Poole, Reginald S.: Horae Aegypticae: or, the chronology of ancient Egypt: discovered from astronomical and hieroglyphic records upon its monuments, including many dates found in coeval inscriptions from the period of the building of the Great Pyramid to the times of the Persians ; and illustrations of the history of the first nineteen dynasties, shewing the order of their succession, from the monuments (London, 1851)

SECTION III.

THE SOTHIC CYCLE.

The first division of the ceiling of the Rameseum of
El-Kurneh* contains representations of certain stars
and asterisms, placed beneath those months of the
Vague Year in which they rose heliacally, using the
term in its Egyptian acceptation. The first of these
representations is a boat, in which stands a female
figure, shown by her name and position to be Isis-
Sothis (commonly called Sothis), the Sirius of the Greeks
and moderns. The head of this figure is beneath the
commencement of Thoth, the first month. It is uni-
versally acknowledged that this figure and place of
Sothis represent the so-called heliacal rising of that
star, which was a phenomenon of the greatest import-
ance in the ancient Egyptian calendar. It is as well
known and established that the Egyptians bad a great
cycle of 1460 Julian and 1461 Vague Years, the com-
mencement of which was marked by the rising of Sothis,
in a certain manner, hitherto called " the heliacal
rising," on the first day of the first month of the Vague
Year. It is equally certain that one of these great
cycles, called the "Sothic Cycles," commenced on the
20th of July, b.c. 1322 ; and it is generally acknow-
ledged, having been first pointed out by the learned and
accurate Sir Gardner Wilkinson, that the representation
in the llameseum of El-Kurneh dates about, or shortly

* See Plate II.