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sonings were vain and void of truth; whereupon he was admired by them in those confer-
ences as a very wise man, and of great sagacity, when he discoursed on any subject he un-
dertook, and this not only in understanding it but to persuade other men to assent to him.
He communicated to them in arithmetic, and delivered to them THE SCIENCE OF AS-
TRONOMY; for before Abram came to Egypt they were UNACQUAINTED with those
parts of learning; for that science also came FROM THE CHALDEANS INTO EGYPT,
and from thence to the Greeks also (Antiquities of the Jews,
87-88).

Abraham not only carried Mesopotamian culture and technology with him and "boosted
Egypt from the early Chalcolithic into the late Bronze Age," but he also brought with him God's
calendar and Sabbath days. Egyptologists have discovered that the earliest Egyptian calendar was
based on the moon's cycles, and the hieroglyphic symbol for "month" shows a crescent moon (the
first visible crescent of the NEW MOON) over a star.

After Abraham's departure, modifications were made to the calendar to give it a uniquely
Egyptian flavor or character. They started counting the year when they saw the new moon right af-
ter the star Sirius. There were 12 months, each month containing 29 1/2 days, for a total of 354
days. Then the Egyptians added another month to the calendar to ensure that two factors -- the Nile
river and the calendar -- would always match each other in terms of when the Nile would flood,
and the date.

The calendar remained lunar based, however, until after the Exodus of the Israelites from
Egypt many centuries later.

From Joseph to the Exodus

Years later Joseph, the great-grandson of Abraham, was sold into slavery by his brothers
for 20 pieces of silver and transported to Egypt by his Midianite captors. After being sold to Poti-
phar, the chief of Pharaoh's bodyguard, Joseph eventually rose to become the second most power-
ful man in the land of Egypt -- next to the Pharaoh himself. In this position Joseph introduced many
innovations into the land (see our article Joseph and the Engineering Wonders of Egypt) and
saved the Egyptian people from a severe seven-year famine.

Samuel Kurinsky, in his book The Eighth Day: The Hidden History of the Jewish Con-
tribution to Civilization, points out that

The most critical and important factor affecting the economy of Egypt was the engineer-
ing of an effective control of its water resources. Legends, both Hebraic and Arabic, have
it that Joseph and his people made a great and everlasting contribution to Egypt in this re-
gard. The application of MESOPOTAMIAN MATHEMATICS served in the planning of
new systems of irrigation and in expanding the primitive systems previously installed in
Egypt. The storage of water is even more effective as a hedge against years of drought
and famine than the storage of grain, which, we are told, was a first step recommended by
Joseph to the pharaoh (New Jersey: Jason Aronson, Inc. 1994. P. 127).

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