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



beginning of Germinal. I can conceive it to be possible that the French Revo- 

 lutionists might have adopted a year of this form ; but, had they done so, I cannot 

 think they would have given names to the months, expressive of their physical 

 characters ; — not even though they had a Delalande to point out to them that 

 " in sixty-nine or seventy years, or more accurately three times in 209 years, the 

 months would return to their normal places." It is surprising to me that 

 M. Biot did not perceive that the establishment of any cyclical relation between 

 the year of 360 days and the tropical year supposes a knowledge of the length of 

 the latter. Had the use of the tropical year preceded that of the year of 360 

 days, such a relation might have existed ; but this is not M. Biot's opinion. He 

 attributes the use of the year of 360 days to ignorance. It originated, according 

 to him, in " the first ages of nascent civilization," ages of which I deny the 

 existence in Egypt ; and was abandoned when it was discovered that a year of 

 365 days would more accurately exhibit the succession of the seasons. Under 

 such circumstances, how could a cycle, such as M. Biot has imagined, have been 

 employed ? The demi-savages, whom he supposes to have then inhabited the 

 valley of the Nile, had not him to reveal it to them. In truth, the parts of M. 

 Biot's memoir, in which he treats of the cyclical relations of this year of 360 days, 

 are but a specimen of ingenious trifling. Till he had brought forward some 

 proof that it existed at all, and, if so, that it existed cotemporaneously with 

 the hieroglyphic notation of the months, he need not have troubled himself to 

 show that in 209 years such a wandering year would have its seasons three times 

 in coincidence with their primitive places ; while in 48? years the dogstar would 

 seven times rise heliacally at its commencement. 



4. There is a fourth way of accounting for the hieroglyphic notation of the 

 months, as it exists on the monuments. The notation might have been intro- 

 duced, with or without a change in the form of the year, at the chronological 

 epoch, similar to that of the eighteenth century before our era, which might 

 have occurred in the thirty-third century before it. To this I reply, that the 

 epoch in question is prior to the most remote of the eras which biblical chro- 

 nologers have assigned for the deluge. This simple statement ought to be con- 

 clusive against the hypothesis. But, as this paper may fall into the hands of 

 some who undervalue this consideration, I will lay before them some others. 



I might appeal to the fact, that no dated inscriptions have been discovered. 



