In directing their eyes to the celestial sphere, Thot had at the same time revealed to men the art of measuring time, and the knowledge of the future. As he was the moon-god _par excellence_, he watched with jealous care over the divine eye which had been entrusted to him by Horus, and the thirty days during which he was engaged in conducting it through all the phases of its nocturnal life, were reckoned as a month. Twelve of these months formed the year, a year of three hundred and sixty days, during which the earth witnessed the gradual beginning and ending of the circle of the seasons. The Nile rose, spread over the fields, sank again into its channel; to the vicissitudes of the inundation succeeded the work of cultivation; the harvest followed the seedtime: these formed three distinct divisions of the year, each of nearly equal duration. Thot made of them the three seasons,--that of the waters, Shaît; that of vegetation, Pirûît; that of the harvest, Shômû--each comprising four months, numbered one to four; the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th months of Shaît; the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th months of Pirûît; the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th months of Shômû. The twelve months completed, a new year began, whose birth was heralded by the rising of Sothis in the early days of August. The first month of the Egyptian year thus coincided with the eighth of ours. Thot became its patron, and gave it his name, relegating each of the others to a special protecting divinity; in this manner the third month of Shaît fell to Hathor, and was called after her; the fourth of Pirûît belonged to Ranûît or Ramûît, the lady of harvests, and derived from her its appellation of Pharmûti. Official documents always designated the months by the ordinal number attached to them in each season, but the people gave them by preference the names of their tutelary deities, and these names, transcribed into Greek, and then into Arabic, are still used by the Christian inhabitants of Egypt, side by side with the Mussulman appellations. One patron for each month was, however, not deemed sufficient: each month was subdivided into three decades, over which presided as many _decani_, and the days themselves were assigned to genii appointed to protect them. A number of festivals were set apart at irregular intervals during the course of the year: festivals for the new year, festivals for the beginning of the seasons, months and decades, festivals for the dead, for the supreme gods, and for local divinities. Every act of civil life was so closely allied to the religious life, that it could not be performed without a sacrifice or a festival. A festival celebrated the cutting of the dykes, another the opening of the canals, a third the reaping of the first sheaf, or the carrying of the grain; a crop gathered or stored without a festival to implore the blessing of the gods, would have been an act of sacrilege and fraught with disaster. The first year of three hundred and sixty days, regulated by the revolutions of the moon, did not long meet the needs of the Egyptian people; it did not correspond with the length of the solar year, for it fell short of it by five and a quarter days, and this deficit, accumulating from twelvemonth to twelvemonth, caused such a serious difference between the calendar reckoning and the natural seasons, that it soon had to be corrected. They intercalated, therefore, after the twelfth month of each year and before the first day of the ensuing year, five epagomenal days, which they termed the "five days over and above the year."[*]