160 The Rev. E. Hincks on the Years and Cycles 



true length of the year was among the facts known. It is difficult to suppose 

 that the excess of the solar year over 365 days should not have been known and 

 estimated ; but, as to its excess over 360 days being familiar to the first settlers, 

 there cannot be a question. How then could it ever have occurred to them to 

 limit the length of the year to 360 days ? Even the unbeliever in revelation 

 must see the absurdity of a year of 360 days having continued in use to so late a 

 date as 1780 B, C. ; but to the believer in the Holy Scriptures there is the same 

 absurdity in the supposition that such a year ever existed in Egypt at all. 



I write not, however, for believers in the Scriptures exclusively ; and I will, 

 therefore, without reference to their authority, reply to the question which I have 

 supposed to be asked ; and will show that a year of 365 days could not have been 

 substituted for one of 360 days in the ages preceding 1780 B. C. any more than 

 at that epoch. 



The year 2782 B. C. has been fixed upon by some chronologers as that in which 

 the year of 365 days succeeded that of 360. Those who maintain that opinion, 

 or any similar one, will have to account for the hieroglyphical notation of the 

 months on the different monuments. That notation could not have been intro- 

 duced at the time when the year of 365 days was introduced, or at any subsequent 

 epoch before about 1780 B. C, because until this last mentioned period the 

 physical characters of the actual year could never have corresponded to the 

 physical characters expressed by the notation. It remains then, that the notation 

 must have been first introduced about 1780, the form of the year remaining 

 unaltered ; or that the notation must have been introduced previously to the 

 change in the form of the year. The absurdity of the former supposition is 

 shown in this manner. Assuming it to be the case, it must have been well 

 known, at the time their denominations were given to the months, that they 

 would become inapplicable to them in the course of a few years. There must 

 have been many living, who would be able to testify, that, though the inundation 

 commenced then at the beginning of the ninth month, it had commenced in 

 their youthful days before the middle of the eighth, and they had heard from their 

 fathers of its commencing in the seventh. There was no change in the form 

 of the year cotemporary with the adoption of this notation of the months and 

 seasons, which might give rise to the belief that hereafter the seasons would 

 continue correctly denominated. The year must have been generally recognized 



