LT.-COL. G. MACKINLAY ON BIBL[CAL ASTRONOMY. 13] 



with an additional month inserted about every third year to 

 prevent them from moving through the seasons ; this was also 

 the arrangement of the Israelites, who, however, possessed their 

 own peculiarities of calendar; for instance, at the beginning 

 of their national life they simply indicated a month by its 

 number, while the Babylonians assigned special names to each. 

 They also had special feast times and sabbaths. 



The Egyptians (a race quite foreign to the Israelites), on the 

 other hand, had equal civil years of 365 days each, regulated 

 by the sun alone, and divided into twelve non-lunar months of 

 thirty days each, with a separate and added period of five 

 days ; while the Egyptian sacred year was corrected on much 

 the same principle as that which we now adopt in our leap 

 year arrangement. 



In Babylonia much attention was given to the moon, 

 witness the remains at the present moment of a temple to the 

 moon god at Abraham's own town of Ur. Temples to the sun 

 god are very numerous in Egypt, but those to the moon are 

 rarer. 



When the Hebrews lived in Egypt they must doubtless have 

 used the Egyptian calendar, at any rate in their dealings with 

 the inhabitants of the land, and possibly they used the 

 Babylonian luni-solar calendar, or a similar one, among 

 themselves as the Jews do now ; but this is not very likely, 

 as at first they were few in number, and they then had no 

 great feasts of their own to observe. But from the time of the 

 first passover they gave up the Egyptian calendar altogether, 

 and the Lord's words to Moses, " This month " (evidently a 

 strictly lunar one) " shall be unto you the beginning of months, 

 it shall be the first month of the year unto you " (Ex. xii, 2), 

 emphasizes the break with the land of the oppressors. This 

 abandonment of the Egyptian calendar must have needed 

 great skill and wisdom on the part of Moses to carry out,* 

 and it was of a piece with the general policy to prevent any 

 return to the land of Egypt, which was naturally in the 



* The tenacity with which an old calendar may be clung to is shown 

 by the fact that in two Mahommedan countries with strictly lunar years, 

 Morocco and Persia, there are still remains of another calendar. Iu the 

 former country, the time for sowing is regulated by almanacks in which 

 the actual names of the Roman non-lunar months still survive (letter 

 from G. Michell, Esq., H.B.M. Vice-Consul Casa Blanca, Morocco). And 

 in Persia governors assume their offices on the first day of the year, which 

 is computed according to the old Persian solar reckoning. (Letter, 

 Rev. H. St. Clair Tisdall missionary in Persia.) 



