Smyf.y — Examination of Dates of the Assouan Aramaic Papyri. 243 



what follows these three years will be called respectively a Thoth year, a 

 Nisaii year, and a Tishri year. 



A comparison of Papyri E and F proves that the Tishri year was not 

 that employed, for the date of Papyrus E is 17th November, 446; and if 

 the 19th year began at some date in Sept.-Oct., 446, the 25th year would 

 have begun on soine day in Sept.-Oct., 440, and hence could not have included 

 the 26th of August, 440. In other words, a comparison of Papyri E and F 

 proves that the beginning of the year cannot have taken place between the 

 26th of August and the 17th of November. There remain the Thoth year and 

 the Nisan year. In dating by kings' reigns, in most ancient countries, 

 except Babylon, the reigns were ante-dated ; that is, the second year began 

 at the new year after the king's accession. Thus in the so-called Ptolemaic 

 Canon, the reigns of the Ptolemies are counted from the 1st of Thoth 

 preceding the accession. 



In Babylon the reigns were post-dated. The year of the accession of 

 the new king was the last of the preceding king, and the first year began 

 on the 1st of the following Nisan. The Ptolemaic Canon for the Babylonian 

 kings dates the reign from the 1st of Thoth, before the 1st of Nisan, after 

 the accession : thus in the period between the 1st of Thoth and the follow- 

 ing 1st of Nisan, the Canon date will be one year in advance of the 

 Babylonian date.' 



This principle, adopted in the Canon, of dating the Babylonian kings from 

 the 1st of Thoth preceding the 1st of Nisan which was subsequent to the 

 accession, is not a true system of ante-dating the reigns, unless the accession 

 of the king came later than the 1st of Thoth and earlier than the 1st 

 of Nisan : if the accession came after the 1st of Nisan and before the 

 1st of Thoth, the reigns would be post-dated in both calendars. Though 

 the system of the Canon is simple and intelligible for the astronomical 

 purposes for which it was drawn up, it is hardly conceivable that 

 it was adopted for dating contemporary documents. In these it is much 

 more probable that, while the years were, as we shall see, post-dated by 

 the Jewish calendar, they were truly ante-dated by the Egyptian, If this 

 were so, it would follow that, when the accession took place between 

 the 1st of Thoth and the 1st of Nisan, the number of the year in the 

 Egyptian calendar would be greater by one than that in the Jewish calendar 

 during the period between the 1st of Thoth and the 1st of Nisan, and that 



' It is not neoessarj' to discuss these statemerits here, because the whole question has been very 

 clearly examined by Eduavd M. Meyer, and these results have, in my opinion, been definitely 

 proved by him in " Forschungen ziir alten Geschichte," vol. ii., p. 437f. 



R. I. A. PROC, VOL, XXVII., SECT. C. [37] 



