The Egyptian civil year was of 365 days only, as we find in Herodotus, and I apprehend there is no dispute about it. The Sothiac period, or that cycle in which the heliacal rising of Sirius passed the whole civil year, and took place again on the same day, was of 1461 years, not 14,601. If they had adopted a year of 365 d. 6 h., this period would have been more than three times 14,601; the excess of the sidereal year above that being only 9' 9", which will not amount to a day in less than about 125 years.

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