36. Chabasa himself convicted Lenormant of a similar error in discussing Ramses II's victory over the Hittites at Kadesh. Lenormant employed only the Abusimbel version of the report of the battle, not noticing that the ancient Egyptian scribe had omitted an entire line of the document, as is shown by the Ramesseum version. This omitted line. happens to be of vital importance to a proper understanding of the battle, and the failure to observe its omission is fatal to any discussion of the conflict. The same error, nevertheless, has since been repeated in at least one notable modern treatise on the same battle. Further examples might be adduced in illustration of the danger incurred in making a study of any inscription as found in a single publication of the text. 37. The translations in the following volumes, we repeat, are therefore based upon all the available material for the reconstruction of each document, whether in the original or in old publications made at a time when the original was possibly in a better state of preservation. In no other way can all the available material be obtained, and scholars who would compare the renderings herein with the original documents themselves will in many cases be able to do so only by reconstructing the text in the same way. a Revue archéologique, XV1 (1858-59), 573 ff., 701 f. bCorrespondant, VII (February, 1858), second article. cSee my Battle of Kadesh, 4, 5. CHRONOLOGY 38. The state of our modern chronology of early Egyptian history is so confused that a brief presentation of the system herein employed seemed indispensable, although space will not permit even partial discussion of the materials upon which it is based. The following presentation, moreover, will attempt nothing more than an explanation of the elementary factors of the problem, as even these are unknown to some who have nevertheless arbitrarily rejected their invaluable data. 39. The Egyptians, as far back as the fifth millennium. before Christ, had discovered approximately the length of the year. They, like all other peoples, had suffered from the vexatious fact that the lunar month is not an even divisor of the year. Instead of attempting to adjust this obstinate incommensurability by constant and complicated intercalations, they showed amazing appreciation of the practical demands which a calendar should satisfy, and boldly abandoned the lunar month as the basis of the calendar. Believing the year to be 365 days long, they divided it into twelve months of thirty days each, and an intercalated period of five days at the end of the year. The creation of this convenient and practical, though artificial, calendar was an achievement unparalleled in any other ancient civilization. It was as useful to men of science as to civil life in general, and for this reason it was in later times aSince this brief discussion was written, the admirable essay of Meyer ("Aegyptische Chronologie," Abhandlungen der Königlichen Preussischen Akademie, 1904) has appeared, from which the author has frequently added valuable observations to the above presentation. The literature of the subject is large, but Meyer's invaluable treatise furnishes a compendium of the whole obscure and difficult field. adopted by the Greek astronomers as the basis of all their computations. 40. The Egyptian began his year at the advent of the inundation, and this event, by a happy accident, approximately coincided with the reappearance of Sirius (Sothis) at sunrise on the eastern horizon, after he had been for some length of time invisible. This occurred each year on July 19a (Julian). The interval between such heliacal risings of Sothis was thus fortunately approximately a solar year.b The feast of the Rising of Sothis on July 19 was therefore the New Year's feast of the Egyptians. The year was also arbitrarily divided into three seasons, each containing four months of thirty days each. These were: the season of verdure, or the inundation; the season of winter or sowing; and the season of summer or harvest. When this remarkably rational calendar was introduced, it of course coincided with the seasons as determined for the people by the sun and the inundation. But the Sothic year was almost exactly, and in 3231 B. C. was exactly, a quarter of a day longer than the new calendar year of 365 days. Every four years, therefore, the calendar reached the end of the year and began the next year one day too soon, so that the rising of Sirius fell on the second day of the new year. As this process continued, and each calendar New Year's Day arrived earlier and earlier, it finally passed gradually around the whole year and again fell on the astronomical New Year's Day. This process consumed four times as many years as aIt took place on July 19 (Julian) as the normal date, in the latitude of Memphis, for many thousands of years B. C., until far down in the last thousand years B. C., when the Sothic year had sufficiently lengthened to shift the heliacal rising of Sothis to July 20. (See Meyer, op. cit., 1904, 17 ff.) bNeither the solar nor the Sothic year is constant in length, and at present they are slowly diverging. cMeyer, op. cit., 14. |