Histories

Besides this story of the rearing of the children, I also heard other things at Mit Rahina [31.25,29.85] (inhabited place), Giza, Upper Egypt, Egypt, AfricaMemphis in conversation with the priests of Hephaestus;[*](Identified by the Greeks with the Egyptian Ptah.) and I visited Thebes [32.666,25.683] (deserted settlement), Qina, Upper Egypt, Egypt, AfricaThebes and Heliopolis [31.333,30.1] (deserted settlement), Cairo, Urban, Egypt, AfricaHeliopolis, too, for this very purpose, because I wished to know if the people of those places would tell me the same story as the priests at Mit Rahina [31.25,29.85] (inhabited place), Giza, Upper Egypt, Egypt, AfricaMemphis; for the people of Heliopolis [31.333,30.1] (deserted settlement), Cairo, Urban, Egypt, Africa Heliopolis are said to be the most learned of the Egyptians.

Now, such stories as I heard about the gods I am not ready to relate, except their names, for I believe that all men are equally knowledgeable about them; and I shall say about them what I am constrained to say by the course of my history.

But as to human affairs, this was the account in which they all agreed: the Egyptians, they said, were the first men who reckoned by years and made the year consist of twelve divisions of the seasons. They discovered this from the stars (so they said). And their reckoning is, to my mind, a juster one than that of the Greeks; for the Greeks add an intercalary month every other year, so that the seasons agree; but the Egyptians, reckoning thirty days to each of the twelve months, add five days in every year over and above the total, and thus the completed circle of seasons is made to agree with the calendar.