NA TORE 



[November lo, 1892 



THE ORIGIN OF THE YEAR, 

 III. 



T N the previous articles I have endeavoured to show 

 that the Egyptians had the Sirius year and the vague 

 year so related to each other that the successive coin- 

 cidences of the ist Thoth in both years took place after 

 intervals of 1460 Sirian years. With a real year, the 

 length of which would be brought home to them by the 

 regular recurrence of the solstices and Nile flood (to say 

 nothing of the equinoxes) and the year of 360 days which 

 they would soon find to be quite artificial and unreal ; 

 they would be much more likely to refer the dates in the 

 artificial year to the real one, than to take the opposite 

 course, and, as I have shown, the artificial dates would sweep 

 backwards through the real ones. Such a method of reckon- 

 ing, however, would be useless for calendar purposes, as 

 they not only wanted to define the days of the year but 

 the years themselves, and I pointed out that something 

 more was necessary, and that an easy way of defining 

 years would be to conceive a great year, or atmus magnus, 

 consisting of 1460 years, each " day" of which would re- 

 present four years in actual time ; and further to consider 

 every event, the year of which had to be chronicled in 

 relation to others to take place on the day of the heliacal 

 rising of Sirius or the nearly coincident Nile flood, which. 



was employed to mark the first year of each series of 

 four. 



Now as a matter of fact it is known (I have the high 

 authority of Dr. Krall for the statement) that each king 

 was supposed to begin his reign on the ist Thoth 

 (or 1st Pachons) of the particular year in which that 

 event took place, and the fact that this was so sup- 

 ports the suggestion we are considering. During the 

 reign its length and the smaller events might be 

 recorded in vague years and days so long as the date of 

 its commencement had been referred to a cycle. 



We have next to consider more especially the vague 

 year. 



One argument which has been used to show that 

 a vague year was not in use during the time of the 

 Ramessids has been derived from some inscriptions 

 at Silsilis which refer to the dates on which sacred 

 offerings were presented there to the Nile-god. As the 

 dates 15th of Thoth and 15th of Epiphi are the same 

 in all three inscriptions, although they cover the period 

 from Ramses II. to Ramses III. — 120 years — it has been 

 argued by Brugsch that a fixed year is in question. 



Brugsch points out that the two dates are separated 

 by 65 days ; that this is the exact interval between the 

 Copiic festivals of the commencement of the flow and 

 the marriage of the Nile— the time of highest water ; and 



■■■nBiHniii 



Fig. 5. — The distribution of the ist of Thoth (representing the rising of Sirius) among the Egyptian month: 



1460 year Sotliic cycle. 



as we shall see, occurred, at different periods of Egyptian 

 history, on the ist Thoth and ist Pachons. 



A diagram, which may here be repeated, was given to 

 show how such a system would work. From any co- 

 incidence of 1st Thoth (or ist Pachons) in both the Sirian 

 and the vague year, since the vague year is the shorter, 

 the 1st Thoth (to deal only with Thoth) of the vague year 

 would recede ; so that in such a cycle it would fall first 

 among the Epacts, then in Mesori, and so on through 

 the months, till the next coincidence was reached. 



The diagram will show how readily the cycle year can 

 be determined for any vague year. If for instance the 

 1st Thoth in the vague year falls on i Tybi of the cycle, 

 we see that 980 years must have elapsed since the be- 

 ginning of the cycle, and so on. 



Here, then, we have a true calendar system ; if the 

 Egyptians had not this, what had they 1 



Such a calendar system as this it will be seen, however, 

 is good only for groups of four years. Thus during the 

 first four years of a cycle the ist Thoth vague would 

 happen on ist Thoth of the cycle, during the next four 

 years on the 5th Epact, and so on. 



Now a system which went no further than this would 

 be a very coarse one. We find, however, that special 

 precautions were taken to define which year of the four 

 was in question. Brugsch ^ shows that a special sign 



' Continued from vol. xlvi. p. 107. 



^ " Mat^riaux pour servir a la reconstruction du calendrier," p. 29. 



NO. 1202, VOL. 47] 



that, therefore, in all probability these are the two natural 

 phenomena to commemorate which the offerings on the 

 dates in question were made. 



But Brugsch does not give the whole of the inscription. 

 A part of it, translated by De Rougd,^ runs thus : — 



" I (the king) know what is said in the depot of the 

 writings which are in the House of the Books. The Nile 

 emerges from its fountains to give the fullness of life- 

 necessaries to the gods," &c. 



De Rouge justly remarks : " Le langage singulier que 

 tient le Pharaon d^dicateur pourrait meme faire soup- 

 9onner qu'tl fte s'agit pas- de la veitue effective de I'eau 

 saint e du Nil a Vune des deux dates precite'es." 



Krall {loc. cit. p. 51) adds the following interesting 

 remarks: — "Consider, now, what these 'Scriptures of 

 the House of Life' were like. In a catalogue of books 

 from the temple of Edfu, we find, besides a series of 

 purely religious writings, 'The knowledge of the period- 

 ical recurrence of the double stars (sun and moon),' 

 and the ' Law of the periodical recurrence of the stars.' 

 "... The knowledge embodied in these writings dated 

 I from the oldest times of the Egyptian empire, in which 

 ! the priests placed, rightly or wrongly, the origin of all 



their sacred rolls" (cf Manetho's ' History," p. 130). 

 i Now to investigate this question we have to approach 

 I some considerations which at first sight may seem to be 



"Aeg. Zeit," 



5) P- 5i quoted by Krall 



