period from Menes to Sethos (about 773 B.C.) the sun rose (avareina) four times in an extraordinary manner; that where it then set, it had twice risen (Tavaтsîñai), and where it then rose (avarénλ) it had twice set, without occasioning any alteration in Egypt, either as regarded the products of the earth or river, or in reference to disease or mortality. Various attempts were made to deduce some chronological data from this remark, which Letronne tried to dispose of by refuting the unphilological assumptions advanced in support of them. He saw in it only one more, in addition to the many notices in the classics, respecting extraordinary natural phenomena and changes in the courses of the

stars.

There can however be no doubt, upon an unprejudiced view of the passage, that the priests did mean to give Herodotus a chronological statement connected with these phenomena. His words certainly are enigmatical. There is a mistake either in the former or latter part of the sentence. For if the sun twice set in the east, it must naturally have also risen at the same time twice in the west; which makes, not four periods, but two. We must suppose that the special facts were what he was really told, and, as usual, reported faithfully, and the erroneous deduction from them his own. This furnishes us with a very striking solution. During the course of the Sothiac cycle, the beginning of the year gradually passed through all parts of the heavens; and at the middle of it was at the exactly opposite point to that of the normal solar year. When, therefore, the priests spoke of this passage of the movable solar year through the opposite points in the heavens, they may have said, or Herodotus may have understood them to mean, that the sun rose at the opposite side of the heavens, that is, in the west, and set at the other side. If they wished to describe the duration of two such periods, expressing it in this way, they would have

said that it occurred twice. We shall shortly find that this was perfectly correct.24

Tacitus likewise mentions the number 1460 as that of the Phoenix period, which, according to Herodotus and others, consisted of 500 years. Ptolemy, lastly, has clearly adopted the computation for the epoch of 25 years, for the length of a cycle of 1460 years.

If, then, all the notices regarding the Sothiac year tend to the conclusion that the sacred ordinances were based upon it, by the commencement of which, as being the representation of the primeval and model year,

24 This view has latterly been corroborated by Böckh's emendation of the passage, and Lepsius' learned explanation of it. Böckh (Manetho, 36. seq.) argues that, according to Herodotus' own mode of expressing himself, the words & éwv must be interpreted like i. 15.; in short that on simply means "habitations." This would require ȧvaorñvaι instead of ȧvarɛîλaι, which makes it perfectly intelligible. It seems to me that Pomponius Mela also understood it in this sense, for he says (i. 9.): "Mandatum literis servant, dum Ægyptii sunt, quater cursus suos vertisse sidera..." Lepsius explains it thus (Einl. 193.): "In the civil calendar also there was a day of the summer and of the winter solstice, of the vernal and of the autumnal equinox; they had a northern and a southern hemisphere, just as in the natural year. Now as these two circles gradually change their relative positions, it will happen that the true sun, at a fixed point in the ecliptic, the summer solstice for instance, will, at each of these periods, rise once on the day of the summer solstice of the civil year, at the top (wμa) of the northern hemisphere; then go down southwards, karabaiveɩ Tòv vоTor, as the astrologers said, and will again go southwards for precisely the same period to the opposite point of the winter solstice. After this it again takes upwards a northerly course, ἀναβαίνει τὸν βοῤῥᾶν, and lastly goes down again to the north, when it returns to the point from which it started; for the solstices were always considered as in the horizon, and the vernal equinox as up in the sky (uerovparei). Now in those years in which the sun set solstitially on the day of the civil summer solstice (Karen), it rose solstitially on the day of the winter solstice (avin), and vice versa. This astrologico-symbolical mode of expression was doubtless of very ancient date, and naturally was only understood by the priests, and took the exoteric shape of legends, such as those in Herodotus called Egyptian, and as we find them in a still more individualised shape also in Greek mythology."

all computations were made, the simple conclusion. will follow, that we require no other assumption, and are not justified in making any. The coincidence of the heliacal rising of Sirius with the summer solstice is the grand fixed point of Egyptian observation. To this point all their observations of the heavens and earth were directed during a period of nearly a thousand years ending 2800 B. C., the signs of which never did and never could recur. This, then, must have been the commencement of the Sothiac cycle, which, again, implies an earlier or contemporary assumption of the Epagomenæ. Now the year 2782 happens to be precisely the commencement of the divine Sothiac year preceding 1322. The notation of the months, according to which Thoth (the beginning of the civil year) was placed unchangeably 120 days after the solstice, may then have long been in use. The excess of the quarter of a day, owing to the connexion between its heliacal rising on the day of the solstice and the year of 365 days, may have been long known. The notion might therefore naturally arise of making the coincidence of the civil year, commencing with Sirius, the beginning of the great cycle which the year must pass through before it could again be in harmony with the stars and with nature. No change was allowed to be made: the arrangement of the festivals remained bound up with the model year, and the secret of the true year was as completely kept as the key to it was carefully preserved.

E.

THE APIS CYCLE OF 25 YEARS, AND ITS CONNEXION
WITH THE SOTHIAC CYCLE.

THE Apis Cycle was notoriously a period of 25 years.
It appears to me capable of proof that it necessarily had

relation both to the lunar and solar years. As Ideler has shown 25, there is not only a computation of the mean anomaly of the sun from 25 to 25 years of the Philippine era in the tables of Ptolemy, but that there are, in the sixth book of the Almagest, tables for calculating the mean new and full moons, in which there are progressive periods of that number of years (είκοσιπενταETηpides). 309 mean months are only 1h 8' 33" less than 25 Egyptian years. To this we may add, that

the Apis cycle of 25 years thus produced the same result, in regard to the coincidence of the lunar phases with the same days of the Egyptian year, as the Sothiac cycle did for the recurrence of the heliacal rising of Sirius with the beginning of the civil year.

There is a remarkable circumstance, though, as far as I am aware, it has not been hitherto noticed, that these tables of Ptolemy go on from 1, 26, 51, exactly up to the 1476th year. This appears to me to depend upon the following fact: 59 Apis cycles make up the Sothiac year of 1460 years, with 15 years over. If they had left off at the 58th Apis cycle, there would have been 10 years of the Sothiac cycle remaining. But this carries us further. Originally, at least, the two cycles must have begun together. In the 1450th year, therefore, of the Sothiac year the phases of the moon would have been nearly 3 days (2) behind the day at which it commenced; and the renewal of the cycle offered the simplest means of making the Apis cycle recommence in such a way, that people should be fully aware of the beginning of the new course.26

By this arrangement of the two systems, those of the lunar and solar years, it might be supposed that the intention was, by means of these cycles, to combine the two; and that previously the civil year had been a

25 P. 182.

26 The discovery of the Apis tombs has led to still further explanations. 1855.

lunar year of 354 days. The notation of the 12 moons might exist just as well with it as with the year of 360 days.27

F.

THE PHENIX PERIOD.

THE Phoenix Period, as noticed by Ideler and others, must be connected with the Sothiac cycle. Herodotus was told in Egypt distinctly that it was a cycle of 500 years, while Tacitus also obtained certain data which made it range uniformly with that cycle. 500 years are so nearly a third of the Sothiac cycle (instead of 487), that we must suppose it to be the third of the solar year. At the end of 500 (487 years) the signs of the months had got exactly four places wrong.

But we think this may be carried out further than has yet been done. The commencement of the Canicular cycle implies that the rising of Sirius corresponded with the 1st of Thoth. But this is a displacement of four months; for Thoth, according to his sign, begins 120 days after the ancient heliacal rising of Sirius. Hence, it was only at the end of 487 civil years, computed from the point of the proper notation of the months, that the 1st of Thoth corresponded with the

27 Lepsius' investigations on this point will be mentioned in the supplement. We will only notice here two very important facts. He has proved, in the first place, that the festival of Apis coincided with that of the Nile (Hapi is written just as well with the Apis ox as with the Nile), and that the lunar cycle carried out by it begins with the new moon nearest to the solstice, and consequently to the inundation (pp. 157-160.). In the second place (p. 161.) he has called attention to the circumstance of the Egyptian number of the great cosmic year of 36,525 years clearly depending upon the Apis period, and its connexion with the Canicular cycle, for it is merely the multiple of the two (1461 +25.).