above the year." These so-called epagomenal days were undoubtedly
introduced at a very early period. Maspero holds that they were
in use before the first Thinite dynasty, citing in evidence the
fact that the legend of Osiris explains these days as having been
created by the god Thot in order to permit Nuit to give birth to
all her children; this expedient being necessary to overcome a
ban which had been pronounced against Nuit, according to which
she could not give birth to children on any day of the year. But,
of course, the five additional days do not suffice fully to
rectify the calendar. There remains the additional quarter of a
day to be accounted for. This, of course, amounts to a full day
every fourth year. We shall see that later Alexandrian science
hit upon the expedient of adding a day to every fourth year; an
expedient which the Julian calendar adopted and which still gives
us our familiar leap-year. But, unfortunately, the ancient
Egyptian failed to recognize the need of this additional day, or
if he did recognize it he failed to act on his knowledge, and so
it happened that, starting somewhere back in the remote past with
a new year's day that coincided with the inundation of the Nile,
there was a constantly shifting maladjustment of calendar and
seasons as time went on.

The Egyptian seasons, it should be explained, were three in
number: the season of the inundation, the season of the
seed-time, and the season of the harvest; each season being, of
course, four months in extent. Originally, as just mentioned, the
season of the inundations began and coincided with the actual
time of inundation. The more precise fixing of new year's day was
accomplished through observation of the time of the so-called
heliacal rising of the dog-star, Sirius, which bore the Egyptian