Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 7.djvu/167

 OF THE REIGN OF PHILIP ARID^US. 119 The minor temples may have had their calendars on a smaller scale, like the present, and consequently more easily destroyed. The specimen of the calendar of Elephantina, copied by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, gives a further insight into the object of these documents. It gives a list of parti- cular things, either consumed or bestowed during the festivals : for the fragment remaining states the good things to be hess emf- — " ordered upon it," i. e., the festival. The account commences with a mutilated item of 20 jars {imiat ^) of honey, 30 measures of some other substance, 12 jars [mnat) of wine, and 10 bushels (Jietep'^) of clover. For the 28th day of the month Epiphi,^ on which the festival of the Dog- star fell, were provided 1 bull, 5. . . .,10 bushels (Jietep) of white flour, 33 baskets (Jietep) of white bread, 10 bushels [Jietep) of incense, 92 baskets-full of white meat, QQ mnat of mead, 80 jars of some drink, 15 jars of sherbet, or " a delicious drink," as it is called, and 20 bushels of clover. The inscription states, that this was the estimate of things required for that festival. This is followed by a mutilated account of the wine, honey, bread, &c., for another. There can be no doubt, from the terms in which the tables of the gods are mentioned in the inscriptions,^ and the especial officers employed as clerks, receivers, &c., of their food, that the gods were as daintily served as Bel in the Apocrypha, and the food as duly devoured. The table of the Sun,^ which some have thought to find described in one of the Papyri of the British Museum, is a special instance. It is evident that the chronology of the country must depend upon the due appreciation of these calendars ; and although the present was constructed at a period for which there is abundance of data, and whose chronology is fixed, ^ The mna is apparently a measure like the things which come on tiieir table the Hebrew, and the Coptic moit. (ul/iu)" to the deceased : Cf. Sharpe, Eg. ' After all, I consider it doubtful whe- Ins. PI. 112,t. 107, 1. fi. To which is some- ther this group does not read Iiep.t. I timesadded, "from" or "in their presence" regard the measure as the Coptic oioipe — (cm bah) : Ibid. 9!!, 1. 4 ; !);5, 1. 3 : and "at the Alexandrian ol(j>l, and the Hebrew the set of avcry sun" (cm Irtrt en ranch) : nS'^ cphah. Peyron, Lex. Ling. Copt., Statue of Ancbta, British Museum, 4. '5 ; p. 150. Some read this as " pints." Lepsius, Auswahl, Tab. xi. It may be " It is as well to bear in mind the re- concluded from this, that there was a daily semblance of this Egyptian month and dinner, or feast, given to the gods at sunset the Hebrew Abib. If this fragment is — a kind of supper, and that the principal part of the Thothmes III. calendar, it is Egyptian meal was then taken, of course a fixed point for the chronology ' Herodotus, iii. 18. Dr. llincks, in of the XVIIIth dynasty. Trans. Brit. Arch. Assoc, 8vo, Loud., " I allude to the common sepulchral 184.5, p. 254. statement, that the gods have given " all VOL. VII. R