MJ Thomas 2 Wrote:
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> According to you, the 4th Dyn Egyptians knew there
> was 365.25 days in a year.

This question was not addressed to me. However, the Sothic Cycle, is assumed to have existed in the 4th dynasty.

"360 days (Source: The British Museum: Dictionary of Ancient Egypt by Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson (1995))."
-- Technically correct. 12 months=360 days... plus 5 extra days for the gods (365 days), and then corrected due to the sothic cycle (an extra day added every few years). (I have an old post on the egyptian calendar, I can look up if you want a source; however, it is sourced from Greek Texts, not egyptian).

[en.wikipedia.org]
"It is believed that Ancient Egyptians followed both a 365-day civil calendar and a lunar religious calendar."
...
"The ancient Egyptian civil year was 365 days long, and apparently did not have any intercalary days added to keep it in alignment with the Sothic year, a kind of sidereal year. Normally, a sidereal year is considered to be 365.25636 days long, but that only applies to stars on the ecliptic, or the apparent path of the Sun. Because Sirius is not on the ecliptic, the wobbling of the celestial equator and hence of the horizon at the latitude of Egypt causes the Sothic year to be slightly smaller. Indeed, it is almost exactly 365.25 days long, the average number of days in a Julian year."
*******
"I'd say that we have irrefutable evidence that the diagonal of the base of Khafre's pyramid being in the region of 365 royal cubits and the number of days in a year being 365.25 is nothing more than a coincidence."
-- Could be. This is a big site, and there is some margin of error. It is certainly a curious coincidence, though.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/06/2009 03:11PM by rich.