DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9804#0247
APPENDIX A (to p. 70)
THE EGYPTIAN YEAR
Thk beginning of all the trouble is that the Egyptians
used a calendar year of only 365 days, and ignored leap
year. Their New Year's Day, the first day of the month
Thoth, originally began in the summer. It was the time
of the greatest event of the year, the inundation of the
Nile, and was naturally taken as the beginning of all
tilings.
The beginning of the inundation, however, was not
the only event that marked the New Year. The actual
day was fixed by the rising of Sothis or Sirius, the bright
star of the constellation Canis Major, which looms so
large in all Classical literature. By the " rising " of the
star was meant, as always in ancient times, not the
first day of the year on which it was seen at night, but
the first day on which it was seen emerging on the eastern
horizon, in the faint light that immediately precedes sun-
rise.
Though, however, the first of Thoth fell here originally
in the year from which the Egyptians began their counting,
as we count from a.d. or b.c., the Romans from the
foundation of the city, the Greeks from the first Olympiad,
it lost a quarter of a day every year owing to its inability
to " leap," and got this much away from its starting-
point. In four years it fell a day earlier, in one hundred
years nearly a month earlier, in the true solar seasonal
year, and was already far away from the rising of Sirius.
In 730 years it had retired into midwinter, and was
completely out of touch with the inundation of the Nile.
221
THE EGYPTIAN YEAR
Thk beginning of all the trouble is that the Egyptians
used a calendar year of only 365 days, and ignored leap
year. Their New Year's Day, the first day of the month
Thoth, originally began in the summer. It was the time
of the greatest event of the year, the inundation of the
Nile, and was naturally taken as the beginning of all
tilings.
The beginning of the inundation, however, was not
the only event that marked the New Year. The actual
day was fixed by the rising of Sothis or Sirius, the bright
star of the constellation Canis Major, which looms so
large in all Classical literature. By the " rising " of the
star was meant, as always in ancient times, not the
first day of the year on which it was seen at night, but
the first day on which it was seen emerging on the eastern
horizon, in the faint light that immediately precedes sun-
rise.
Though, however, the first of Thoth fell here originally
in the year from which the Egyptians began their counting,
as we count from a.d. or b.c., the Romans from the
foundation of the city, the Greeks from the first Olympiad,
it lost a quarter of a day every year owing to its inability
to " leap," and got this much away from its starting-
point. In four years it fell a day earlier, in one hundred
years nearly a month earlier, in the true solar seasonal
year, and was already far away from the rising of Sirius.
In 730 years it had retired into midwinter, and was
completely out of touch with the inundation of the Nile.
221