back to occupy the position of the original January, the change
would have been so gradual, covering the period of two life-times
or of four or five average generations, that it might well escape
general observation.

Each succeeding generation of Egyptians, then, may not improbably
have associated the names of the seasons with the contemporary
climatic conditions, troubling themselves little with the thought
that in an earlier age the climatic conditions for each period of
the calendar were quite different. We cannot well suppose,
however, that the astronomer priests were oblivious to the true
state of things. Upon them devolved the duty of predicting the
time of the Nile flood; a duty they were enabled to perform
without difficulty through observation of the rising of the
solstitial sun and its Sothic messenger. To these observers it
must finally have been apparent that the shifting of the seasons
was at the rate of one day in four years; this known, it required
no great mathematical skill to compute that this shifting would
finally effect a complete circuit of the calendar, so that after
(4 X 365 =) 1460 years the first day of the calendar year would
again coincide with the heliacal rising of Sothis and with the
coming of the Nile flood. In other words, 1461 vague years or
Egyptian calendar years Of 365 days each correspond to 1460
actual solar years of 365 1/4 days each. This period, measured
thus by the heliacal rising of Sothis, is spoken of as the Sothic
cycle.

To us who are trained from childhood to understand that the year
consists of (approximately) 365 1/4 days, and to know that the
calendar may be regulated approximately by the introduction of an
extra day every fourth year, this recognition of the Sothic cycle
seems simple enough. Yet if the average man of us will reflect
how little he knows, of his own knowledge, of the exact length of
the year, it will soon become evident that the appreciation of
the faults of the calendar and the knowledge of its periodical
adjustment constituted a relatively high development of
scientific knowledge on the part of the Egyptian astronomer. It
may be added that various efforts to reform the calendar were
made by the ancient Egyptians, but that they cannot be credited
with a satisfactory solution of the problem; for, of course, the
Alexandrian scientists of the Ptolemaic period (whose work we
shall have occasion to review presently) were not Egyptians in
any proper sense of the word, but Greeks.

Since so much of the time of the astronomer priests was devoted
to observation of the heavenly bodies, it is not surprising that
they should have mapped out the apparent course of the moon and
the visible planets in their nightly tour of the heavens, and
that they should have divided the stars of the firmament into
more or less arbitrary groups or constellations. That they did so
is evidenced by various sculptured representations of
constellations corresponding to signs of the zodiac which still
ornament the ceilings of various ancient temples. Unfortunately
the decorative sense, which was always predominant with the
Egyptian sculptor, led him to take various liberties with the
distribution of figures in these representations of the
constellations, so that the inferences drawn from them as to the
exact map of the heavens as the Egyptians conceived it cannot be
fully relied upon. It appears, however, that the Egyptian
astronomer divided the zodiac into twenty-four decani, or
constellations. The arbitrary groupings of figures, with the aid
of which these are delineated, bear a close resemblance to the
equally arbitrary outlines which we are still accustomed to use
for the same purpose.


IDEAS OF COSMOLOGY

In viewing this astronomical system of the Egyptians one cannot
avoid the question as to just what interpretation was placed upon
it as regards the actual mechanical structure of the universe. A
proximal answer to the question is supplied us with a good deal
of clearness. It appears that the Egyptian conceived the sky as a
sort of tangible or material roof placed above the world, and
supported at each of its four corners by a column or pillar,
which was later on conceived as a great mountain. The earth
itself was conceived to be a rectangular box, longer from north
to south than from east to west; the upper surface of this box,
upon which man lived, being slightly concave and having, of
course, the valley of the Nile as its centre. The pillars of
support were situated at the points of the compass; the northern
one being located beyond the Mediterranean Sea; the southern one
away beyond the habitable regions towards the source of the Nile,
and the eastern and western ones in equally inaccessible regions.
Circling about the southern side of the, world was a great river
suspended in mid-air on something comparable to mountain cliffs;
on which river the sun-god made his daily course in a boat,
fighting day by day his ever-recurring battle against Set, the
demon of darkness. The wide channel of this river enabled the
sun-god to alter his course from time to time, as he is observed
to do; in winter directing his bark towards the farther bank of
the channel; in summer gliding close to the nearer bank. As to
the stars, they were similar lights, suspended from the vault of
the heaven; but just how their observed motion of translation
across the heavens was explained is not apparent. It is more than
probable that no one explanation was, universally accepted.

In explaining the origin of this mechanism of the heavens, the
Egyptian imagination ran riot. Each separate part of Egypt had
its own hierarchy of gods, and more or less its own explanations


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