Resemblances have been found between the calendar systems of Egypt and America, based chiefly upon the length and division of the year, and the number of intercalary and complementary days. This, however, is too lengthy a subject to be fully discussed here. In a previous volume I have given a full account of the American systems, and must perforce leave it to the reader to compare them with the Egyptian system.[I-133] Of course a similarity of customs has to be found to support this theory, as in the case of others. Consequently our attention is drawn to embalmment, circumcision, and the division of the people into castes, which is not quite true of the Americans; some resemblance is found, moreover, between the religions of Egypt and America, for instance, certain animals were held sacred in both countries; but all such analogies are far too slender to be worth anything as evidence; there is scarcely one of them that would not apply to several other nations equally as well as to the Egyptians. * * * * * [Sidenote: THE PHŒNICIAN THEORY.] Turning now to Western Asia, we find the honor of first settling America given to the adventurous Phœnicians. The sailors of Carthage are also supposed by some writers to have first reached the New World, but as the exploits of colony and mother-country are spoken of by most writers in the same breath, it will be the simplest plan to combine the two theories here. They are based upon the fame of these people as colonizing navigators more than upon any actual resemblances that have been found to exist between them and the Americans. It is argued that their ships sailed beyond the Pillars of Hercules to the Canary Islands, and that such adventurous explorers having reached that point would be sure to seek farther. The records of their voyages and certain passages in the works of several of the writers of antiquity are supposed to show that the ancients knew of a land lying in the far west.[I-134] [Sidenote: VOYAGES OF THE PHŒNICIANS.]