Note 426:2 — Chapter XXXVII

This is clearly shown by Mr. Higgins in his Anacalypsis. It should be remembered that Gautama Buddha, the "Angel-Messiah," and Cyrus, the "Anointed" of the Lord, are placed about six hundred years before Jesus, the "Anointed." This cycle of six hundred years was called the "great year." Josephus, the Jewish historian, alludes to it when speaking of the patriarchs that lived to a great age. "God afforded them a longer time of life," says he, "on account of their virtue, and the good use they made of it in astronomical and geometrical discoveries, which would not have afforded the time for foretelling (the periods of the stars), unless they had lived six hundred years; for the great year is completed in that interval." (Josephus, Antiq., bk. i. c. iii.) "From this cycle of six hundred," says Col. Vallancey, "came the name of the bird Phœnix, called by the Egyptians Phenu, with the well-known story of its going to Egypt to burn itself on the altar of the Sun (at Heliopolis) and rise again from its ashes, at the end of a certain period."