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

IV.] The Light of Grand Orient. 139

principles, began to be preserved. Since in
the course of the cycle, the heliacal risings
take place on each day of the entire year, they
will run during the first half of the cycle in
one direction (relatively to the earth's orbit)
and in the latter half in the opposite. And
since there is also a corresponding series of
settings, subject to a similar change of direc-
tion, the two series would in each cycle
make up a double reversal, interchanging
positions not once but twice. When therefore
Herodotus tells us in a well-known passage
(Euterp. 143), how, according to the Egyptian
records, the risings and settings had been out
of their orders four times since their reckon-
ing commenced; " the risings twice taking
the place of the settings, and the settings
twice taking the place of the risings," the
meaning becomes perfectly clear if referred
(as Rawlinson suggests) to the heliacal risings
and settings of Sothis, the determinator of
the Kalendar. And the very circumstance