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Updated: June 23, 2025
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.
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.
"The Egyptians estimated the year at 365 d. 6 h., by which they lost one year in every 14,601, their Sothiac period. They determined the length of their year by the heliacal rising of Sirius, 2782 years before the Christian era, which is the earliest epoch of Egyptian chronology." The Egyptian civil year was of 365 days only, as we find in Herodotus, and I apprehend there is no dispute about it.
According to Professor Meyer and Professor Erman, this formal calendar was introduced in 4200 B.C., one of the occasions when the heliacal rising of the star Sothis fell on the first of the month Thoth of the calendar. However, if we accept with them the date 3300 B.C. as the date of the First dynasty, then in 4200 B.C. the Egyptians were just emerging from a neolithic state.
The orientation of Egyptian temples and Druidical stones is such that possibly they were so placed as to assist in the observation of the heliacal risings of certain stars. If the star were known, this would give an approximate date. Up to the present the results of these investigations are far from being conclusive. We have no evidence beyond his own statement that he was a practical observer.
The periodic time of Uranus, the nature of Saturn's ring, and the occupation of Jupiter's satellites, are as far removed from the concerns of mankind as the heliacal rising of Sirius, or the northern position of the Great Bear."
The Egyptians had, at an early period, observed that the rising of the Nile coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius, the Dog-star, and hence they very plausibly referred it to celestial agencies.
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