Note 97 — Chapter IV · THE RELATION OF BABYLONIAN TO EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION

I have put “Lower” between parentheses since it is very questionable whether this particular system of registering time was known in the Delta until it was introduced from Upper Egypt. On the Palermo stone a list of the early kings of Lower Egypt is given, but without any dates, which make their appearance along with the kings of the First dynasty, who belonged to Upper Egypt. It is interesting to observe that the ideograph for “year” is denoted in exactly the same way in both the Babylonian and the Egyptian hieroglyphs by the branch of a (palm) tree. Such a curious symbol for the idea can hardly have been invented independently. Professor Hommel further draws attention to the fact that while the literal translation of a common ideographic mode of representing “year” in Babylonian is “name of heaven,” that of the two syllables of the Egyptian word renpet, “year,” would also be “name of heaven.”