Adams, Walter M.: The house of the hidden places: a clue to the creed of early Egypt from Egyptian sources (London, 1895)

iv.] The Cycle of the Jubilee. 123

the period said to have been occupied in
building the Pyramid of Light. And in five
hundred years, or the Egyptian Cycle of the
Phoenix, the same difference will amount to
between four and five days, that is, very
nearly to the sacred interval; so that if that
interval be omitted, the orbit of the coming:
year joins the orbit of the departing, and
every five hundred years the Phoenix renews
itself. All these cycles therefore centre round
the adjustment of the quarter of a day;
and so essential an element was that quarter
in all calculations relating to the kalendar,
that every fourth year, if we may trust
Horapollo, the festival was celebrated by the
addition of a quarter of an acre to the land
belonging to the temples.

Of the three seasons, that of the inundation
was the first and principal; and the flood of
the Nile ran like a sparkling current through
the religion of the country. "lam the Inun-
dation," says the Creator in the sixty-fourth