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



for 600 years before and after this last epoch ; that is, to so late a date (at Thebes) 

 as 1700 B. C. M. Biot, however, lays great stress on there having been a treble 

 coincidence in the year 3285. Not only the heliacal rising of Sirius, as computed 

 hy him, and the solstice, but also the first day of the ninth month of the year, 

 coincided in that year ; and, whatever be the case as to the solstice and the 

 heliacal rising of Sirius, he thinks that the solstice and the commencement of 

 the ninth month could never have coincided between 3285 and 1780. Now, I 

 admit that there is great apparent force in this reasoning, and it would be diffi- 

 cult to answer it on any other hypothesis as to the nature of the year than that 

 which I am maintaining in this proposition. According to this hypothesis, how- 

 ever, the objection does not lie. According to it, there was invariably a sensible 

 coincidence between the solstice and the beginning of the ninth month, from the 

 first colonization of Egypt down to the beginning of the eighteenth century 

 before Christ. And there was, consequently, by what I have just proved, a 

 sensible coincidence between all the three events, not for a few years only, as 

 M. Biot supposes, but for the whole period between the peopling of the country, 

 and the change of the form of the year in the eighteenth century before our era. 

 5. I will now proceed to develope this hypothesis of my own, for which I 

 have cleared the way by assigning special reasons why every other possible 

 hypothesis should be rejected. Let me first, however, mention one grand objec- 

 tion, to which they are all in common liable. They none .of them account in a 

 satisfactory manner for the hold which the hieroglyphical notation of the seasons 

 gained on the affections of the people. A wandering year existed in the country 

 for 2000 years, the names of the months and seasons of which were descriptive 

 of their physical characters at a particular epoch. If we say that the names were 

 first given at that particular epoch, we in some measure account for their first 

 introduction ; we account for these names having been given rather than any 

 other names descriptive of physical characters. All the hypotheses that we have 

 been considering go thus far ; but this is not enough ; and they none of them 

 go further. They do not account for names descriptive of physical characters 

 being given to the months of a wandering year, rather than names expressing 

 simply the order of succession, or names derived from the deities, which were 

 supposed to preside over them. It is a remarkable fact, that names of this latter 

 kind existed, and might have been used, but that they never are used in 



