cognize the need of
this additional day, or if he did recognize it he failed to act on
his knowledge, and so it happened that, starting somewhere back in the
remote past with a new year's day that coincided with the inundation of
the Nile, there was a constantly shifting maladjustment of calendar and
seasons as time went on.

The Egyptian seasons, it should be explained, were three in number: the
season of the inundation, the season of the seed-time, and the season
of the harvest; each season being, of course, four months in extent.
Originally, as just mentioned, the season of the inundations began and
coincided with the actual time of inundation. The more precise fixing of
new year's day was accomplished through observation of the time of
the so-called heliacal rising of the dog-star, Sirius, which bore the
Egyptian name Sothis. It chances that, as viewed from about the region
of Heliopolis, the sun at the time of the summer solstice occupies an
apparent position in the heavens close to the dog-star. Now, as is well
known, the Egyptians, seeing divinity back of almost every phenomenon
of nature, very naturally paid particular reverence to so obviously
influential a personage as the sun-god. In particular they thought it
fitting to do homage to him just as he was starting out on his tour of
Egypt in the morning; and that they might know the precise moment of his
coming, the Egyptian astronomer priests, perched on the hill-tops near
their temples, were wont to scan the eastern horizon with reference
to some star which had been observed to precede the solar luminary.
Of course the precession of the equinoxes, due to that axial wobble in
which our clumsy earth indulges, would change the apparent position of
the fixed stars in reference to the sun, so that the same star could not
do service as heliacal messenger indefinitely; but, on the other hand,
these changes are so slow that observations by many generations of
astronomers would be required to detect the shifting. It is believed
by Lockyer, though the evidence is not quite demonstrative, that the
astronomical observations of the Egyptians date back to a period when
Sothis, the dog-star, was not in close association with the sun on the
morning of the summer solstice. Yet, according to the calculations of
Biot, the heliacal rising of Sothis at the solstice was noted as early
as the year 3285 B.C., and it is certain that this star continued
throughout subsequent centuries