IV.] The Cycle of Eqtial Light. 143

solution. Suppose now that in addition to
the current date of the solstice the archaic
date was also preserved—a suggestion entirely
in agreement with Egyptian custom and mode
of thought—that is to say, that a record was
kept of the day of the Grand Epoch on which
the earth arrived at the point in her orbit
which she had reached when the kalendar was
defined, then the peculiarity could be ex-
plained. For since the date of Equinox, and
therefore of course of solstice, falls a little
earlier relatively to the orbit every year, the
archaic date will fall a little later. And as
in twenty-six thousand years it traverses the
circle of the year, and falls again on the
anniversary ; in two thousand six hundred and
fifty years the archaic date would be thirty-
seven or thirty-eight days later ; so that if the
kalendar were founded at the epoch assigned,
the difference between the current and the
archaic date in the days of Thothmes III.
would just correspond to the difference which