After the trouble trying to place the beginning of the year, or a day, we now move on to the seasons. As we have seen earlier there are considered to be four seasons, a fact rendered undeniable by the naming of a pizza after it, the quattro stagioni. The problem with a concept like seasons seems to be subjectivity, it depends on where you come from and who you are. That is why this text is sitting above a diagram of the seasons as understood by the Egyptians, both ancient and modern. In ancient Egypt they only had 3 seasons of 4 months each which is based on the annual flooding of the Nile. The new year, 1st of Thoth, was stabilised to 29th August by Augustus in 30 BC.
I have often heard it said that the seasons are related to the agricultural cycle but that has never really made a great deal of sense to me. If the agricultural cycle consists of planting, growing, and harvest then how does that fit into four seasons ? I suppose that the fourth would be the dormant season, winter. A quick look elsewhere suggests that ecologists are using a six season calendar. In some tropical and subtropical regions it is more common to speak of the rainy (or wet, or monsoon) season versus the dry season whilst in other tropical areas a three-way division into hot, rainy and cool season is used. In India there are six seasons and in the polar regions there are only two; night and day. This info was taken from Wikipedia.