180. A YEAR is denoted by a bent line with a little projection from the middle, which seems to re present a plant with an annual shoot or bud ; it is commonly followed by a semicircle and a block or dash.
181. There is some little uncertainty respecting the exact limits of the characters denoting the first month THOYTH. The name seems to have some relation to gathering the harvest, and the emblem is probably intended for a field of corn and, perhaps, as the year is said to have begun originally with the dogdays, the appropriation of this character to the first month may have been contemporaneous with the origin of the calendar.
182, 183. The sixth month, MECHIR, is remark able for having half as many crescents as the twelfth MESORE this relation would, without doubt, be fur ther illustrated, if we could discover any thing like a calendar, among the immense mass of Egyptian literature, which is still in existence. The mann
acript, which Montfaucon calls a calendar, merely because it is divided into twelve columns, has no pretensions to the name.
184, 185. The symbol for the sun seems to be employed in the designation both of the FIRST DAY of the month, the NEOMENIA of the Greek inscrip tion, and of the lila, Or THIRTIETH DAY. Of the characters following the sun, the one seems to mean good, or rather slew, as in Thoyth, the month of the new year: the other old or last. This character might be taken for a serpent, or for a branch of a tree ; but it seems more probable that it is intended for the tail of an animal, since it occurs in several of the manuscripts as representing a tail; of the month is sufficiently expressive of the sense. See n. 130.