164 CHRONOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS 



Copts : and we may yet be obliged to appeal to Modern Egypt, and 

 the current Reckoning there, to recover the connecting points in our 

 own Chronology.* 



10. It appears, from the Old Egyptian Chronicle, as well as from the 

 Africano-Manetho Table of Chronology, that the numbers 1540 and 

 1461 were both used by the Egyptians in measuring time. Possibly, 

 the latter number may not always stand for years: for there are 

 (3651x4=) 1461 days in a quadrennium of our own Calendar; and 

 one hundred of our Calendar years contain "1461x25 = 36,525" 

 days ; a sum, which, by changing the place of the comma, becomes 

 the decimal expression of 365L 



The Egyptians have long used a Fixed Calendar; and, as de- 

 scribed by Lane and others, it does not materially differ from our own. 

 When Augustus visited Alexandria (in B. C. 30), the Egyptian New 

 Year fell on "the 29th of August:" and in modern times, a similar 

 arrangement has been found to exist in several Oriental Calendars. 

 The origin of the practice appears to be connected with the Egyptian 

 Sacred Numbers, 40 and 70; the 29th of August, being forty days 

 after the Rising of Sirius (July 20th), and seventy days after the 

 Solstice. In Modern Egypt, we find the New Year no longer "seventy" 

 days from the Solstice; and we thus acquire the means of testing the 

 reality of Precession. 



Leyjsius is said to have traced the Egyptian Fixed Calendar as far 

 back as the Building of the Pyramids. However this may be, the 

 sign of the quadrennium occurs on the very earliest monuments, and 

 implies, that the Egyptians kept a record of the natural tears : 

 either by the approximation of a fourth year intercalation ; or they 

 may have used a simple enumeration ; the same, perhaps, that after- 

 wards among the Greeks was continued as the " Olympiads." 



11. The Ancient Egyptians also enumerated the lunations : using 

 for this purpose a short Lunar Calendar ; which has been traced by 

 Lepsius as far back as the Twelfth Dynasty, and is perhaps the one 

 continued at the present day by the Muslims. This short Lunar 



* Some ambiguity arises, in consequence of the Dionysian Era (already noticed in the 

 preceding pages) commencing 284 years before the Christian Era; while the Diocletian, 

 commences 284 years afterwards. Whichever Era may have been employed in con- 

 nexion with the Old Egyptian Chronicle, the substitution will produce no change in the 

 main results. 



