P.S. July, 1858. The following publications, which deserve particular notice, have appeared since this was written: CHABAS, F. Le plus ancien Livre du Monde, in the "Revue Archéologique," 1858, p. 1-26. HEATH, D. I., Rev. The Exodus Papyri: 8vo., London, 1855. A Record of the Patriarchal Age: 12mo., London, 1858. DE ROUGE. Le Poeme de Pen-ta-our, in the "Revue Contemporaine," 1856, p. 389. Notice sur un Manuscrit Égyptien, in the "Revue Archéologique," 1853, vol. ix. p. 385. 37 SECTION I. THE EGYPTIAN CALENDAR, AND THE DATE OF ITS INSTITUTION.4 A. THE MOVABLE YEAR AND THE SIGNS OF THE MONTHS MUST HAVE BEEN ARRANGED ABOUT THE YEAR 3285 B. C. IT is almost universally admitted, after the various learned investigations which have been instituted upon the subject in our days, that there were neither intercalary days nor intercalary months in the civil calendar of the Egyptians before the time of Augustus; but that the civil year of 365 days gradually ran farther and farther into the true solar year. A more recent attempt to sustain the opposite view, in which some passages in the classics have been misunderstood and others overlooked, must be considered entirely abortive. The following will suffice to show that such a notion is wholly untenable. It is stated by Eratosthenes, nearly two centuries before the reign of Augustus, that the festival of Isis, which in earlier times coincided with the vernal equinox, coincided in his time with the autumnal. The only explanation of this is, that the civil year, in the absence of intercalary days or months, passed through In reference to this subject generally, we refer our readers to the lucid and conclusive exposition in Ideler's Handbook of Chronology, vol. i. 5 Upon the Names given to the Months by several ancient Peoples. By Drs. Benfey and Stern. Berlin, 1837-8. all the seasons, inasmuch as it anticipated the solar year by nearly one day in every four years. The consequence of this would be, that a festival which originally fell on the 1st of Thoth would gradually advance two, three, four, and, at the end of 120 years, thirty days, or a month, into the true year. Geminus, who lived 70 B. C., in quoting the above remark of Eratosthenes, states so expressly in reference to his own times. How could Ptolemy, in the age of the Antonines, have made the astronomical calculations which he records, according to the movable year, as Hipparchus also did, if it had not been the Old-Egyptian year? But he expressly designates these computations, which extended back far beyond the Ptolemaic times, as "those according to the Egyptians," in contrast with the Alexandrian method, in which it is admitted that calculations were made by fixed years from the time of the capture of Alexandria by Augustus. In a movable year of this sort the months, then, must necessarily have advanced gradually through all the seasons. But in Egypt all the twelve months were connected with signs of settled seasons, and, indeed, in such a manner that, from the peculiarity of that remarkable country, we can accurately assign the particular period of the solar year which each of these signs was meant to indicate, and, of course, did really indicate when the calendar was arranged. The Egyptians we know had three seasons, consisting of four equal months of thirty days (a tetrameny). The five supplemental days (epagomenæ) were added on to the end of the twelfth. In the invariable order of these months, Thoth being always the first, these, as the hieroglyphics by which the bust of Champollion is surrounded on our frontispiece are intended to demonstrate, were called, the GREEN SEASON, the HARVEST SEASON, and the WATER SEASON. |