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



of the two cycles ; containing five lunisolar cycles, and two cycles of 1500 years. 

 This period of 3000 years is mentioned by Herodotus (Eut. 123) as that in 

 which the transmigration of souls is completed ; and it appears from the Old 

 Chronicle to have been the duration of the reign of Chronus, or Time. 



But an objection may here be stated. If the period of 300 years was not in 

 strict propriety cyclical, why should the Egyptians have represented it by a 

 phoenix, which could only symbolize a period, in which things returned to their 

 pristine state ? This objection admits the following answer ; which, if it be 

 correct, supplies a fresh verification of the results, at which I have already 

 arrived. The Egyptians did not place the return of a phoenix at the end of 

 every period of 300 years ; but only when the multiplier was an even number or 

 five. In other words, using their mystical language, no phoenix lived so short a 

 time as 300 years ; but as one phoenix lived GOO years, and the other 1500, the 

 intervals between the successive appearances of phoenixes would sometimes be 

 only 300 years. Now, it is to be observed, that, though the period of 300 years, 

 which terminated A. D. 34, was the sixth such period, since the reformation of 

 the calendar in 1767 B. C. ; the phoenix which appeared then is only numbered 

 by Tacitus as the fourth. Why ? because at the end of the Jirst and third 

 periods of 300 years, there was no complete revolution, and consequently no 

 phoenix. Tacitus's phoenixes appeared first under Sesostris. This was the 

 ' lunisolar phoenix, whose life was 600 years, which is the space mentioned by 

 Philostratus in the third book of his life of Apollonius. The time of its appear- 

 ance was the 147th day of the 601st Egyptian year, or 4th November, 1 167, B. C. 

 The next phoenix, which Tacitus mentions, was of the same sort ; and appeared 

 under Amasis on the 293rd day of the 1201st Egyptian year, or 31st October, 

 567 B. C. This falls within the reign of Amasis according to any system of 

 chronology ; and, according to what I conceive to be the most probable system, 

 it falls in his sixth year. The third phoenix of Tacitus was that of which Mani- 

 lius speaks ; saying, that " in its life a revolution of the great year was completed, 

 and the seasons and stars returned to the same situations." Its life was accord- 

 ingly 1500 years, and it returned, alter et idem, on the first day of the 1502nd 

 Egyptian year, or on the 29th October, 267 B. C. ; which was the 19th year of 

 Ptolemy Philadelphus, the third Macedonian sovereign of Egypt. Lastly, the 

 lunisolar phoenix appeared under Tiberius, on the 74th day of the 1802nd Egyp- 

 tian year, or 27th October, A. D. 34. We have thus all the phoenixes, whose 



