NOTES. 
225 
1460 3 ^ears. 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 the use of equal months, and that of the 
five complementaiy days. As to the M exicans, 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 ^^ear of 365 days 
and I, is a proof, that it was either borrowed iVom 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 
