We have next to discuss the fixed year, to which the Egyptian chronologists were finally driven in later Egyptian times. The decree of Tanis was the true precursor of the Julian correction of the calendar. In consequence of this correction we now add a day every four years to the end of February. The decree regulated the addition, by the Egyptians, of a day every four years by adding a day to the epacts, which were thus six every four years instead of being always five, as they had been before. In fact, it replaced the vague year by the sacred year long known to the priests. But if everything had gone on then as the priests of Tanis imagined, the Egyptian New Year's Day, _if_ determined by the heliacal rising of Sirius, would not always afterwards have been the 1st of Payni, although the solstice and Nile flood would have been clue at Memphis about the 1st of Pachons; and this is, perhaps, one among the reasons why the decree was to a large extent ignored. Hence, for some years after the date of the decree of Tanis, there were at least three years in force--the new fixed year, the new vague year, reckoning from Pachons, and the old vague year, reckoning from Thoth. But after some years another attempt was made to get rid of all this confusion. The time was 23 B.C., 216 years after the decree of Tanis, and the place was Alexandria. Hence the new fixed year introduced is termed the Alexandrine year. This new attempt obviously implied that the first one had failed; and the fact that the vague year was continued in the interval is sufficiently demonstrated by the fact that the new year was 216∕4 = 54 days _en retard_. In the year of Tanis it is stated that the 1st Pachons, the new New Year's Day, the real beginning of the Hood, fell on the 19th of June (Gregorian), the Summer Solstice, and hence the 1st of Thoth fell on the 22nd of October (Gregorian). In the Alexandrine year the 22nd of October is represented by the 29th of August, and the 19th of June by the 20th of April. It is noteworthy that in the Alexandrine year the heliacal rising of Sirius on the 23rd of July (Julian) falls on the 29th of Epiphi, nearly the same date as that to which I first drew attention in the inscriptions of the date of Thothmes and Pepi. This, however, it is now clearly seen, is a pure accident, due to the break of continuity before the Tanis year, and the _slip_ between that and the Alexandrine one. It is important to mention this, because it has been thought that somehow the "Alexandrine year" was in use in Pepi's time. It would seem that the Alexandrine revision was final, and that the year was truly fixed, and from that time to this it has remained so, and must in the future for ever remain so. It must never be forgotten that we owe this perfection to the Egyptian Festival Calendars. One of the chief uses of the Egyptian calendar that has come down to us was the arrangement and dating of the chief feasts throughout the year in the different temples.