which I will explain presently), has believed himself to have found the trace of a new cycle which he calls the panegyrical month, together with complete dates in this cycle. Not content with this discovery, Mr. Poole thinks he has found several other cycles with their respective dates. I own that I cannot possibly understand how in the face of such important pretensions Mr. Poole has not considered himself obliged to prove the truth of his assertions by minutely analysing the inscriptions which he alleges. Far from this he contents himself with referring to them, and sometimes even without giving the text in his plates. One cannot lean upon an Egyptian inscription as upon a passage from Titus Livius, without new explanations, and I will say frankly that I believe in none of the cycles, and in none of the dates of Mr. Poole. The absolute deficiency of proof would authorise me to end the discussion here, but I will nevertheless show what consequences Mr. Poole is brought to by his tropical cycle. According, then, to this young archæologist, the group dagger and palm branch, or its variant head and palm branch, which Mr. Lepsius has translated "beginning of the year," and which every disciple of Champollion would translate in the same way, signifies first year of the cycle, and will serve to give the date of the monuments where it is found. Mr. Poole had only remarked it in two or three monuments far separated one from the other, but if he will look through the first sheets of Mr. Lepsius's great work he will find these words in the lists of festivals of almost all the tombs successively built under the Memphite kings, and from this he would have to conclude that all these tombs were constructed in the same year. Happily this difficulty does not exist, for there is no indication here of anything but of a festival at the beginning of the year. The same may be said of the new great panegyrical month. Mr. Poole finds a notice of the festival named the Festival of Six, which is known to us from the funeral rituals, and was celebrated on the birthday of Osiris. This number six becomes for him a date of one of these great months. Then, too, there are the twelve festivals of the first of each month, and the twelve festivals of the middles of the months, where again the number twelve is equally metamorphosed into a date. It is evident that by manipulating numbers thus, without controlling their signification, or the way in which they are introduced into inscriptions, one may come to imagine as many cycles as one pleases, and give them a certain degree of verisimilitude in the eyes of persons who can only discuss the results. A labour based like this ought to be considered as nothing, and if I have mentioned it here it is because this young "savant," notwithstanding the ill thesis he has developed, has been enabled to show a great deal of ingenuity and talent, and that this false beginning does not prevent us from recognizing in him a future distinguished archæologist.'-Revue Archæologique, Feb. 1853.

Now we will say at once that we quite agree with M. De Rouge in his criticisms upon Mr. Poole's style. M. De Rougé is himself so excellent a model of a clean, sharp, French style of writing, that he has been repelled by the rather awkward way in

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which our young author has produced his arguments. Still, to insinuate that there is nothing brought forward by him worth examining is, in our opinion, quite unjust, and this thesis we now proceed to maintain. We beg our readers, however, at once to understand that we are no authority' upon these subjects. We have but such general knowledge upon Egyptology as country students may attain to. We judge of an argument pro or con when we see it, being competent to know the difference between a good and a bad one; but, with M. De Rougé, we decidedly think that the periods of Titus Livius are more comprehensible at present than even those of the Phoenix or the Dog-star.

Mr. Poole then affirms, and M. De Rougé denies, that from the very earliest times the Egyptians dated events on the day-year system. Just, then, as modern writers on prophecy use the phrase prophetical year for 360 Julian years, and prophetical month for 30 Julian years, so had the Egyptians (says Mr. Poole) their panegyrical year for 365 Egyptian years, and their panegyrical months.

The importance of this discovery, if the fact can be established, is obvious. We would mention that each panegyrical month comprised 30 Egyptian years; but the smaller division was not into panegyrical days of a year each, but into 20 divisions of a month,' of a year and a half each.

To familiarize our readers with the use of this cycle, let us suppose that Menes, the first Egyptian king, was formally first named as king in the archives of the priesthood B.C. 2717, in the first month of the first panegyrical year, in the first division of the month. Let it be next supposed that Shufu, a king of the fourth dynasty and builder of the great pyramid, could be proved to have been on the throne in a first month and division also of a panegyrical year. This, Mr. Poole asserts, is actually the case; and, if so, it would follow that we might place him at once in B.C. 2352, which Mr. Poole has done. So if Amenemha II., the second king of the twelfth dynasty, reigned in the 12th division of a 12th panegyrical month, as Mr. Poole affirms is the case, we may date him B.C. 2005. Thus much to show the use of this period, if it be a reality.

M. De Rougé would imply that he does not consider the evidence adduced to be worth examining. We can only say that since we have read how little such a first-rate authority has to say against it, we must consider it to stand firmer than it did before.

Mr. Poole has given us certain inscriptions in which any one may recognize some full-length and some abbreviated expressions, the meaning of which constitutes the point in dispute. Now M. De Rougé, it appears to us, has done two unfair things in his argument, and has then, in his own interpretation, given us as mere an ipse dixit as he complains of in Poole.

First, we say, he has argued upon an abbreviated expression

VOL. V.-NO. IX.

only. We would ask him at once, Does he deny that the fulllength expression reads as follows?- Sidereal and solar month of the solar panegyry.' Unless he can do so, and can give some better explanation of the very obvious and expressive symbols in question, it is unfair to take the abbreviated form and say it merely means a common month. A writer on prophetical months and years would not always think it necessary to repeat his adjective prophetical.

Secondly, since there are twelve common months in the common year, and twelve middle days of these months, it is unfair, we say, for M. De Rougé only to notice those particular abbreviated inscriptions, which might possibly mean middle days; for in one case a fifteenth middle day (as De Rougé would translate it) is named. And this seems to us fatal to M. De Rouge's interpretation of the symbols.

The impression, then, left upon our minds is, that Mr. Poole has fastened upon a certain set of hieroglyphics; that he has translated them in a particular way; that after two years of publicity no one has suggested any better translation; that his rendering is of very great importance if true; and that it has been apparently accepted by some good English authorities.

Hitherto we have made a mere hypothesis ;-we have merely supposed or postulated that the beginning of the first panegyrical year should be placed B.C. 2717; and, in fact, we think that if any one is convinced by Mr. Poole's book, it will not be by following out his arguments one by one in the way he has put them, but by mentally granting this postulate; by granting his system, to begin with, as a whole; by drawing out his dynasties side by side on paper; by appending to the different kings all the dates he can fix upon as settled; and by then challenging facts, new or old, to invalidate this connected system if they can.

We must own that, if the panegyrical periods are to be fastened on to known chronology only by the one hook Mr. Poole has hung them upon, and only by the arguments from which he justifies this decisive operation, we should be unwilling to guarantee them against dropping off under M. De Rouge's or somebody else's attempts to dislodge them. The extreme ingenuity, however, of the manipulation' commands our admiration, and we owe it to our discoverer to sketch slightly what this point of junction is, as it appears in his pages; though we are pretty confident that in his own mind he must look upon it, with ourselves, as a strongly suggestive indication rather than as a sufficient proof by itself.

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The reader, then, must understand, to begin with, and realize to himself the fact that the Egyptians had no leap-year. If this were the case among ourselves, it is clear that our month June would, for four times in about every 1500 years, begin on the

longest day; four times it would begin on the shortest day; for about 120 years in the 1500 it would have the longest day in it, and for about 120 years it would contain the shortest day. Thus, with respect to the fixed phenomena of the seasons, our year would properly be called a moveable year, or vague year, as Mr. Poole more shortly but less comprehensibly names it. Now Egypt is of all countries in the world that one where the fixed phenomena of the seasons are most important to the people, and most carefully to be watched and attended to. It may then, we think, be at once granted that, among so very civilized a people as the Egyptians, this tropical cycle,' or period of about 1500 Gregorian years, in the course of which the seasons (as named in the ordinary or vague year) would come round again, was from very early times indeed well understood.

6

There is, then, no difficulty at all in granting that, as what we call December 28 B.C. 507 was the winter solstice or beginning of the tropical or season year, and coincided with the 1st of Thoth or beginning of the moveable or vague year, so 1500 years before the same coincidence took place, namely, what we call January 7th, B.C. 2005, was the winter solstice, and was the first day of Thoth at that remote period. Of this fact itself there is no doubt, but the question is whether the Egyptians knew they were then at the beginning of such a cycle? And to this we, for our part, cannot hesitate to answer Yes. We grant it to Mr. Poole and to the nature of things. The rate of the progress of their vague year among the fixed seasons was a mere matter of very easy and necessary observation.

Now, it is very obvious, that by granting the Egyptians to have known of the tropical cycle, we are no nearer the knowing how they expressed it, if at all, in their hieroglyphical inscriptions. Mr. Poole, however, carries us with him in his first step, namely, his most ingenious proofs that the 'little Rukh,' or 'swallow Rukh,' is the vernal equinox, the time when the swallow returns to Egypt.

Here, however, as far as direct arguments go, we must stop. He adduces two inscriptions of the reign of Amenemha II., each dated in the twelfth panegyrical month, the twelfth division, and each containing a long list of panegyrics, the great Rukh, the little Rukh, the great year, the little year, the five Huru of the year, &c. We should but betray our ignorance if we either accepted or refused this as a proof, in itself, that the documents date from the beginning of the tropical period B.C. 2005. they do, then the panegyrical month mentioned gives us the allimportant dates we named a few pages back. If they do not,

If

a The reason why we do not call this Dec. 28th is that all chronologists have agreed to date in Julian years for the times before the Gregorian correction. This causes a change of name of three days every four centuries.