174 ■ The Rev. E. Hincks on the Years and Cycles 



by the nilometer, or by its being the 122n(i after the solstice, and that length 

 was thenceforward considered as the standard ; and the day, in which the sha- 

 dow, in its increase after the summer solstice, attained to that standard length, 

 was accounted the first day of the new year. The years so determined would be 

 of the same average length as before, but they could only consist of 365 and 

 366 days. They would arrange themselves in periods, consisting of three com- 

 mon and one protracted year, occasionally interrupted by periods consisting of 

 four common and one protracted year. During the time that this system con- 

 tinued in use, and probably shortly after its introduction, the year was divided 

 into twelve equal months of thirty days, and the five or six days, which it con- 

 tained additional, were placed together at the end. To this form of year the 

 hieroglyphical notation was adapted. The names given to the months in that 

 notation expressed physical characters, which they were known to possess, and 

 which they must continue to possess so long as the form of the year should 

 remain as it was. In order to determine the first day of the year by the meri- 

 dian shadow cast by the sun, it was necessary that there should be some object of 

 a remarkable appearance, terminating in a point, and of a permanent nature, the 

 shadow of which might be measured. The pyramids possessed all these charac- 

 ters in a remarkable degree ; and I cannot doubt, that, whatever end they might 

 be intended to answer of a sepulchral or religious nature, they were constructed 

 externally with a view to their being used to mark the commencement of the 

 year, and that they were actually used for this purpose. The ingenious author 

 of the articles on the Pyramids in Eraser's Magazine, conceives that they were 

 designed to mark the commencement of the wandering year at the period of 

 their erection ; the day of the pyramid's first casting a shadow being the day 

 corresponding to the first day of the wandering year at the time when the 

 pyramid was built. But in the long course of time, which must have elapsed while 

 a pyramid was being built, the sun's altitude on the first of Thoth must have 

 ■ varied considerably, supposing, as this vvriter does, that the year was then a wan- 

 dering one. Besides, the commencement of the building of a pyramid does not 

 appear to have been an event of such importance as that its era should have been 

 marked in this manner. I should think it much more likely that the pyramid 

 was constructed so as that the first day of its casting a shadow at noon should be 

 the first day of a fixed year ; and there appears some reason to think that, in 



