sing of Sothis by thirty days, instead of
coinciding with it as it ought. The astronomers of the Graeco-Roman
period, after a retrospective examination of all the past history of
their country, discovered a very ingenious theory for obviating this
unfortunate discrepancy. If the omission of six hours annually entailed
the loss of one day every four years, the time would come, after three
hundred and sixty-five times four years, when the deficit would amount
to an entire year, and when, in consequence, fourteen hundred and
sixty whole years would exactly equal fourteen hundred and sixty-one
incomplete years. The agreement of the two years, which had been
disturbed by the force of circumstances, was re-established of itself
after rather more than fourteen and a half centuries: the opening of the
civil year became identical with the beginning of the astronomical
year, and this again coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius, and
therefore with the official date of the inundation. To the Egyptians of
Pharaonic times, this simple and eminently practical method was unknown:
by means of it hundreds of generations, who suffered endless troubles
from the recurring difference between an uncertain and a fixed year,
might have consoled themselves with the satisfaction of knowing that
a day would come when one of their descendants would, for once in
his life, see both years coincide with mathematical accuracy, and
the seasons appear at their normal times. The Egyptian year might be
compared to a watch which loses a definite number of minutes daily. The
owner does not take the trouble to calculate a cycle in which the total
of minutes lost will bring the watch round to the correct time: he bears
with the irregularity as long as his affairs do not suffer by it; but
when it causes him inconvenience, he alters the hands to the right hour,
and repeats this operation each time he finds it necessary, without
being guided by a fixed rule. In like manner the Egyptian year fell
into hopeless confusion with regard to the seasons, the discrepancy
continually increasing, until the difference became so great, that the
king or the priests had to adjust the two by a process similar to that
employed in the case of the watch.

The days, moreover, had each their special virtues, which it was
necessary for man to know if he wished to profit by the advantages, or
to escape the perils which they possessed for him. There was not one
among them that did