NOTES, 



225 



1460 years. The property of the sothic period, that 

 of bringing back the seasons and festivals to the same 

 point of the year, after having made them pass suc- 

 cessively through every point, is 'undoubtedly one of 

 the reasons, which caused intercalation to be proscribed, 

 no less than the repugnance of the Egyptians for foreign 

 institutions. Now it is remarkable, that this same 

 solar year of 365 days six hours, adopted by nations so 

 different, and perhaps still more remote in their state 

 of civilization than in their geographical distance, re- 

 lates to a real astronomical period, and belongs pe- 

 culiarly to the Egyptians. This is a point, which Mr. 

 Fourier will ascertain in his reseaches on the zodiac 

 of Egypt. No one is . more capable of deciding this 

 question in an astronomical point of view. He alone 

 can elucidate the valuable discoveries, which he has 

 made. I shall here observe, that the Persians, who 

 intercalated thirty days every hundred and twenty 

 years ; the Chaldeans, who employed the era of Nabo- 

 nassar ; the Romans, who added a day every four years : 

 the Syrians, and almost all the nations who regulated 

 their calendar by the course of the Sun ; appear to me, 

 to have taken from Egypt the notion of a solar year of 

 365 days J, the use of equal months, and that of the 

 five complementary days. As to the Mexicans, it would 

 be superfluous to examine how they attained this 

 knowledge ; such a problem would not be soon re- 

 solved : but the fact of the intercalation of thirteen 

 days every cycle, that is, the use of a year of 365 days 

 and i, is a proof, that it was either borrowed from the 

 Egyptians, or that they had a common origin. It is 

 also to be observed, that the year of the Peruvians is 

 not solar, but regulated according to the course of the 

 Moon, as among the Jews, the Greeks, the Macedo- 

 VOL. XIV. Q 



