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



fied all the seasons equally, by bringing to them in their turn all the feasts of 

 the year." The kings of Egypt were required to swear at their accession " that 

 they would allow no intercalation of month or day, but would adhere to the 365 

 days, as their ancestors had appointed ;" — a plain evidence of what I have some- 

 where seen stated as a fact, that some Egyptian king had attempted to restore 

 the year to its original state by intercalating a month to make up for the days 

 already lost, and by ordering single days to be intercalated afterwards on the 

 old system ; but that a popular insurrection had compelled him to abandon the 

 project. The oath, it would seem, was imposed upon him at that time ; and his 

 successors were regularly required to take it. We have again a valuable testi- 

 mony to the importance, which the Egyptians attributed to the preservation of 

 the proper form of the year, in the complaint made by lamblichus, after the 

 fixed year had been substituted for the wandering one at the Roman conquest. 

 " The change," he says, " has taken away all their force from the prayers of the 

 people." If, in fact, we consider the religious appropriation of the days of the 

 year to the different deities, we shall see the ground of this complaint. The 

 year consisted of twelve months, and each month of thirty days. Now, these 

 thirty days were parcelled out among the different deities, so that each had his 

 own festival day occurring twelve times in the year. Each city, and probably 

 each family and individual, had its peculiar days to be observed, while the 

 remaining days in the month were passed over without notice. Besides these 

 monthly festivals, there was a grand annual festival, observed on the five celestial 

 days, in which all the Egyptians took a part. The honors paid to the kings, 

 who were worshipped as gods during their lives, were arranged on this same 

 system. We have a specimen in the decree on the Rosetta stone. The days, 

 which were to be kept in honor of the young king, were two in each month, the 

 I7th and 30th, because, as the decree states, the 30th Mesore was his birth-day, 

 and the l7th Mechir was the day of his accession, and a yearly feast ofjive days, 

 at the beginning of every Thoth, a feast equalling in length and immediately 

 following the grand feast of the five celestial days. There is no reason to sup- 

 pose that the honors appointed to be paid to Ptolemy Epiphanes by this decree 

 were at all different from those which had been paid to his predecessors. Know- 

 ing, then, what these were from this valuable record, we obtain an insight into 

 the whole system. We see the course of the monthly festivals ; and we see how 



