77

shores of the river, but in the strongest current; for the lateral
levels arc variable, while the line of strongest current remains
permanent,—ordinates conceived to be demitted from the cul-
minating point of any transverse section of the river down to
certain tidal levels of the ocean tending always to preserve a
certain metric value. The other number is the measure in
Nile cubits of the secular maximum amplitude of the Nile in
the latitude of the Memphis Observatory. The number 15
is the product of the number which is the principle of all
things, and the cosmical number 5. The literal form of the
number 3x5 pronounced the name of the Most High Being
in the Hebrew language, and was susceptible of being repre-
sented in the form of a triangle. It may be suggested that the
insertion of the human eye in the triangle made an emblema-
tical figure of observation, first by the use of the eye, which
enables man to know God through his works. Let 6 = 24, and
c=15. Then by the same formula of time, times and a half,

we shall have b + i« + (c + c2 + £lf>) = 900-360=540

sacred ysai-s of 360 days = 532'238 Julian years = D. Now

D-^|^p = 532-238-0-459 = 531-778, the date of the first
365-25 '

year of the second king of the four Persian kings of Daniel,

viz. of Cambyses the son of Cyrus, computed prospectively

back from the middle point between the 1360th and the

1365th lunar years from the Menophrcan epoch. The same

graduation was adopted by Dionysius for a fixed epoch for the

Nativity of Christ. But D-360^*"'" =517-626, the date

of the close of the sixth Nile year of the reign of Darius the
son of Hystaspes, rhc third Persian king, and the date of the
completion of the second temple by Zerubbabel and Jeshua
(Joi'adah being pontiff), computed, prospectively, back from
the same masonic epoch of the Nativity. As the close of the
sixth Nile year of Darius the son of Hystaspes was the close
of the 804th Nile year of the Menophrean epoch, we under-
stand the reason why the Sabean writers suspended the works
of the building of the temple (or, it may be, deferred the lay-
ing of the first stone and date thereof) in the second year of