37

Appendix 37

A sidelight falls upon the notions connected with the stag by Hora pollo’s statement concerning the Egyptian writing of “A long space of time: A Stag’s horns grow out each year. A picture of them means a long space of time.” [1] Chairemon (hieroglyph no. 15, quoted by Tzetzes) made it shorter: “eniautos elaphos.” Louis Keimer, stressing the absence of stags in Egypt, pointed to the Oryx (Capra Nubiana) as the appropriate “ersatz,” [2] whose head was, indeed, used for writing the word rnp = year, eventually in “the Lord of the Year,” a well-known title of Ptah. [3] Rare as this modus of writing the word seems to have been — the Wörterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache (eds. Erman and Grapow), vol. 2, pp. 429-33, does not even mention this variant — it is worth considering (as is every subject dealt with by Keimer), the more so as Chairemon [4] continues his list by offering as number 16: eniautos phoinix," i.e., a different span of time, the much-discussed “Phoenix-period” (ca. 500 years). There are numerous Egyptian words for “the year,” and the same goes for other ancient languages. Thus, we propose to understand eniautos as the particular cycle belonging to the respective character under discussion: the mere word eniautos (“in itself,” en heauto; Plato’s Cratylus 410D) does not say more than just this. It seems unjustifiable to render the word as “the year” as is done regularly nowadays, for the simple reason that there is no such thing as the year; to begin with, there is the tropical year and sidereal year, neither of them being of the same length as the Sothic year. Actually, the methods of Maya, Chinese, and Indian time reckoning should teach us to take much greater care of the words we use. The Indians, for instance, reckoned with five different sorts of “year," among which one of 378 days, for which A. Weber did not have any explanation. [5] That number of days, however, represents the synodical revolution of Saturn. Nothing is gained by the violence with which the Ancient Egyptian astronomical system is forced into the presupposed primitive frame.

The eniautos of the Phoenix would be the said 500 (or 540) years; we do not know yet the stag’s own timetable: his “year” should be either 378 days or 30 years, but there are many more possible periods to be considered than we dream of — Timaios told us as much. For the time being the only important point is to become fully aware of the plurality of “years,” and to keep an eye open for more information about the particular “year of the stag” (or the Oryx), as well as for other eniautoi, especially those occurring in Greek myths which are, supposedly, so familiar to us, to mention only the assumed eight years of Apollo’s indenture after having slain Python (Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum, ch. 21, 421C), or that “one eternal year (aidion eniauton),” said to be “8 years (oktō etē), that Cadmus served Ares (Apollod. 3.4.1; see also 2.5.11 with long note by Frazer).

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  1. *The Hieroglyphs of *Horapollo, trans. by G. Boas (1950), p. 89 = Horap.2.21.: “pōs polychronion. Elaphos kat’eniauton blastanei ta kerata, zōgraphoumenē de, polychronion sēmaiei.”

  2. “Interpretation de plusieurs passages d’Horapollon,” in Suppl. 5 aux Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte: (1947), pp. 1-6. “Les Égyptiens avaient remarqué la resemblance existant entre les cornes d’un Bouquetin, caracterisées par de nombreux noeuds, et le signe . . . qui est originairement une branche de dattier” (this branch being the main part of the hieroglyph for “year” — rnp).

  3. M. Sandman Holmberg, The God Ptah (1946), pp. 22, 64f., 77, 178-80.

  4. F. J. Lauth, “Horapollon,” SBAW (1876), p. 68. It remains a tragedy that only nineteen of Chairemon’s explanations have been preserved by Tzetzes, who only stated that Chairemon had given “kai hetera myria.”

  5. A. Weber, “Die Vedischen Nachrichten von den Naxatra,” APAW 2 (1862), pp. 281-88. esp. pp. 286-87.