Creation's dawn / by "Kish" ; with a preface by A. H. Sayce.

  • Kish, pseud.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Creation's dawn / by "Kish" ; with a preface by A. H. Sayce. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    101/140 page 97
    In four multiplied by thirty=120 years, they be- gan a month (thirty days) too soon : therefore, in 1460 years they began a year too soon. This period of 1460 years was called the “ Sothic Period.” We have definite statements of this in Roman times ; for Censorinus, writing in 239 a.d., states that the Egyptian New Year’s Day, First of Thoth, fell on the 25th of June; and 100 years before, in 139 A.D., it fell on the 21st of July, “ on which day Sirius regularly rises in Egj^t.” Hence the beginning of the Sothic Period of 1460 years, or the New Year’s day falling on the 2ist of July, at the heliacal rising of Sirius, took place in A.D. 139 ; likewise in 1322 b.c., in 2784 b.c., and in B.c. 4242, or thereabouts. From this it is plain that, as the nominal months rotated round all the seasons once in each of these cycles, if we only know the days of the nominal month in which any seasonal event happened— such as the rising of Sirius, or the inundation— we can find on what part of the cycle of 1460 years such a coincidence can have fallen. It is from data such as this that Mahler has lately calculated, by the rising of Sirius, and also the new moons, that Tahutmes III. reigned from 20th March, 1503 B.c. to 14th February 1449. Now, one good datum is, that Merenptah cele- brated in the second year of his reign a festival of the rising of Sirius on the 29th of the month Thoth.
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