to astronomical science by preventing men from searching the
heavens as carefully as they have done. Be that as it may, the
complexity exists. The actual year of three hundred and
sixty-five and (about) one-quarter days cannot be divided evenly
into months, and some such expedient as the intercalation of days
here and there is essential, else the calendar will become
absolutely out of harmony with the seasons.

In the case of the Egyptians, the attempt at adjustment was made,
as just noted, by the introduction of the five days, constituting
what the Egyptians themselves termed "the five days over and
above the year." These so-called epagomenal days were undoubtedly
introduced at a very early period. Maspero holds that they were
in use before the first Thinite dynasty, citing in evidence the
fact that the legend of Osiris explains these days as having been
created by the god Thot in order to permit Nuit to give birth to
all her children; this expedient being necessary to overcome a
ban which had been pronounced against Nuit, according to which
she could not give birth to children on any day of the year. But,
of course, the five additional days do not suffice fully to
rectify the calendar. There remains the additional quarter of a
day to be accounted for. This, of course, amounts to a full day
every fourth year. We shall see that later Alexandrian science
hit upon the expedient of adding a day to every fourth year; an
expedient which the Julian calendar adopted and which still gives
us our familiar leap-year. But, unfortunately, the ancient
Egyptian failed to recognize the need of this additional day, or
if he did recognize it he failed to act on his knowledge, and so
it happened that, starting somewhere back in the remote past with
a new year's day that coincided with the inundation of the Nile,
there was a constantly shifting maladjustment of calendar and
seasons as time went on.

The Egyptian seasons, it should be explained, were three in
number: the season of the inundation, the season of the
seed-time, and the season of the harvest; each season being, of
course, four months in extent. Originally, as just mentioned, the
season of the inundations began and coincided with the actual
time of inundation. The more precise fixing of new year's day was
accomplished through observation of the time of the so-called
heliacal rising of the dog-star, Sirius, which bore the Egyptian
name Sothis. It chances that, as viewed from about the region of
Heliopolis, the sun at the time of the summer solstice occupies
an apparent position in the heavens close to the dog-star. Now,
as is well known, the Egyptians, seeing divinity back of almost
every phenomenon of nature, very naturally paid particular
reverence to so obviously influential a personage as the sun-god.
In particular they thought it fitting to do homage to him just as
he was starting out on his tour of Egypt in the morning; and that
they might know the precise moment of his coming, the Egyptian
astronomer priests, perched on the hill-tops near their temples,
were wont to scan the eastern horizon with reference to some star
which had been observed to precede the solar luminary. Of course
the precession of the equinoxes, due to that axial wobble in
which our clumsy earth indulges, would change the apparent
position of the fixed stars in reference to the sun, so that the
same star could not do service as heliacal messenger
indefinitely; but, on the other hand, these changes are so slow
that observations by many generations of astronomers would be
required to detect the shifting. It is believed by Lockyer,
though the evidence is not quite demonstrative, that the
astronomical observations of the Egyptians date back to a period
when Sothis, the dog-star, was not in close association with the
sun on the morning of the summer solstice. Yet, according to the
calculations of Biot, the heliacal rising of Sothis at the
solstice was noted as early as the year 3285 B.C., and it is
certain that this star continued throughout subsequent centuries
to keep this position of peculiar prestige. Hence it was that
Sothis came to be associated with Isis, one of the most important
divinities of Egypt, and that the day in which Sothis was first
visible in the morning sky marked the beginning of the new year;
that day coinciding, as already noted, with the summer solstice
and with the beginning of the Nile flow.

But now for the difficulties introduced by that unreckoned
quarter of a day. Obviously with a calendar of 365 days only, at
the end of four years, the calendar year, or vague year, as the
Egyptians came to call it, had gained by one full day upon the
actual solar year-- that is to say, the heliacal rising of
Sothis, the dog- star, would not occur on new year's day of the
faulty calendar, but a day later. And with each succeeding period
of four years the day of heliacal rising, which marked the true
beginning of the year--and which still, of course, coincided with
the inundation--would have fallen another day behind the
calendar. In the course of 120 years an entire month would be
lost; and in 480 years so great would become the shifting that
the seasons would be altogether misplaced; the actual time of
inundations corresponding with what the calendar registered as
the seed-time, and the actual seed-time in turn corresponding
with the harvest-time of the calendar.

At first thought this seems very awkward and confusing, but in
all probability the effects were by no means so much so in actual
practice. We need go no farther than to our own experience to
know that the names of seasons, as of months and days, come to
have in the minds of most of us a purely conventional
significance. Few of us stop to give a thought to the meaning of
the words January, February, etc., except as they connote certain
climatic conditions. If, then, our own calendar were so defective
that in the course of 120 years the month of February had shifted


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