... A man had a daughter who possessed a wonderful bow and arrow, with which she was able to bring down everything she wanted. But she was lazy and was constantly sleeping. At this her father was angry and said: 'Do not be always sleeping, but take thy bow and shoot at the navel of the ocean, so that we may get fire.'

The navel of the ocean was a vast whirlpool in which sticks for making fire by friction were drifting about. At that time men were still without fire. Now the maiden seized her bow, shot into the navel of the ocean, and the material for fire-rubbing sprang ashore.

Then the old man was glad. He kindled a large fire, and as he wanted to keep it to himself, he built a house with a door which snapped up and down like jaws and killed everybody that wanted to get in. But the people knew that he was in possession of fire, and the stag determined to steal it for them. He took resinous wood, split it and stuck the splinters in his hair. Then he lashed two boats together, covered them with planks, danced and sang on them, and so he came to the old man's house. He sang: 'O, I go and will fetch the fire.' The old man's daughter heard him singing, and said to her father: 'O, let the stranger come into the house; he sings and dances so beautifully.'

The stag landed and drew near the door, singing and dancing, and at the same time sprang to the door and made as if he wanted to enter the house. Then the door snapped to, without however touching him. But while it was again opening, he sprang quickly into the house. Here he seated himself at the fire, as if he wanted to dry himself, and continued singing. At the same time he let his head bend forward over the fire, so that he became quite sooty, and at last the splinters in his hair took fire. Then he sprang out, ran off and brought the fire to the people.

... A sidelight falls upon the notions connected with the stag by Horapollo's statement concerning the Egyptian writing of 'A long space of time: A Stag's horns grow out each year. A picture of them means a long space of time.' Chairemon (hieroglyph no. 15, quoted by Tzetzes) made it shorter: 'eniautos: elaphos'. Louis Keimer, stressing the absence of stags in Egypt, pointed to the Oryx (Capra Nubiana) as the appropriate 'ersatz', whose head was, indeed, used for writing the word rnp = year, eventually in 'the Lord of the Year', a well-known title of Ptah.

Rare as this modus of writing the word seems to have been - the Wörterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache (eds. Erman and Grapow), vol. 2, pp. 429-33, does not even mention this variant - it is worth considering (as in every subject dealt with by Keimer), the more so as Chairemon continues his list by offering as number 16: 'eniautos: phoinix', i.e., a different span of time, the much-discussed 'Phoenix-period' (ca. 500 years).

There are numerous Egyptian words for 'the year', and the same goes for other ancient languages. Thus we propose to understand eniautos as the particular cycle belonging to the respective character under discussion: the mere word eniautos ('in itself', en heauto; Plato's Cratylus 410D) does not say more that just this. It seems unjustifiable to render the word as 'the year' as is done regularly nowadays, for the simple reason that there is no such thing as the year; to begin with, there is the tropical year and sidereal year, neither of them being of the same length as the Sothic year. Actually, the methods of Maya, Chinese, and Indian time reckoning should teach us to take much greater care of the words we use.

The Indians, for instance, reckoned with five different sorts of 'year', among which one of 378 days, for which A. Weber did not have any explanation. That number of days, however, represents the synodical revolution of Saturn. Nothing is gained by the violence with which the Ancient Egyptian astronomical system is forced into the presupposed primitive frame.

The eniautos of the Phoenix would be the said 500 (or 540) years; we do not know yet the stag's own timetable: his 'year' should be either 378 days or 30 years, but there are many more possible periods to be considered than we dream of - Timaios told us as much. For the time being the only important point is to become fully aware of the plurality of 'years', and to keep an eye open for more information about the particular 'year of the stag' (or the Oryx), as well as for other eniautio, especially those occurring in Greek myths which are, supposedly, so familiar to us, to mention only the assumed eight years of Apollo's indenture after having slain Python (Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum, ch. 21, 421C), or that 'one eternal year (aidion eniauton)', said to be '8 years (okto ete)', that Cadmus served Ares ...