EGYPTIAN CALENDAR

The first Egyptians counted by lunar months.

The word month is is expressed by the ideograph noon sign, though this by
no mean helped in dividing time in strict harmony with the regular recurrence
of the seasons and observations of the sun's course.....

To obtain such agreement the early Egyptians tried to get as close as possible
to the solar year.

Taking twelve months of thirty days as a basis, they supplemented them by five
inter-calary days (epagomenae), and thus created a calendar year 365 days, within
a quarter of a day of the true solar year 3651/4 days.

The most noted feature of this first of known calendar was it's adaptation to
agricultural works.

For the twelve months were divided into three seasons the inundation (akhet), the sowing
(perit), and the harvest (shemu).

The first day of the year was fixed at July 19th, whe two great events caught the eyes
of tillers... the beginning of the Nile flood and the appearance in the heavens at the
hour of sunrise of the star Sothis (Sirius).

The "heliacal rising of the Sothis marked the beginning point of an astronomical
era which we call the Sothic cycle.

The coincidence of this sunrise and appearance of Sothis only really exist once in every
1,460 solar or 1,461 civil years.

The calendar could only have been inaugurated in a year where the first day of the
year fell on the day of the heliacal rising of Sothis July 19th (Julian)

In Egyptian history this has happened in 4241, 2781, and 1321 B.C. and A.D. 140.

The calendar introduction cannot be therefore later than 4241 B.C. which is the
oldest certain date in world history......"Hetep"

(HETEP CIRCLE)