APPENDIX: THE EGYPTIAN YEAR.
Upon the quite peculiar Egyptian time-reckoning I have only a few remarks to make by way of addition to the clear and convincing account of its origin given by Eduard Meyer; as to the disarrangement of the names of months familiar to us, which are borrowed from festivals, I must admit I am not quite clear, but this matters little for our present purpose since these names are more than two thousand years younger than the introduction of the year. The Egyptian year consists of three seasons—time of inundation, seed-time, and harvest—each of four months containing thirty days each, together with five additional days, the epagomena, standing outside the year and theoretically not included in it. The month is therefore the round month and the year the round year, which by multiplying the round number of the months in the year by the round number of days in the month gives a total of 360 (12 × 30) days. The use of round numbers in the arithmetical application of the calendar is familiar in all quarters of the world and has been known at all times; it is continued in the practice of our modern banks in calculating interest à l’usance. The surprising thing is that in Egypt no notice should have been taken of the moon, and that the month should have been carried through as a mere numerical unity. For at the stage of knowledge presupposed by the regulation of the calendar the Egyptians must have known that the number of days in the moon-month varies between 29 and 30. I am therefore inclined to think that this form of year was first introduced as a means of counting in administration and the making of returns, and then by degrees established itself as the civil calendar because the rural life was so closely dependent upon the administration and its accounts. We may compare the fact that the lunisolar calendar of Greece was introduced as an ecclesiastical calendar, and succeeded in establishing itself as the civil calendar owing to the close connexion between the religious and the political life; but the old reckoning from the phases of the stars persisted alongside of it. In the same way we must suppose that in Egypt alongside of the numerical calendar the old method of reckoning by the concrete appearance of the moon originally persisted, but since by this time it had lost its practical importance it vanished without leaving any other traces than the length of the arithmetical month (as a round number) and the name ‘month’.
On the other hand it must have been intended to give to the year the length of the solar year: the five extra days were accordingly introduced outside the series of months. Hence the same word wepet ronpet means both the first day of the civil shifting year and also the day of the actual morning rising of Sirius; hence too the three four-month divisions of the shifting year are called after the seasons. The first of these, the time of inundation, began exactly with the morning rising of Sirius when the Nile began perceptibly to rise. Here the Egyptians went wrong because they did not realise that the year does not consist of exactly 365 days, but contains an additional fraction of a day. The consequence was that the Egyptian year got out of place in relation to the solar year, but so slowly that no inconvenience was caused in practical life: the linguistic difficulty, that wepet ronpet acquired two different meanings and that e. g. the season called the time of inundation might fall in the actual seed-time or harvest, the conservative minds of the Egyptians enabled them to tolerate. A contributing factor was the practical convenience of the calendar. The dislocation must however very soon have been recognised, since the actual morning rising of Sirius, so far as we know, was always celebrated, i. e. it was a movable feast in relation to the calendar. The error is included in the well-known formula of the Sothic period (1461 Egyptian = 1460 Julian years).
The knowledge of the closest approximation that can be made to the correct number of days in the year, reckoning only whole days, can only be arrived at in one of two ways, either by the observations of the solstices and equinoxes, which is the method adopted e. g. by the Hopi, or by means of the rising of a star. The duration of the solar year is not reached by way of the lunisolar year. Which of the two methods the Egyptians adopted is not in doubt. No notice has come before me which suggests that the Egyptians observed the position of the sunrise or sunset on the horizon, while the stars on the other hand were accurately observed by them. There are calendars which give the position of the constellations in accordance with which the hours of night were determined and proclaimed[982], and in particular the morning rising of Sirius was at all times observed and celebrated. This is primitive[983], but not so the counting of the days between two risings. The latter process would be facilitated if the reckoning was previously carried out in numerical months of 30 days (naturally as a round number, not as an actual month); perhaps this was the first stage. The calendar therefore, as Ed. Meyer has specially pointed out, must have begun to run its course in a year in which the rising of Sirius and New Year’s Day coincided, i. e. it began with a Sothic period.
The months within each season are numbered from I to IV. Among primitive peoples it frequently happens that a season gives its name to two months, which are distinguished as the first and second, but a numbering such as that of the Egyptian calendar is unexampled and shews once more a desire to get away from the moon-month. The so-called ‘months’ are rather subdivisions of the seasons.
The breach—and it can be considered no less—with the primitive time-reckoning is part negative, part positive. Positively, the length of the solar year in whole days has been astonishingly early recognised, but the greatest advance is in the negative direction. The calendar has been detached from the concrete phenomena of the heavens: thereby it acquires a numerical character, and only so is the genuine time-reckoning created. For in practice it is more necessary to be able to reckon conveniently than to remain in accurate agreement with the incommensurability of the motions of the heavenly bodies. Hence the Egyptian calendar held good, although its year was a shifting year and in spite of the fact that the ideal year underlying it was a sidereal and not the actual solar year, and the Greek astronomers reckoned by it on account of its convenience, just as our astronomers still reckon by the Julian calendar. The Egyptian year therefore lies at the bottom of our year, which has been altered so as to remain in agreement with the seasons,—this being necessary in view of the spread of the historic sense among the people—but has also unfortunately been spoiled in the division into months, owing to the influence of the Roman months. The Egyptian calendar is the greatest intellectual fact in the history of time-reckoning; like all the greatest achievements of this nature, e. g. the alphabet, it was attained through a radical simplification, in which also practical convenience played a great part. It should not be forgotten that astronomy and the calendar are not identical. In matters of the calendar practical utility is more welcome than refined astronomical calculation.
CHAPTER XI.
POPULAR MONTHS OF THE EUROPEAN PEOPLES.
In ancient times, and even at the present day in lands which lie outside the path of the great leveller, civilisation, the months taken over with the Roman calendar are not numbered divisions of the year, the names of which are a matter of indifference, but are concretely conceived and named as seasons. They are, in fact, nothing but seasons, the number and duration of which are determined by the conventional calendar. The striving after concreteness which characterises not too highly civilised man leads to the abolition of the obscure and unintelligible Roman names of months, and the substitution of other names describing the season, or more rarely taken from some great festival falling within the month. Only the Hungarian months are entirely named after ecclesiastical festivals[984]. It is also found that the Latin names are as far as possible rendered intelligible by popular etymology.
These statements are well illustrated by the names given to the months by the Greek peasants of Macedonia. It is said of the latter that they measure time not so much by the conventional calendar as by the labours and the festivals characteristic of the different seasons. Seed-time, harvest and vintage, the feast of Saint George, the midsummer fires are some of the notable occasions in the life of the peasant, and these have impressed themselves upon the names of the months. The names are:—1, Γεννάρης, derived from γεννοῦν, also called μεγάλος or τρανὸς μῆνας in opposition to February, and Κλαδευτής on account of the pruning of the vines; 2, Φλεβά ρης, ‘Vein-sweller’, the veins (φλέβες) of the earth are swollen with water (cf. the English folk-name for this month, ‘February fill-dyke’), or μικρὸς μῆνας, κουτσοφλέβαρος; 3, Μάρτης, ὁ φουσκοδενδρίτης, ‘the tree-sweller’, Γδάρτης, ‘the flayer’, on account of the bitterly cold wind; 4, Ἀπρίλης, Ἁγιογεωργίτης, from the feast of Saint George on the 23rd; 5, Μάης; 6, Θεριστής, harvest month; 7, Ἁλωνιστής, Ἁλωνάρης, threshing-floor month; 8, Αὔγουστος; 9, Τρυγητής, vintage month, Σταυριώτης, from the Feast of the Exaltation of the Precious Cross, held on the 14th; 10, Ὀχτώβριος, Ἁγιοδημητριάτης, from the feast of Saint Demetrios on the 26th; 11, Σποριᾶς, sowing month, Ἀντρεάς, from the feast of Saint Andrew on the 30th; 12, Νικολαίτης, from the feast of Saint Nicholas on the 6th[985].