I don't know about this particular phantom time theory, but if you don't have a good calendar you need to keep inserting random days, leading to greater and gre

I don't know about this particular phantom time theory, but if you don't have a good calendar you need to keep inserting random days, leading to greater and greater confusion. Changing the calendar was not a big deal under those circumstances, it was normal behavior. Apparently so much so that in Egypt they had the Pharaoh swear he wouldn't change the calendar again upon taking office: "It must have been, then, that there were local attempts to retain the coincidences between the true and the calendar year — intercalation of days or even of months being introduced, now in one place, now in another ; and these attempts, of course, would make confusion worse confounded^ as the months might vary with tlie district, and not with the time of year. That this is what really happened is, no doubt, tlie origin of the stringent oath required of the Pharaohs in after times, to which I shall subsequently refer. [...] When the year of 365 days was established, it was evidently imagined that finality had been reached ; and, mindful of the confusion which, as we have shown, must have resulted from the attempt to keep up a year of 360 days by intercalations, each Egyptian king, on his accession to the throne, bound himself by oath before the priest of Isis, in the temple of Ptah at Memphis, not to intercalate either days or months, but to retain the year of 365 days as established by the Antiqui.^ The text of the Latin translation preserved by Nigidius Figulus cannot be accurately restored; only thus much can be seen with certainty. To retain this year of 365 days, then, became the first law for the king, and, indeed, the Pharaohs thenceforth throughout the Avhole course of Egyptian history adhered to it, in spite of their being subsequently convinced, as we shall see, of its inadequacy." https://archive.org/stream/dawnastronomyas00lockgoog/dawnastronomyas00lockgoog_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/dawnastronomyas00lockgoog/dawnast...