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

IV.] The Reckoning of Truth. 145

Osiris was, as we have seen, the first festival
of the New Year, and what connection could
•such a day have with any particular day of
any month whatever? A very close connec-
tion if the archaic date is to be taken into
consideration. At the commencement of the
second Sothiac cycle the archaic date of
Osiris's Birthday would fall twenty or twenty-
one days later than at the foundation of the
kalendar; and, remembering the five days for
the sacred interval, we reach the fifteenth day
of the first month ; while a similar calculation,
allowing in all forty-one days, brings us in
the third Sothiac cycle to the sixth of the suc-
ceeding month. For a similar reason another
great festival, that of the Bark of Ra, is
ordered to be celebrated on the Birthday of
Osiris, since at the foundation of the Kalendar
that day coincided with the rising of the sacred
"Ue, the waters of which represent new life.

Hence, in order to preserve a true record of
tune, it is necessary to note the motion of the