Smylv — Examination of Dates of the Assouan Aramaic Papyri. 237 



have attempted to deal with the Macedonian calendar of the early Ptolemies 

 will have learned caution. 



The assumptions on which the following discussion is based are : — 



(1) The Egyptian year is the annus vagus of 365 days, without inter- 



calation. In any given year the equivalent date by the Julian 

 calendar can be determined. 



(2) The Jewish calendar was luni-solar. That is to say, the first day of 



any Jewish month approximately coincided with the apparent new 

 moon. No assumption should be made as to the method of inter- 

 calation. 



(3) The accepted dates of the kings' reigns are approximately accurate, 



though, for the purposes of this investigation, an error of four or 

 five years either way would not influence the results. 



We should, therefore, proceed by first obtaining, as nearly as possible, the 

 Julian days of the month which correspond to the Egyptian dates of the 

 papyri. From this we can determine the Julian equivalent of the first day 

 of the Jewish month. A comparison with the lunar tables will show whether 

 this date coincided, in any not distant year, with the apparent new moon. 

 By this method the day of the month in the Julian calendar is determined 

 by the given Egyptian date ; the year is determined by the lunar tables ; so 

 that we may regard the true Julian date as astronomically determined. 

 From the results thus obtained we can determine the proper readings in 

 those papyri in which they are doubtful : we can draw definite conclusions 

 concerning the commencement of the year, and the way in which the years 

 of the kings' reigns were counted. The determination of these points will 

 provide for the chronology of the Persians in Egypt a basis much more secure 

 than any that has previously existed. 



Before entering upon the separate examination of the dates of the 

 papyri, it is necessary to say a few words about the alternative numbers 

 which appear in most of these dates. The doubts are partly due to the 

 fact that the last stroke of the number sometimes differs from the others in 

 thickness and in direction, but chiefiy to the peculiarities in the form of 

 the date of Papyrus K. In this text the number of the year is given 

 twice: in the first instance it is clearly 13; but in the second the symbols 

 for 13 are followed by a stroke slanting in a different direction from the 

 others. The editors assumed that the number ought to be the same in 

 both cases. But this assumption is not necessary, for among the early 

 Greek and Demotic papyri of the Ptolemaic dynasty there are several 

 which assign the same event to years whose numbers differ by one. This 



