162 Proceedings of the 



from the commencement of the reign of each king: so that, in 

 order to establish the historical succession of events, it would appa- 

 rently be necessary to have a chronological canon, indicating the 

 number of years of each reign ; and many antiquarians have sup- 

 posed that this was the case. It is, however, singular, that in the 

 numerous Egyptian monuments with which we are acquainted we find 

 no traces of any such canon except, indeed, the chronological canon 

 of Ptolemy, and the fragments of the chronicle of Manetho, both of 

 which are of very limited extent. M. Biot seeks to prove, that the 

 attachment of the Egyptians to the annus vagus arose from the fact 

 of its containing a natural cycle, specially adapted to their country : 

 so that, by means of symbolic signs attached to the different days of 

 the annus vagus and to certain epochs of the true solar year, they 

 could, with the utmost facility, connect these two systems of years, 

 and thus fix the dates indicated by the anni vagi, with as much pre- 

 cision as we can do by our present calendar. M. Champollion, in 

 his late researches, has ascertained that the Egyptians divided the 

 year into three equal portions of four months, or 120 days each (the 

 five supplementary days having a separate and distinguishing mark) : 

 these were represented by symbols illustrative of the periods of vege- 

 tation, harvest, and inundation. The inundation of the Nile com- 

 mences invariably at the summer solstice: it attains its greatest 

 elevation in 100 days, and then, after remaining stationary a few 

 days, it begins to recede, and the ground is sown while yet moist; 

 so that in 120 or 125 days after the summer solstice, the period of 

 inundation ends, and that of vegetation commences. Four months 

 afterwards the harvest begins, and lasts four months ; and thus 

 ends the agricultural year. The Egyptians were well aware, that 

 as the inundation of the Nile invariably commenced at the summer 

 solstice, which would therefore be the first day of the ninth month, 

 or third period of the year, the first day of Thot (the first month) 

 ought to be 125 days after that solstice. They had, therefore, only 

 to observe the degree of variation existing between the time of the 

 solar year at which the 1st of Thot occurred in any given year, and 

 that at which it ought in reality to be found, and a perpetual and 

 unfailing calendar was at once constituted, showing with the utmost 

 precision in what part of the cycle of 1506 years any given year 

 was. It only remained then to ascertain how many of these cycles 

 there had been, or, in other words, when the Egyptians first adopted 

 the mode of computation by the annus vagus, and observed its 

 variation from the true solar year. It is evident that the system 

 must have commenced at a period when the solar year and the 

 annus vagus were in accordance; and as we know that when 

 Augustus altered the mode of computing the year, twenty-four 

 years B.C., the 1st Thot of the annus vagus corresponded with the 

 29th of August, it is easy, by fixing the date of the summer solstice, 

 to ascertain when the 1st day of Thot did in fact occur 125 days 

 after the summer solstice. The following table shows all the 



