150 Mutton Webster 



as possible, did not wash themselves, and took special care not to 

 undertake any menial or difficult task, doubtless because they lived 

 in the conviction that they would be forced to keep on doing it 

 through the whole ensuing year. The Mexicans were more pas- 

 sive in regard to these days, inasmuch as they merely took care 

 to avoid conjuring up mischief for the coming year while the 

 Mayas did things more thoroughly. During these days, so por- 

 tentous for the entire year, they banished the evil which might 

 threaten them. They prepared a clay image of the demon of evil, 

 Uuayayab, . . . confronted it with the deity who had supreme 

 power during the year in question, and then carried it out of the 

 village in the direction of that cardinal point to which the new 

 year belonged."^* 



It is an impressive testimony to the essential unity of primitive 

 culture that in a far distant quarter of the globe an almost identical 

 superstition existed. The Egyptian solar calendar, as the Mexi- 

 can, was based on a year of 365 days, but in Egypt the year was 

 divided into twelve equal months of thirty days each, likewise 

 leaving five supplementary days to be added at the end of the 

 twelfth month — •" the five days over and above the year," as they 

 were styled by the Egyptians. At an early period these epago- 

 menal days were celebrated in certain temples as those on which 

 the five gods of the Osirian cycle — Osiris, Horus, Typhon, Isis, 

 Nephthys, were born.^^ The first, third and fifth were held to be 

 unlucky, the second is not described as either lucky or unlucky, 

 whilst the fourth is said to be a " beautiful festival of heaven and 

 earth."^« 



"Seler, op. cit., 16 sq. Cf. for a fuller account idem, in Hastings, 

 Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, iii. 308. 



" Diodorus Siculus, i. 13, 4 ; Plutarch, De Isidc et Osiride, 12. 



" E. A. W. Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, London, 1904, ii. 109. Wiede- 

 mann {Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, London, 1897, P- 211) mentions 

 only tlie third as an unlucky day. See also Foucart, in Hastings, Encyclo- 

 paedia of Religion and Ethics, iii. 92 sq., 105. 



The ancient Persians likewise counted five epagomenal days to make 

 up the solar year; and their feast of the Sacaea, mentioned by Berosus, 

 has l)een shown to be identical with the celebration of these supplementary 



