CHAPTER XXIII.

THE EGYPTIAN YEAR AND THE NILE.

Our researches so far leave no doubt upon the question that a large part of the astronomical activity of the earliest Egyptians had reference to observations connected especially with New Year's Day. It has been made abundantly clear, too, that in very early times the Egyptians had a solar year commencing at the Summer Solstice, and that this solstice was then, and is now, coincident with the arrival of the Nile flood at Heliopolis and Memphis, the most important centres of northern Egyptian life during the early dynasties.

In the dawn of civilisation it was not at all a matter of course that the sun should be taken as the measurer of time, as it is now with us; and in this connection it is worth while to note how very diverse the treatment of this subject was among the early peoples. Thus, for instance, it was different in Egypt from what it was in Chaldæa and Babylonia, and later among the Jews. In the Egyptian inscriptions we find references to the moon, but they prove that she occupied quite a subordinate position to the sun, at least in the later times. The week of seven days was utterly unknown amongst the Egyptians. Everything that can be brought forward in its favour belongs to the latest periods. The passage quoted by Lepsius from the Book of the Dead proves nothing, since, according to Krall, an error has crept into his translation. In Babylonia it would seem that the moon was worshipped as well as the sun; and it was thus naturally used for measuring time; and, so far as months were concerned, this, of course, was quite right. In Babylonia, too, where much desert travel had to be undertaken at night, the movements of the moon would be naturally watched with great care.

An interesting point connected with this is that, among these ancient peoples, the celestial bodies which gave them the unit period of time by which they reckoned were practically looked upon in the same category. Thus, for instance, in Egypt the sun being used, the unit of time was a year; but in Babylonia the unit of time was a month, for the reason that the standard of time was the moon. Hence, when periods of time were in question, it was quite easy for one nation to conceive that the period of time used in another was a year when really it was a month, and _vice versâ_. It has been suggested that the years of Methuselah and other persons who are stated to have lived a considerable number of years were not solar years but lunar years--that is, properly, lunar months This is reasonable, since, if we divide the numbers by twelve, we find that they come out very much the same length as lives are in the present day, and there is no reason why this should not be so.

There seems little doubt that the country in which the sun was definitely accepted as the most accurate measurer of time was Egypt.

Rā, the sun, was the chief god of ancient Egypt. He was worshipped throughout the various nomes. Even the oldest texts (_cf._ that of Menkaurā in the British Museum) tell of the brilliant course of Rā across the celestial vault and his daily struggle with darkness.

"The Egyptians," says Ranke in the first chapter of his "Universal History," which is devoted to Egypt, "have determined the motion of the sun as seen on earth, and according to this the year was divided, in comparison with Babylon, in a scientific and practically useful way, so that Julius Cæsar adopted the calendar from the Egyptians and introduced it into the Roman Empire. The other nations followed suit, and since then it has been in general use for seventeen centuries. The calendar may be considered as the noblest relic of the most ancient times which has influenced the world."

Wherever the ancient Egyptians came from--whether from a region where the moon was the time-measurer or not--so soon as they settled in the valley where the Nile then, as now, like a pendulum slowly beat the years by its annual inundation at the Summer Solstice, the solar basis of their calendar was settled. Hence it was Nature, the Nile--on the regulation of which depended the welfare of the country--which facilitated the establishment of the Egyptian year. Solstice and Nile-flood are the turning-points of the old Egyptian year.

That Egypt is the gift of the Nile is a remark we owe to the Father of History, who referred not only to the fertilising influence of the stream, but to the fact that the presence of the Nile, and its phenomena, are the conditions upon which the habitability of Egypt altogether depends. That the Egyptian year and that part of Egyptian archæology and myth which chiefly interests astronomers are also the gift of the Nile, is equally true.

The heliacal rising of Sirius and other stars at the time of the commencement of the inundation each year; all the myths which grew out of the various symbols of the stars so used; are so many evidences of the large share the river, with its various water-levels at different times, had in the national life. It was, in fact, the true and unique basis of the national life.

In this the Nile had a compeer or even compeers. What the Nile was to Egypt the Euphrates and Tigris were to a large region of Western Asia, where also we find the annual flood a source of fertility, a spectacle which inspired poets, and an event with which astronomers largely occupied themselves.

What more natural than that Euphrates, Tigris, and Nile were looked upon as deities; that the gods of the Nile valley on the one hand, and of the region watered by the Euphrates and Tigris, on the other, were gods to swear by; that they were worshipped in order that their benign influences might be secured, and that they had their local shrines and special cults?

The god sacred to the Euphrates and Tigris was called Ea.

The god sacred to the Nile was called Hāpi. The name is the same as that of the bull Apis, the worship of which was attributed to Mena.[64] Certainly Mena, Mini, or Menes, as he is variously called, was fully justified in founding the cult of the river-god, for he first among men appears to have had just ideas of irrigation, and I have heard the distinguished officers who have lately been responsible for the irrigation system of to-day speaking with admiration of the ideas and works of Mena. Whether the Tigris had a Mena in an equally early time is a point on which history is silent; but, according to the accounts of travellers, the Tigris in flood is even more majestic than the Nile, and yet the latter river in flood is a sight to see--a whole fertile plain turned, as it were, into an arm of the sea, with here and there an island, which, on inspection, turns out to be a village, the mud houses of which too often are undermined by the lapping of the waves in the strong north wind.

There is no doubt that the dates of the rise of these rivers not only influenced the national life, but even the religions of the dwellers on their banks. The Euphrates and Tigris rise at the Spring Equinox--the religion was equinoxial, the temples were directed to the east. The Nile rises at a solstice--the religion was solstitial and the solar temples were directed no longer to the east. To the Egyptians the coming of the river to the parched land was as the sunrise chasing the darkness of the night; the sun-god of day conquering the star-gods of night; or again the victorious king of the land slaughtering his enemies.

Egypt, in the words of Amru, first appears like a dusty plain, then as a fresh sea, and finally as a bed of flowers.

It might be imagined at first sight that as the year was thus determined, so to speak, by natural local causes, the divisions or seasons would be the same as those which Nature has given _us_. This is not so. The river and land conditions are so widely different.

By no one, perhaps, have the actual facts been so truly and poetically described as by Osborn, who thus pictures the low Nile[65]:--

"The Nile has shrunk within its banks until its stream is contracted to half its ordinary dimensions, and its turbid, slimy, stagnant waters scarcely seem to flow in any direction. Broad flats or steep banks of black, sun-baked Nile mud, form both the shores of the river. All beyond them is sand and sterility; for the hamseen, or sand-wind of fifty days' duration, has scarcely yet ceased to blow. The trunks and branches of trees may be seen here and there through the dusty, hazy, burning atmosphere, but so entirely are their leaves coated with dust that at a distance they are not distinguishable from the desert sand that surrounds them. It is only by the most painful and laborious operation of watering that any tint approximating to greenness can be preserved at this season even in the pleasure-gardens of the Pacha. The first symptom of the termination of this most terrible season is the rising of the north wind (the Etesian wind of the Greeks), blowing briskly, often fiercely, during the whole of the day. The foliage of the groves that cover Lower Egypt is soon disencumbered by it of the dust, and resumes its verdure. The fierce fervours of the sun, then at its highest ascension, are also most seasonably mitigated by the same powerful agency, which prevails for this and the three following months throughout the entire land of Egypt."

Then comes the inundation:--

"Perhaps there is not in Nature a more exhilarating sight, or one more strongly exciting to confidence in God, than the rise of the Nile. Day by day and night by night, its turbid tide sweeps onward majestically over the parched sands of the waste, howling wilderness. Almost hourly, as we slowly ascended it before the Etesian wind, we heard the thundering fall of some mud-bank, and saw, by the rush of all animated Nature to the spot, that the Nile had overleapt another obstruction, and that its bounding waters were diffusing life and joy through another desert. There are few impressions I ever received upon the remembrance of which I dwell with more pleasure than that of seeing the first burst of the Nile into one of the great channels of its annual overflow. All Nature shouts for joy. The men, the children, the buffaloes, gambol in its refreshing waters, the broad waves sparkle with shoals of fish, and fowl of every wing flutter over them in clouds. Nor is this jubilee of Nature confined to the higher orders of creation. The moment the sand becomes moistened by the approach of the fertilising waters, it is literally alive with insects innumerable. It is impossible to stand by the side of one of these noble streams, to see it every moment sweeping away some obstruction to its majestic course, and widening as it flows, without feeling the heart to expand with love and joy and confidence in the great Author of this annual miracle of mercy."

After the flood comes the sowing time. The effects of the inundation, as Osborn shows in another place,

"exhibit themselves in a scene of fertility and beauty such as will scarcely be found in another country at any season of the year. The vivid green of the springing corn, the groves of pomegranate-trees ablaze with the rich scarlet of their blossoms, the fresh breeze laden with the perfumes of gardens of roses and orange thickets, every tree and every shrub covered with sweet-scented flowers. These are a few of the natural beauties that welcome the stranger to the land of Ham. There is considerable sameness in them, it is true, for he would observe little variety in the trees and plants, whether he first entered Egypt by the gardens of Alexandria or the plain of Assouan. Yet is it the same everywhere, only because it would be impossible to make any addition to the sweetness of the odours, the brilliancy of the colours, or the exquisite beauty of the many forms of vegetable life, in the midst of which he wanders. It is monotonous, but it is the monotony of Paradise."

The flood reaches Cairo on a day closely approximating to that of the Summer Solstice. It attains its greatest height, and begins to decline near the Autumnal Equinox. By the Winter Solstice the Nile has again subsided within its banks and resumed its blue colour. Seed-time has occurred in this interval.

Beginning with the inundation (Summer Solstice) we have--

(1) The season or _tetramene_ of the inundation, July-October. (2) " " " sowing, November-February. (3) " " " harvest, March-June.

From the earliest times the year was divided into twelve months, as follows, the leading month being dedicated to the God of Wisdom, Thoth (Tehuti):--

{Thoth End of June (Gregorian). Inundation {Phaophi " July. {Athyr " August. {Choiak " September.

{Tybi " October. Seed-time {Menchir " November. {Phamenoth " December. {Pharmouthi " January.

{Pachons " February. Harvest {Payni " March. {Epiphi " April. {Mesori " May.

The terms for the seasons and months are found even on the building material of the largest pyramid of Dashûr, and in the oldest records we already find calendar indications. On the steles of the Mastăbas, in which the deceased prays Anubis for a good sepulture, we find a list of the festal days on which sacrifices are to be offered for the dead.

A modern calendar (given both by Brugsch and De Rougé) is, doubtless, a survival from old Egyptian times. It is good for the neighbourhood of Cairo, and the relation of the important days of the inundation to the solstice, in that part of the river, is as follows:--

Night of the drop 11 Payni 15 " Summer solstice. Beginning of the inundation 18 " 3 days after. Assembly at the nilometer 25 " 10 " Proclamation of the inundation 26 " 11 " Marriage of the Nile 18 Mesori 63 " The Nile ceases to rise 16 Thoth 96 " Opening of the dams 17 " 97 " End of the greater inundation 7 Phaophi 117 "

In order to show how the astronomy of the ancient Egyptians--to deal specially with them--was to a large extent concerned with the annual flood and all that depended upon that flood; and how the first tropical year used on this planet, so far as we know, was established, it is important to study the actual facts of the rise somewhat closely, not only for Egypt generally, but for several points in the line, some thousand miles in extent, along which in the earliest times cities and shrines were dotted here and there.

Time out of mind the fluctuations in the height of the river have been carefully recorded at different points along the river. In the "Description de l'Égypte" we find a full description of the so-called nilometer at Aswân (First Cataract), which dates from a remote period, perhaps as early as the fifth dynasty.

In Ebers' delightful book on Egypt space is given to the description of the much more modern one located at Rôda.

The nilometer, or "mikyās," on the island of Rôda, now visible, is stated to have replaced one which was brought thither from Memphis at some unrecorded date. Makrīzī in 1417, according to Ebers, saw the remains of the older nilometer.

The present mikyās is within a covered vault or chamber, the roof being supported on simple wooden pillars. In a quadrangular tank in communication with the river by a canal is an octagon pillar on which the Arabic measurements are inscribed. These consist of the pic (variously called ell or cubit) = 0·54 metre, which is divided into twenty-four kirats. In consequence of the rise of the river bed in relatively recent times, the nilometer is submerged at high Nile to a depth of two cubits.

The rise of the Nile can now be carefully studied, as gauges are distributed along the river. We have the Aswân gauge from 1869, the Armant gauge from 1887, the Suhag gauge from 1889, and the Asyût gauge from 1892. The distances of these gauges from Aswân are as follows:--

Kilometres. Aswân 0 Armant 200 Suhag 447 Asyût 550 Rôda 941

The Rôda gauge is not to be depended on, as the movements of the barrage regulation destroy its value as a record. The heights of these gauges above mean sea-level are as follows:--

Metres. Aswân 84·158 Armant 69·535 Suhag 56·00 Asyût 53·10 Rôda 13·14

Great vagueness arises in there being no very obvious distinction between the gauge readings reached in summer and that from which the rise is continuous. There are apparently rainfalls in the end of spring of sufficient power to raise the Nile visibly in summer, just as muddy rises have been seen in winter to pass down the valley, leaving a muddy mark on the rocks at Aswân and Manfalūt. Independently of the actual gauge-reading of the rise, there are facts about it which strike every beholder. At the commencement of the rise we have the _green water_. This occurs in June, but varies in date as much as the top of the flood varies.

From the fact that modern observations show that the very beginning of the rise, and the first flush, second flush and final retirement vary, it seems evident that the ancient Egyptians could not have had any fixed zero-gauge or time for the real physical fact of the rise, but must have deduced from a series of observations either a mean period of commencement, or a mean arrival of the red water, or a mean rising up to a certain gauge.

First, to deal with the green water. Generally when the rise of an inch or two is reported from the nilometer at Rôda, the waters lose the little of clearness and freshness they still possessed. The green colour is the slimy, lustreless hue of brackish water within the tropics, and no filter that has yet been discovered can render such water clear. The colour is really due to algæ.

Happily, the continuance of this state of the water seldom exceeds three or four days. The sufferings of those who are compelled to drink it in this state, from vesical disease, even in this short interval, are very severe. The inhabitants of the cities generally provide against it by Nile water stored in reservoirs and tanks.

Colonel Ross, R.E., noticed in 1887 and in 1890, when, owing to the slow retreat of the Nile, the irrigation officers had to hold back many basins in the Gîzeh province, and also in 1888 when the water remained long stagnant, that the basin water got green--showed the algæ and smelt marshy--just as the June green water does.

Hence it has been argued that, as the Nile water in the bed of the stream--even in very slow-flowing back-waters--does not become green, the greenness must be produced by an almost absolute stagnation of the water. We know of great marshes up above Gondokoro, and hence it is thought that the green water of summer, which comes on suddenly, is this marsh-water being pushed out by the new water from behind, and that is why it heralds the rise. No one has so far minutely observed the gradual intrusion of the green water.

The rise of the river proceeds rapidly, and the water gradually becomes more turbid. Ten or twelve days, however, elapse before the development of the last and most extraordinary of all the appearances of the Nile, thus described by Mr. Osborn[66]:--

"It was at the end of--to my own sensations--a long and very sultry night, that I raised myself from the sofa upon which I had in vain been endeavouring to sleep, on the deck of a Nile boat that lay becalmed off Benisoueff, a town of Middle Egypt. The sun was just showing the upper limb of his disc over the eastern mountains. I was surprised to see that when his rays fell upon the water a deep ruddy reflection was given back. The depth of the tint increased continually as a larger portion of his light fell upon the water, and before he had entirely cleared the top of the hill it presented the perfect appearance of a river of blood. Suspecting some delusion, I rose up hastily, and, looking over the side of the boat, saw there the confirmation of my first impression. The entire body of the water was opaque and of a deep red colour, bearing a closer resemblance to blood than to any other natural production to which it could be compared. I now perceived that during the night the river had visibly risen several inches. While I was gazing at this great sight the Arabs came round me to explain that it was the Red Nile. The redness and opacity of the water, in this extraordinary condition of the river, are subject to constant variations. On some days, when the rise of the river has not exceeded an inch or two, its waters return to a state of semi-transparency, though during the entire period of the high Nile they never lose the deep red tinge which cannot be separated from them. It is not, however, like the green admixture, at all deleterious; the Nile water is never more wholesome or more deliciously refreshing than during the overflow. There are other days when the rise of the river is much more rapid, and then the quantity of mud that is suspended in the water exceeds, in Upper Egypt, that which I have seen in any other river. On more than one occasion I could perceive that it visibly interfered with the flow of the stream. A glassful of it in this state was allowed to remain still for a short time. The upper portion of it was perfectly opaque and the colour of blood. A sediment of black mud occupied about one-quarter of the glass. A considerable portion of this is deposited before the river reaches Middle and Lower Egypt. I never observed the Nile water in this condition there, and indeed no consecutive observations exist of the reddening of the water. It is quite clear that the reddening cannot come from the White Nile, but must be the first floods of the Blue Nile and Bahral Azral coming down."

One of the most important matters for the purposes of our present inquiry is connected with the influence upon local calendars, in different parts of the Nile valley, of the variations of the phenomena upon which the Egyptians depended for the marking of New Year's Day.

If the _solstice_ had been taken alone, the date of it would have been the same for all parts of the valley; but certainly the solstice was not taken alone, and for the obvious reason, that they wanted something to warn them of the Nile rise, and in the lower reaches of the river the rise precedes the solstice. Nor was the heliacal rising of Sirius, of which more presently, taken alone.

But it was chiefly a question of the arrival of the Nile flood, and the date of the commencement of the Nile flood was by no means common to all parts of Egypt.

Now it is to be gathered from the modern gauges that it takes the flood some time, as we can easily imagine, to pass down the 600 miles between Elephantine and Cairo.

In the early flood, rising from, say, one cubit Aswân to six cubits, where there are many dry sandbanks, and the spreading out of the river is considerable, and there is an absence of overlapping flushes from behind, the rate goes up to fifteen days, and the _earliest_ indication of the rise may take longer still, but this is very difficult to observe.

The rate in Hood is 1¾ days from Wādy Halfa to Aswân, and six days from Aswân to Rôda (941 kilometres). In very high Niles this is perhaps accelerated to five days.

There is, therefore, a very great difference in time and rate between Green and Red Nile.

The rise is 45 ft. at Aswân, 38 at Thebes, and 25 at Cairo.

From the data obtained at the gauges named, which have been kindly forwarded to me by Mr. Garstin, the Under Secretary of State of the Public Works Department of Egypt, I have ascertained that the average time taken by the first indication of the flood to travel between Thebes and Memphis is now about nine days.

It must be remembered, however, that the river-bed is now higher than formerly; the land around Thebes, according to Budge, has been raised about nine feet in the last 1,700 years.

If, therefore, at each great city, such as Thebes and Heliopolis, New Year's Day depended absolutely on the arrival of the inundation, not only would the day have been uncertain, but the difference of time in the arrival of the Hood at various places along the river would represent a difference in the New Year's Days of those places, compared to which our modern differences of local time sink into insignificance, for they only touch hours of the day.

The great difficulty experienced in understanding the statements generally made concerning the Nile-rise is due to the fact that the maximum flood is, as a rule, registered in Cairo upwards of forty days after the maximum at Aswân.

For the following account of how this is brought about I am indebted to the kindness of Colonel Ross, R.E.:--

"The behaviour of the flood at the Aswân gauge is as follows: Between August 20 and 30 a good average gauge of 16 cubits is often reached, and between August 27 and September 3 there is often a drop of about 30 centimetres. The August rise is supposed to be mostly due to the Blue Nile and Atbara River. Between September 1 and 8 the irrigation officers generally look for a maximum flood-gauge of the year at Aswân. This is supposed to be the first flush of the White Nile. In the middle of September there are generally two small flushes, but the last twenty days of September are generally distinctly lower than that of the first week. The final flush of the Nile is seldom later than the 21st to 25th September.

"All this water does not merely go down the Nile; it floods the different basins. The opening of these basins begins from the south to the north. This operation is generally performed between the 29th September and the 22nd October. The great Central Egypt basins are not connected with the Nile for purposes of discharge into the river between Asyût and near Wasta, or a distance of 395-90 kilometres = 305 kil.

"The country in the middle or Central Egypt is broad, and thus there is an enormous quantity of water poured out of these basins into the lower reaches of the river about the 20th October, which seriously raises the Nile at Cairo, and in a good average year will bring the Cairo gauge (at Rôda) up to the maximum of the year on or about October 22, and hence it is that the guide-books say the Nile is at its highest in the end of October.

"A gauge of 16½ cubits at Aswân while the basins are being filled does not give more than 21 cubits at Rôda (Cairo), but, as the basins with a 16½ gauge will fill by the 10th September, it follows that a 16½ to 16 cubit gauge at Aswân will not give a constant Cairo gauge, as the great mass of water passes by the basins and reaches Cairo. Hence we have frequently the paradox of a steady or falling gauge at Aswân showing a steady rise at Cairo.

"If the gauge at Aswân keeps above 16 cubits to near the end of September, the basin-emptying is much retarded, as the emptying at each successive basin fills the Nile above the 16 cubit level; _hence the lower halves of the basins do not flow off_, and thus, when the great Middle Egypt basins are discharged, they do not raise the Nile so much as they do when the last half of September Nile is below 16 at Aswân.

"In years like 1887 and 1892, which differ from each other only in date of maximum gauge at Aswân, the river, having filled the basins in fifteen to twenty days instead of in twenty-five to thirty days, comes down to Cairo in so largely increased a volume that a really dangerous gauge of 25 cubits at Cairo is maintained for over a fortnight (the average October gauge in Cairo is about 23 cubits), and from September 10 to October 25 the river remains from 24 cubits to 25½ cubits, and the Middle Egypt basins discharge so slowly that the opening day is hardly traceable on the Cairo gauge.

"In the 1878 flood, which was the most disastrous flood possible, the river rose in the most abnormal fashion, and on October 3 attained 18 cubits at Aswân. This breached the Delta, and in addition so delayed the Upper Egypt basins emptying, from the reason before given, that the wheat was sown too late, and got badly scorched by the hot winds of March and April."[67]