the Egyptian year
did not possess, but the uniform length of the Egyptian months is
enviable even now. The months were grouped under three seasons of four
months each, and were known respectively as the first, second, third and
fourth month [HRGs: N12:Z1], [HRGs: N12:two], [HRGs: N12:three], [HRGs:
N12:four] of [HRGs: SA-x:t-hrw] (i'h.t) "inundation" or "verdure,"
[HRGs: pr:r-t:hrw] _pr.t_ (_pro_) "seed-time," "winter," and [HRGs:
S:N35B-hrw] _smw (shom)_ "harvest," "summer," the [HRGs:
Z93-Z92-Hr:r-w-rnp-t:Z1] "five (days) over the year" being outside these
seasons and the year itself, according to the Egyptian expression, and
counted either at the beginning or at the end of the year. Ultimately
the Egyptians gave names to the months taken from festivals celebrated
in them, in order as follows:--Thoth, Paophi, Athyr, Choiak, Tobi,
Mechir, Phamenoth, Pharmuthi, Pachons, Payni, Epiphi, Mesore, the
epagomenal days being then called "the short year." In Egypt the
agricultural seasons depend more immediately on the Nile than on the
solar movements; the first day of the first month of inundation, i.e.
nominally the beginning of the rise of the Nile, was the beginning of
the year, and as the Nile commences to rise very regularly at about the
date of the annual heliacal rising of the conspicuous dog-star Sothis
(Sirius) (which itself follows extremely closely the slow retrogression
of the Julian year), the primitive astronomers found in the heliacal
rising of Sothis as observed at Memphis (on July 19 Julian) a very
correct and useful starting-point for the seasonal year. But the year of
365 days lost one day in four years of the Sothic or Julian year, so
that in 121 Egyptian years New Year's day fell a whole month too early
according to the seasons, and in 1461 years a whole year was lost. This
"Sothic period" or era of 1460 years, during which the Egyptian New
Year's day travelled all round the Sothic year, is recorded by Greek and
Roman writers at least as early as the 1st century B.C. The epagomenal
days appear on a monument of the Vth Dynasty and in the very ancient
Pyramid texts. They were considered unlucky, and perhaps this accounts
for the curious fact that, although they are named in journals and in
festival lists, &c., where precise dating was needed, no known monument
or legal document is dated in them. It is, however, quite possible that
by the side of the year of 365 days a shorter year of 360 was employed
for som