The ruling class consists of Arabs intermingled with Turks, who have been in succession the conquer- ors of the land, and may be regarded as representing the priestly and military castes.
The only other trilje we have room to notice is that of the Copts, equally with the preceding indigenous. Thej' are Christians hy hereditary transmision, and have suffered centuries of cruel persecutions and hu- miliations, though now they seem to be rising in im- portance, and promise to fill an important page in the future histor}' of Egypt. In character they are amia- l)le, pacific, and intelligent, having, of course, the faults and vices of dissimulation, falsehood, and mean- ness, which slaverj'^ never fails to engender. In office they arc the scribes, the arithmeticians, the measurers, the clerks — in a word, the learned men of the country. The language which they use in their religious servi- ces is the ancient Egyptian, or Cojitic, which, how- ever, is translated into Arabic for the benefit of the laity (Bowring's ReporC). See below, Egypt, Chris- TiAX ; and Copts.
XIX. Technical Chronolorjy. — That the Egyptians used various periods of time, and made astronomical observations from a remote age, is equally attested by ancient writers and b^' their monuments. It is, how- ever, very diflicult to connect periods mentioned by the former with the indications of the fame kind of- fered bj- the latter ; and what we may term the record- ed observations of the monuments cannot be used for the determination of chronology without a previous knowledge of Eg3'ptian astronomy that we have not wholly attained. The testimony of ancient writers must, however, be carefully sifted, and we must not
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take their statements as a positive basis without the stroiii^est evidence of correctness. Without that tes- timony, however, we could not at present prosecute the inquiry. The Egyptians do not appear to have had any common ajra. Ever}' document tliat bears the date of a year gives the year of the reigning sover- eign, counted from thatcurrent j'ear in wliich he came to the tlirone, whicli was called his first j'ear. There is, therefore, no general means of testing deductions from tiie chronological indications of the monuments.
• There appear to have been at least three years in use with the Egyptians before the Roman domination, the Vague Year, the Tropical Year, and the Sothic Y'ear; but it is not probable that more than two of these were employed at the same time. The Vague Y'ear contained 365 days v/ithout any additional frac- tion, and therefore passed through all the seasons in about 1500 years. It was used both for civil and for religious purposes. Probably the Israelites adopted this year during the sojourn in Egypt, and that insti- tuted at the Exodus appears to have been the current Vague Y'ear fixed by the adoption of a method of in- tercalation. See Year. The Vague Year was divi- ded into twelve months, each of thirty days, with five epciffomencE, or additional days, after the twelfth. The months were assigned to three seasons, each compris- ing four months, called respectively the 1st, 2d, 3d, and -Ith of those seasons. The names by which the Egyptian months are commonly known, Thoth, Pao- phi, etc., are taken from the divinities to which they were sacred. The seasons are called, according to our rendering, those of Vegetation, Manifestation, and the Waters, or the Inundation : the exact meaning of their names has, however, been much disputed. They evidentlj'^ refer to the phenomena of a tropical year, and such a year we must therefore conclude the Egyp- tians had, at least in a remote period of their histo- rv. If, as we believe, the third season represents the period of the inundation, its beginning must be dated about one month before the autumnal equinox, which would place the beginning of the year at the winter solstice, an especially fit time in Egypt for the com- mencement of a tropical year. The Sothic Year was a supposed sidereal 3'ear of 365J days, commencing with the so-called heliacal rising of Sothis. The Vague Y'ear, having no intercalation, constantly retreated through the Sothic Year, until a pei-iod of 1461 j'ears of the former kind, and 1460 of the latter had elapsed, from one coincidence of commencements to another.
The Egyptians are known to have used two great cycles, the Sothic Cycle and the Tropical C3'cle. The former was a cj'cle of the coincidence of the Sothic and Vague years, and therefore consisted of 1460 years of the former kind. This cycle is mentioned by an- cient writers, and two of its commencements recorded, the one, called the JEm of Menophres, July 20, B.C. 1322, and the other on the same da}', A.D. 139. Me- nophres is supposed to be the name of an Egyptian king, and this is most prol)able. The nearest name is Meni-])tah, or Meneidithah, which is part of that of Sethi ;\Ienptah, a title that seems to have been in one form or another common to several of the first kings of the 19th dynasty. Chronological indications seem to be conclusive in favor of Sethos I. The Tropi- cal Cycle was a cycle of the coincidence of the Tropi- cal and Vague years. We do not know the exact length of the former year with the Egyptians, nor, indeed, that it was used in the monumental age ; l)Ut from the mention of a period of 500 years, the third of the cycle, and the time during which the Vague Y'ear would retrograde through one season, we cannot doubt that there was such a cycle, not to speak of its analogy with the Sothic Cycle. It has been supposed by 51. Biot to have had a duration of 1505 years; but the length of 1500 Vague Years is preferable, since it contains a number of complete' lunations, besides that the Egyptians could scarcely have been more exact,