April 27, 191 1] 



NATURE 



2«3 



nature of things a compromise, and the divergence 

 between the schemes which have been brought tor- 

 ward proves that the reformers are by no means of 

 one mind. The ordinary man does not seem im- 

 pressed with the necessity for a change. It is alleged 

 that the business man feels some inconvenience, but 

 the English accountant would surely gain far more 

 benefit from a decimal currency than from a fixed 

 almanac. Meanwhile the Board of Trade is very 

 properly taking steps to learn the opinions of the 

 merchants and traders of the country. 



It is, of course, mere child's play to invent a 

 calendar. The objection to interrupting the consecu- 

 tive run of the weeks must be strongly felt. One 

 wonders therefore that none of those who appear to 

 be so much impressed with the advantage of sub- 

 dividing a year of 364 days have not, so far as we 

 are aware, suggested another plan for getting rid of 

 the superfluous da5's. This could be done by using 

 the week instead of the day as the unit of inter- 

 calation. We begin by allotting 364 days to the 

 common year. We then add at the end of every 

 fifth year (the date ending with o or 5) a special 

 "leap" week. This in itself would make the year 

 on the average too long. We therefore omit the 



• leap " week every fifty years, when the date ends in 

 -5 or 75; and, further, we omit the week at every 

 ( t;ntury which is divisible by 4 (the reverse of the 

 dregorian rule). The result is to add 71 weeks or 

 497 days in 400 years, thus making the average 

 length of the year 365"2425 days, or exactly the same 

 as the mean Gregorian year. The special week 

 would probably be found a nuisance, but it would 

 '>nly come once in five years, and it has been seriously 

 proposed to introduce four such weeks into every 

 \ear! Of course, under this plan, the date of the 

 ( quinox would wander eight days on either side of 

 the mean date. At the sacrifice of simplicity it would 

 lie more correct to intercalate eleven weeks in each 

 successive period of 62 years, at the intervals : 



6,6,5, 6,6,5, 6,6,5, 6,5 years, 

 Hy this rule the equinox would be kept within four 

 (lays of a given date, while the mean length of a year 



• ould be slightly more accurate than in the Gregorian 

 \stem. Such a variation from the mean date would 

 K)t be likelv to constitute a practical objection. The 



idea, however, is onlv suggested in order to illustrate 

 ihe unexhausted possibilities which lie before the 

 would-be calendar reformer. H. C. P. 



THE UNVEILING OF NUBIA.^ 

 T ESS than four years ago practically nothing was 

 ^ known of the true history of that stretch of the 

 Nile Valley, immediately above the First Cataract, 

 wliich is known to us to-dav as Nubia, be- 

 yond a few ancient Egyptian stories of raids and 

 conquests, and the tales, often enough fantastic and 

 unreal, of Greek and Roman tourists. In one brief 

 winter's work (1907-8) Dr. Reisner and his col- 

 laborators have changed all that. For they have 

 recovered from the soil of Nubia the materials for 

 reconstructing the main phases of the history of that 

 ( ountry's strange vicissitudes during the last fiftv cen- 

 Uirics, as well as a great mass of precise information 

 loncerning that crucial period in her evolution, when, 

 .ii)out twenty-seven centuries before the Christian era, 

 she besran to lag behind Egypt and take her own 

 wayward course, which earned for her the ancient 

 bvword " wretched " Nubia. 



It has now been demonstrated that in predynastic 



I "The Af-h^ ''o^ici' Survey of NiiV)i-«. R p'>rt for IQ07-8." Vol i., 

 V'chai'lo !ra' R-port. Ry Prof. G. A. Reisnrr, Pp. v4-37') + -^1o text- 

 ^nres. PI t-s tiH p|:\n« to accomn'>ny vol. i. Pp. 14 + 73 plates + xxx 

 plans. (C.-iTo : National Printing Denarfnent, 1910.) Piice z I.e. 



NO. 2165, VOL. 86] 



limes, i.e. before Upper and Lower Egypt became 

 united under Menes, tfie first king of the nrst dynasty 

 {circa 34001100 B.C.), and until the end of the third 

 dynasty {circa 2700 B.C.), Egypt and Nubia were cul- 

 turally (and, as is shown m vol. ii. of this report, 

 racially also) one territory ; but, from the time roughly 

 correspondmg to the beginning of the period ot the 

 Pyramid-builders in Egypt, the histories of the two 

 countries began to diverge the one from the other, 

 Egypt advancing by rapid strides towards national 

 greatness and the attainment of her highest artistic 

 and architectural triumphs; while Nubia was not 

 able even to maintain the old standard of archaic 

 culture, for her people lost their cunning at the same 

 time that their racial purity became tainted with negro 

 blood. 



In the time of the Middle Kingdom (circa 2000 B.C.), 

 when Egypt for a second time was raised on the 

 crest of a wave of prosperity. Nubia also felt the same 

 influence, and began to exhibit marked signs of pro- 

 gress and the attainment of a distinct individuality; 

 then for the first time her people began to manufac- 

 ture wares that were not merely inspired by Egypt 

 or imitations of Egyptian workmanship, but deserve 

 to be called Nubian. And if it be admitted that the 

 Nubian arts and crafts show obvious traces of their 

 derivation from the archaic Egyptian, it is also clear 

 that they were developed in a manner strikingly dif- 

 ferent from those found in Egypt in dynastic times. 

 In the first products of these distinctively Nubian 

 arts we can detect, as also in the remains of the 

 people who made them, an underlying stratum of 

 predynastic Egyptian influence, modified by negro 

 admixture, but evolved in a manner quite distinctive 

 of and confined to Nubia. 



Egypt and Nubia each went its own way and 

 evolved along the distinctive lines they had respec- 

 tively chosen, until a time shortly before the in- 

 auguration of the New Empire in Egypt. The passing 

 of Egypt under the sway of the Asiatic Hyksos 

 domination had the effect of driving many Egyptians 

 into voluntary exile in Nubia ; this led to a displace- 

 ment of the Nubian population southwards; charac- 

 teristic Egyptian graves, containing Egyptian wares 

 and the remains of Egyptian people, made their ap- 

 pearance in Nubia at this time ; and evidences of 

 Egyptian occupation of the country were abundant 

 throughout the period of the New Empire. 



But when Egyptian power began to wane, the 

 Nubians came into their own once more ; but 

 as they returned from the south strangers accom- 

 panied them, and, ever after this event, from time 

 to time there were incursions of aliens into Nubia ; 

 sometimes tall, Dinka-Iike negroid warriors, with 

 their own distinctive burial customs; later still, 

 Egyptians of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods 

 occupied Nubia and left the characteristic evidence 

 of their stay in the country, as well as the bodies of 

 criminals of non-Nubian type — perhaps the notorious 

 Rlenunyes of the Eastern desert, the mysterious people 

 to whom the classical writers so often referred — 

 whom they had executed; then again, in the early 

 centuries of the Christian era, but before the intro- 

 duction of Christianity into Nubia, another group of 

 Negroes came north into Nubia, and in the graves 

 of their dead buried their own distinctive pottery, 

 which is neither Egyptian nor Nubian ; and in Chris- 

 tian times aliens from Syria and western Asia took 

 refuge beyond the First Cataract. 



Nubia was ever a poverty-stricken land ; to add 

 to her natural disabilities, her geographic.Tl position 

 rendered her liable to be overrun by all these alien 

 hordes, and made her the meeting-place of Egyptians 

 and Negroes and the cockpit where they fought. 



