Oedipus Aegyptiacus c. 1653 by Athanasius Kircher
“Upon the pole the circle of the Zodiac ends in 24 stations of the stars: one half they place toward the north, the other toward the south; they assign strength to those stars which fall under the sense of sight and belong to the region of light, but those which flee the gaze they place in the realm of darkness and of the dead, and these form the whole order of the universe.” These, together with the Sun, pass through their annual revolution, and observe the pantomime of the Osiridian actions, being the causes of the great changes everywhere in this world. And this is the Egg of Zoroaster, that is, the World, in which Orimazes placed 24 gods, and Arimanius the same number of opposing spirits, for the sake of the mixture of good and evil. See the tale in Plutarch On Osiris and Isis, and in folio 176, where the subject of the Pamphilian Obelisk is handled, and which the Chaldeans represented under the following figure."
