Prehistory

The Nile flood at Cairo c. 1830.

Current understanding of the earliest development of the Egyptian calendar remains speculative. A tablet from the reign of the First Dynasty pharaoh Djer (c. 3000 BC) was once thought to indicate that the Egyptians had already established a link between the heliacal rising of Sirius (Ancient Egyptian: Spdt or Sopdet, "Triangle"; Greek: Σῶθις, Sôthis) and the beginning of their year, but more recent analysis has questioned whether the tablet's picture refers to Sirius at all.^[4] Similarly, based on the Palermo Stone, Alexander Scharff proposed that the Old Kingdom observed a 320-day year, but his theory has not been widely accepted.^[5] Some evidence suggests the early civil calendar had 360 days,^[6] although it might merely reflect the unusual status of the five epagomenal days as days "added on" to the proper year.

With its interior effectively rainless for thousands of years,^[7] ancient Egypt was "a gift of the river" Nile,^[8] whose annual flooding organized the natural year into three broad natural seasons known to the Egyptians as:^[9][10][11]

1. Inundation or Flood (Ancient Egyptian: Ꜣḫt, sometimes anglicized as Akhet): roughly from September to January.
2. Emergence or Winter (Prt, sometimes anglicized as Peret): roughly from January to May.
3. Low Water or Harvest or Summer (Šmw, sometimes anglicized as Shemu): roughly from May to September.^[9]

As early as the reign of Djer (c. 3000 BC, Dynasty I), yearly records were being kept of the flood's high-water mark.^[12] Otto E. Neugebauer noted that a 365-day year can be established by averaging a few decades of accurate observations of the Nile flood without any need for astronomical observations,^[13] although the great irregularity of the flood from year to year^{[lower-alpha 1]} and the difficulty of maintaining a sufficiently accurate Nilometer and record in prehistoric Egypt has caused other scholars to doubt that it formed the basis for the Egyptian calendar.^[3][6][15]
Note that the names of the three natural seasons were incorporated into the Civil calendar year (see below), but as this calendar year is a wandering year, the seasons of this calendar slowly rotate through the natural solar year, meaning that Civil season Akhet/Inundation only occasionally coincided with the Nile inundation.

Lunar calendar

A modern lunar calendar for 2017

The Egyptians appear to have used a purely lunar calendar prior to the establishment of the solar civil calendar^[16][17] in which each month began on the morning when the waning crescent moon could no longer be seen.^[15] Until the closing of Egypt's polytheist temples under the Byzantines, the lunar calendar continued to be used as the liturgical year of various cults.^[17] The lunar calendar divided the month into four weeks, reflecting each quarter of the lunar phases.^[18] Because the exact time of morning considered to begin the Egyptian day remains uncertain^[19] and there is no evidence that any method other than observation was used to determine the beginnings of the lunar months prior to the 4th century BC,^[20] there is no sure way to reconstruct exact dates in the lunar calendar from its known dates.^[19] The difference between beginning the day at the first light of dawn or at sunrise accounts for an 11–14 year shift in dated observations of the lunar cycle.^[21] It remains unknown how the Egyptians dealt with obscurement by clouds when they occurred and the best current algorithms have been shown to differ from actual observation of the waning crescent moon in about one-in-five cases.^[19]

Parker and others have argued for its development into an observational and then calculated lunisolar calendar^[22] which used a 30 day intercalary month every two to three years to accommodate the lunar year's loss of about 11 days a year relative to the solar year and to maintain the placement of the heliacal rising of Sirius within its twelfth month.^[16] No evidence for such a month, however, exists in the present historical record.^[23]

Temple Month Ꜣbd n ḥwt-nṯr[24] in hieroglyphs

A second lunar calendar is attested by a demotic astronomical papyrus^[25] dating to sometime after 144 AD which outlines a lunisolar calendar operating in accordance with the Egyptian civil calendar according to a 25 year cycle.^[26] The calendar seems to show its month beginning with the first visibility of the waxing crescent moon, but Parker displayed an error in the cycle of about a day in 500 years,^[27] using it to show the cycle was developed to correspond with the new moon around 357 BC.^[28] This date places it prior to the Ptolemaic period and within the native Egyptian Dynasty XXX. Egypt's 1st Persian occupation, however, seems likely to have been its inspiration.^[29] This lunisolar calendar's calculations apparently continued to be used without correction into the Roman period, even when they no longer precisely matched the observable lunar phases.^[30]

The days of the lunar month — known to the Egyptians as a "temple month"^[24] — were individually named and celebrated as stages in the life of the moon god, variously Thoth in the Middle Kingdom or Khonsu in the Ptolemaic era: "He ... is conceived ... on Psḏntyw; he is born on Ꜣbd; he grows old after Smdt".^[31]

Days of the lunar month^{[31][lower-alpha 2]}

Day	Name
	Egyptian		Meaning (if known)
1	[lower-alpha 3]	Psḏtyw[lower-alpha 4]	Literal meaning unknown but possibly related to the Ennead; the day of the New Moon.
2	[lower-alpha 5]	Tp Ꜣbd Ꜣbd	"Beginning the Month" or "The Month"; the beginning of the Crescent Moon.
3		Mspr	"Arrival"
4		Prt Sm	"The Going Forth of the Sm", a kind of priest
5		I͗ḫt Ḥr Ḫꜣwt	"Offerings upon the Altar"
6	[lower-alpha 6]	Snt	"The Sixth"
7	[lower-alpha 7]	Dnı͗t	"Partial"; the first-quarter day.
8		Tp	Unknown
9	[lower-alpha 8]	Kꜣp	Unknown
10		Sı͗f	Unknown
11		Stt	Unknown
12		Unknown	"Partial" the second-quarter day.
13	[lower-alpha 9]	Mꜣꜣ Sṯy	Unknown
14		Sı͗ꜣw	Unknown
15	[lower-alpha 10]	Smdt Tp Smdt	Literal meaning uncertain; the day of the Full Moon.
16		Mspr Sn Nw Ḥbs Tp[49]	"Second Arrival" "Covering the Head"
17		Sı͗ꜣw	Second Quarter Day
18	[lower-alpha 11]	I͗ꜥḥ	"Day of the Moon"
19		Sḏm Mdwf	Unknown
20		Stp	Unknown
21	[lower-alpha 12]	Ꜥprw	Unknown
22		Pḥ Spdt	Unknown
23		Dnı͗t	"Partial"; the third-quarter day.
24	[lower-alpha 13]	Knḥw	Unknown
25		Stt	Unknown
26		Prt	"The Going Forth"
27	[lower-alpha 14]	Wšb	Unknown
28		Ḥb Sd Nwt	"The Jubilee of Nut"
29		Ꜥḥꜥ	Unknown
30	[lower-alpha 15]	Prt Mn	"The Going Forth of Min"

Civil calendar

Sirius (bottom) and Orion (right). Together, the three brightest stars of the northern winter sky—Sirius, Betelgeuse (orange star, upper right), and Procyon (upper left)—can also be understood as forming the Winter Triangle.

A Middle Kingdom star chart

A hieroglyphic calendar at Elephantine.

The civil calendar was established at some early date in or before the Old Kingdom, with probable evidence of its use early in the reign of Shepseskaf (c. 2510 BC, Dynasty IV) and certain attestation during the reign of Neferirkare (mid-25th century BC, Dynasty V).^[54] It was probably based upon astronomical observations of Sirius^[15] whose reappearance in the sky closely corresponded to the average onset of the Nile flood through the 5th and 4th millennium BC.^{[14][lower-alpha 16]} A recent development is the discovery that the 30-day month of the Mesopotamian calendar dates as late as the Jemdet Nasr Period (late 4th-millennium BC),^[56] a time Egyptian culture was borrowing various objects and cultural features from the Fertile Crescent, leaving open the possibility that the main features of the calendar were borrowed in one direction or the other as well.^[57]

The civil year comprised exactly 365 days,^{[lower-alpha 17]} divided into 12 months of 30 days each and an intercalary month of five days,^[59] which were celebrated as the birthdays of the gods Osiris, Horus, Set, Isis, and Nephthys.^[60] The regular months were grouped into Egypt's three seasons,^[59] which gave them their original names,^[61] and divided into three 10-day periods known as decans or decades. In later sources, these were distinguished as "first", "middle", and "last".^[62] It has been suggested that during the Nineteenth Dynasty and the Twentieth Dynasty the last two days of each decan were usually treated as a kind of weekend for the royal craftsmen, with royal artisans free from work.^[63] Dates were typically expressed in a YMD format, with a pharaoh's regnal year followed by the month followed by the day of the month.^[64] For example, the New Year occurred on I Akhet 1.

Lord of Years Nb Rnpt in hieroglyphs

The importance of the calendar to Egyptian religion is reflected in the use of the title "Lord of Years" (Nb Rnpt)^[65] for its various creator gods.^[66] Time was also considered an integral aspect of Maat,^[66] the cosmic order which opposed chaos, lies, and violence.

The civil calendar was apparently established in a year when Sirius rose on its New Year (I Akhet 1) but, because of its lack of leap years, it began to slowly cycle backwards through the solar year. Sirius itself, about 40° below the ecliptic, follows a Sothic year almost exactly matching that of the Sun, with its reappearance now occurring at the latitude of Cairo (ancient Heliopolis and Memphis) on 19 July (Julian), only two or three days later than its occurrence in early antiquity.^[59][67]

Following Censorinus^[68] and Meyer,^[69] the standard understanding was that, four years from the calendar's inception, Sirius would have no longer reappeared on the Egyptian New Year but on the next day (I Akhet 2); four years later, it would have reappeared on the day after that; and so on through the entire calendar until its rise finally returned to I Akhet 1 1460 years after the calendar's inception,^{[68][lower-alpha 18]} an event known as "apocatastasis".^[70] Owing to the event's extreme regularity, Egyptian recordings of the calendrical date of the rise of Sirius have been used by Egyptologists to fix its calendar and other events dated to it, at least to the level of the four-Egyptian-year periods which share the same date for Sirius's return, known as "tetraëterides" or "quadrennia".^[70] For example, an account that Sothis rose on III Peret 1—the 181st day of the year—should show that somewhere 720, 721, 722, or 723 years have passed since the last apocatastasis.^[68] Following such a scheme, the record of Sirius rising on II Shemu 1 in 239 BC implies apocatastases on 1319 and 2779 BC ±3 years.^{[21][lower-alpha 19]} Censorinus's placement of an apocatastasis on 21 July AD 139^{[lower-alpha 20]} permitted the calculation of its predecessors to 1322, 2782, and 4242 BC.^[72] The last is sometimes described as "the first exactly dated year in history"^[73] but, since the calendar is attested before Dynasty XVIII and the last date is now known to far predate early Egyptian civilization, it is typically credited to Dynasty II around the middle date.^{[74][lower-alpha 21]}

The classic understanding of the Sothic cycle relies, however, on several potentially erroneous assumptions. Following Scaliger,^[80] Censorinus's date is usually emended to 20 July^{[lower-alpha 23]} but ancient authorities give a variety of 'fixed' dates for the rise of Sirius.^{[lower-alpha 24]} His use of the year 139 seems questionable,^[83] as 136 seems to have been the start of the tetraëteris^[84] and the later date chosen to flatter the birthday of Censorinus's patron.^[85] Perfect observation of Sirius's actual behavior during the cycle—including its minor shift relative to the solar year—would produce a period of 1457 years; observational difficulties produce a further margin of error of about two decades.^[72] Although it is certain the Egyptian day began in the morning, another four years are shifted depending on whether the precise start occurred at the first light of dawn or at sunrise.^[21] It has been noted that there is no recognition in surviving records that Sirius's minor irregularities sometimes produce a triëteris or penteteris (three- or five-year periods of agreement with an Egyptian date) rather than the usual four-year periods and, given that the expected discrepancy is no more than 8 years in 1460, the cycle may have been applied schematically^[70][86] according to the civil years by Egyptians and the Julian year by the Greeks and Romans.^[68] The occurrence of the apocatastasis in the 2nd millennium BC so close to the great political and sun-based religious reforms of Amenhotep IV/Akhenaton also leaves open the possibility that the cycle's strict application was occasionally subject to political interference.^[87] The record and celebration of Sirius's rising would also vary by several days (equating to decades of the cycle) in eras when the official site of observation was moved from near Cairo.^{[lower-alpha 25]} The return of Sirius to the night sky varies by about a day per degree of latitude, causing it to be seen 8–10 days earlier at Aswan than at Alexandria,^[89] a difference which causes Rolf Krauss to propose dating much of Egyptian history decades later than the present consensus.

Ptolemaic calendar

Following Alexander the Great's conquest of the Persian Empire, the Macedonian Ptolemaic Dynasty came to power in Egypt, continuing to use its native calendars with Hellenized names. In 238 BC, Ptolemy III's Canopus Decree ordered that every 4th year should incorporate a sixth day in its intercalary month,^[90] honoring him and his wife as gods equivalent to the children of Nut. The reform was resisted by the Egyptian priests and people and was abandoned.

Coptic calendar

Egyptian scholars were involved with the establishment of Julius Caesar's reform of the Roman calendar, although the Roman priests initially misapplied its formula and—by counting inclusively—added leap days every three years instead of every four. The mistake was corrected by Augustus through omitting leap years for a number of cycles until AD 4. As the personal ruler of Egypt, he also imposed a reform of its calendar in 26 or 25 BC, possibly to correspond with the beginning of a new Callipic cycle, with the first leap day occurring on 6 Epag. in the year 22 BC. This "Alexandrian calendar" corresponds almost exactly to the Julian, causing 1 Thoth to remain at 29 August except during the year before a Julian leap year, when it occurs on 30 August instead. The calendars then resume their correspondence after 4 Phamenoth / 29 February of the next year.^[91]

Influence

Ancient Egyptians would consult a calendar like the Cairo calendar to dictate their behaviour on a particular day, this would affect the kinds of rituals that could be performed and whether offerings should be given to the deceased.^[96] We know that private individuals would have owned copies of calendars as copies have been found in tombs such as one found in the tomb of the scribe Qenherkhepshef now in the British museum.

Citations

Bibliography

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• Forisek, Péter (2003), Censorinus and His Work De Die Natali (PDF), Debrecen: University of Debrecen. (Full Hungarian version.)
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