340 HISTORY OF GREECE. Egypt probably had such tablets or inscriptions, some differing from others. But this only shows us that such dvaypaipai or other temple monuments do not of themselves carry any authority, unless in cases where there is fair reason to presume them nearly contemporary with the facts or persons which they are produced to avouch. It is plain that the temple inscriptions repre- sent the ideas of Egyptian priests (of some unknown date anterior to Herod- otus) respecting the entire range of Egyptian past history and chronology. What the proportion of historical items may be, included in this aggre- gate, we hare no means of testing, nor are the monuments in Egyptian tem- ples in themselves a proof of the reality ^of the persons or events which they arc placed to commemorate, any more than the Centauromachia or Amazon- omachia on the frieze of a Grecian temple proves that there really existed Centaurs or Amazons. But it is interesting to penetrate, so far as we arc enabled, into the scheme upon which the Egyptians themselves conceived and constructed their own past history, of which the gods form quite as es- sential an element as the human kings ; for we depart from the Egyptian ooint of view when we treat the gods as belonging to Egyptian religion
- nd the human kings to Egyptian history, both are parts of the same
jcries. It is difficult to trace the information which Herodotus received from the Egyptian priests to any intelligible scheme of chronology; but this may be done in regard to Manetho with much plausibility, as the recent valuable and elaborate analysis of Boeckh (Manetho und die Hundsternperiode, Berlin, 1845) has shown. He gives good reason for believing that the dvnasties of Manetho have been so arranged as to fill up an exact number of Sothiac cy- cles (or periods of the star Sirius, each comprehending 1460 Julian years = 1461 Egyptian years). The Egyptian calender recognized a year of 365 days exactly, taking no note of the six hours additional which go to make up the solar year : they had twelve months of thirty days, with five epago- mcns or additional days, and their year always began with the first of the month Thoth (Soth, Sothis). Their year being thus six hours shorter (or one day for every four years) than the Julian year with its recurrent leap- year, the first of the Egyptian month Thoth fell back every four years ono day in the Julian calender, and in the course of 1460 years it fell successive- ly on every day of the Julian year, coming back again to the same day from which it had started. This period of 1460 years was called a Sothiac period, and was reckoned from the year in which the first of the Egyptian month Thoth coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius in Egypt ; that is, (for an interval from 2700 B. c. down to the Christian era) on the 20th July of the Julian year. We know from Ccnsorinus that the particular revolu- tion of the Sothiac period, in which both Herodotus and Manetho were in- cluded, ended in the year 139 after the Christian era, in which year the first of the Egyptian month Thoth fell on the 20th Julyj or coincided with tho heliacal rising of Sirius in Egypt : knowing in what year this period ended, vre also know that it must have begun in 1322 n. c., and that the period im- mediately preceding it must have begun in 2782 u. c. ( Censorinus, De Die
