient Hist., p. 124.) It was on the same day that Noah is said to have shut himself up in the ark, that the priests of Egypt shut up in their sacred coffer or ark the image of Osiris, a personification of the Sun. This was on the 17th of the month Athor, in which the Sun enters the Scorpion. (See Kenrick's Egypt, vol. i. p. 410.) The history of Noah also corresponds, in some respects, with that of Bacchus, another personification of the Sun.