able new year's day of the calendar had come round
to the place in the natural year from which it first began to move in
the reign of Menophres or Thutmosis III.; it had come round to the day
when the dog-star rose heliacally. If the years had been counted from
the beginning of this great year, there could have been no doubt when it
came to an end, as from the want of a leap year the new year's day
must have been always moving one day in four years; but no satisfactory
reckoning of the years had been kept, and, as the end of the period was
only known by observation, there was some little doubt about the exact
year. Indeed, among the Greek astronomers, Dositheus said the dog-star
rises heliacally twenty-three days after midsummer, Meton twenty-eight
days, and Euctemon thirty-one days; they thus left a doubt of thirty-two
years as to when the period should end, but the statesmen placed it in
the first year of the reign of Antoninus. This end of the Sothic period
Avas called the return to the phoenix, and had been looked forward to by
the Egyptians for many years, and is well marked on the coins of this
reign. The coins for the first eight years teem with astronomy. There
are several with the goddess Isis in a boat, which we know, from the
zodiac in the Memnonium at Thebes, was meant for the heliacal rising of
the dog-star. In the second and in the sixth year we find on the coins
the remarkable word aion, _the age_ or _period_, and an ibis with a
glory of rays round its head, meant for the bird phoenix. In the seventh
year we see Orpheus playing on his lyre while all the animals of the
forest are listening, thus pointing out the return of the golden age.
In the eighth year we have the head of Serapis circled by the seven
planets, and the whole within the twelve signs of the zodiac; and on
another coin we have the sun and moon within the signs of the zodiac. A
series of twelve coins for the same year tells us that the house of the
sun, in the language of the astrologers, is in the lion, that of the
moon in the crab, the houses of Venus in the scales and the bull, those
of Mars in the scorpion and the ram, those of Jupiter in the archer
and the fishes, those of Saturn in the sea-goat and aquarius, those of
Mercury in the virgin and the twins. On the coins of the same year we
have the eagle and thunderbolt, the sphinx, the bull Apis, the Nile and
crocodile, Isis nursing the child Horus, the hawk-headed Aroeris, and
the winged s