Egyptian calendar

File:Kom Ombo Temple Calendar 2.JPG

A section of the hieroglyphic calendar at the Kom Ombo Temple, displaying the transition from Month XII to Month I without mention of the five epagomenal days.

File:Astronomical Ceiling, Tomb of Senenmut MET DT207429.jpg

Astronomical ceiling from the Tomb of Senenmut (XVIII Dynasty, Template:Circa–1458 BC), discovered in Thebes, Upper Egypt; facsimile preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.<ref>Full version at Met Museum</ref>

File:Goddess Nut 1.JPG

The sky goddess Nut and human figures representing stars and constellations from the star chart in the tomb of Ramses VI.

The ancient Egyptian calendar – a civil calendar – was a solar calendar with a 365-day year. The year consisted of three seasons of 120 days each, plus an intercalary month of five epagomenal days treated as outside of the year proper. Each season was divided into four months of 30 days. These twelve months were initially numbered within each season but came to also be known by the names of their principal festivals. Each month was divided into three 10-day periods known as decans or decades. 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Because this calendrical year was nearly a quarter of a day shorter than the solar year, the Egyptian calendar lost about one day every four years relative to the Gregorian calendar. It is therefore sometimes referred to as the Template:Nowrap (Template:Langx), as its months rotated about one day through the solar year every four years. Template:Nowrap's Canopus Decree attempted to correct this through the introduction of a sixth epagomenal day every four years but the proposal was resisted by the Egyptian priests and people and abandoned until the establishment of the Alexandrian or Coptic calendar by Augustus. The introduction of a leap day to the Egyptian calendar made it equivalent to the reformed Julian calendar, although by extension it continues to diverge from the Gregorian calendar at the turn of most centuries.

This Template:Nowrap ran concurrently with an Template:Nowrap which was used for some religious rituals and festivals. Some Egyptologists have described it as lunisolar, with an intercalary month supposedly added every two or three years to maintain its consistency with the solar year, but no evidence of such intercalation before the Template:Nowrap has yet been discovered.

History

Prehistory

File:WEBSTER(1830) 2.011 OVERFLOW OF THE NILE. VIEWFROM THE PYRAMIDS, LOOKING TOWARDS CAIRO.jpg

The Nile flood at Cairo Template:C..

Current understanding of the earliest development of the Egyptian calendar remains speculative. A tablet from the reign of the First Dynasty pharaoh Djer (Template:C.Template:NbspBC) was once thought to indicate that the Egyptians had already established a link between the heliacal rising of Sirius (Template:Langx or Sopdet, "Triangle"; Template:Langx, Sôthis) and the beginning of their year, but more recent analysis has questioned whether the tablet's picture refers to Sirius at all.Template:Sfnp 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.Template:Sfnp Some evidence suggests the early civil calendar had 360 days,<ref name=teacosy>Template:Harvp.</ref> 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,Template:Sfnp ancient Egypt was "a gift of the river" Nile,<ref>Template:Citation.</ref> whose annual flooding organized the natural year into three broad natural seasons known to the Egyptians as:<ref name="teatime">Template:Harvp.</ref>Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

1. Inundation or Flood (Template:Langx, sometimes anglicized as Akhet): roughly from September to January.
2. Emergence or Winter ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, sometimes anglicized as Peret): roughly from January to May.
3. Low Water or Harvest or Summer ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, sometimes anglicized as Shemu): roughly from May to September.<ref name="teatime" />

As early as the reign of Djer (Template:C.Template:NbspBC, Dynasty I), yearly records were being kept of the flood's high-water mark.Template:Sfnp 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,Template:Sfnp although the great irregularity of the flood from year to yearTemplate:Efn 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.<ref name="flinty" /><ref name="teacosy" />Template:Sfnp
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 Template:Nowrap, 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

File:2017 Northern Lunar Calendar.png

A modern lunar calendar for 2017

The Egyptians appear to have used a purely lunar calendar prior to the establishment of the solar civil calendarTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfn in which each month began on the morning when the waning crescent moon could no longer be seen.Template:Sfnp 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.Template:Sfn The lunar calendar divided the month into four weeks, reflecting each quarter of the lunar phases.Template:Sfnp Because the exact time of morning considered to begin the Egyptian day remains uncertain<ref name=captainred/> and there is no evidence that any method other than observation was used to determine the beginnings of the lunar months prior to the Template:Nowrap there is no sure way to reconstruct exact dates in the lunar calendar from its known dates.<ref name=captainred/> 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.Template:Sfnp 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.<ref name=captainred>Template:Harvp.</ref>

Parker and others have argued for its development into an observational and then calculated lunisolar calendarTemplate:Sfnp 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.Template:Sfnp No evidence for such a month, however, exists in the present historical record.Template:Sfnp

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A second lunar calendar is attested by a demotic astronomical papyrus<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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.Template:Sfnp 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,Template:Sfnp using it to show the cycle was developed to correspond with the new moon around 357Template:NbspBC.Template:Sfnp 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfnp

The days of the lunar month — known to the Egyptians as a "temple month"Template:Sfnp — 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".Template:Sfnp

Days of the lunar monthTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Efn

Day	Name
	Egyptian		Meaning (if known)
1	<hiero>N10-G4-W3</hiero>Template:Efn	PsḏtywTemplate:Efn	Literal meaning unknown but possibly related to the Ennead; the day of the New Moon.
2	<hiero>D1-N11:N14</hiero>Template:Efn	Tp Ꜣbd Ꜣbd	"Beginning the Month" or "The Month"; the beginning of the Crescent Moon.
3	<hiero>F31-Q3:D21-W3</hiero>	Mspr	"Arrival"
4	<hiero>O1:D21-X1-S29-G17-W3</hiero>	Prt Sm	"The Going Forth of the Sm", a kind of priest
5	<hiero>Aa1:X1-D2:Z1-R2-W3</hiero>	I͗ḫt Ḥr Ḫꜣwt	"Offerings upon the Altar"
6	<hiero>S29-T22-N35:X1-Z2:Z2-W3</hiero>Template:Efn	Snt	"The Sixth"
7	<hiero>D46:N35-M17-X1-W3</hiero>Template:Efn	Dnı͗t	"Partial"; the first-quarter day.
8	<hiero>D1*D12:W3</hiero>	Tp	Unknown
9	<hiero>F19-Q3:W3</hiero>Template:Efn	Kꜣp	Unknown
10	<hiero>S29-M17-I9:D52-W3</hiero>	Sı͗f	Unknown
11	<hiero>F29-N8-Z2:W3</hiero>	Stt	Unknown
12	<hiero>N31:D53-N31:D53-W3</hiero>	Unknown	"Partial" the second-quarter day.
13	<hiero>D12-D12-U1-A59-W3</hiero>Template:Efn	Mꜣꜣ Sṯy	Unknown
14	<hiero>S32-G1-Z7-W3</hiero>	Sı͗ꜣw	Unknown
15	<hiero>D1-N13</hiero>Template:Efn	Smdt Tp Smdt	Literal meaning uncertain; the day of the Full Moon.
16	<hiero>F31-Q3:D21-Z1*Z1:W24-W3</hiero>	Mspr Sn Nw Ḥbs TpTemplate:Sfnp	"Second Arrival" "Covering the Head"
17	<hiero>S32-G1-Z7-W3</hiero>	Sı͗ꜣw	Second Quarter Day
18	<hiero>M17-V28-N12-W3</hiero>Template:Efn	I͗ꜥḥ	"Day of the Moon"
19	<hiero>F21-S43-S43-S43-I9:W3</hiero>	Sḏm Mdwf	Unknown
20	<hiero>U21:Q3-W3</hiero>	Stp	Unknown
21	<hiero>Aa20-D21:G43-W3</hiero>Template:Efn	Ꜥprw	Unknown
22	<hiero>F22-M44-X1:W3</hiero>	Pḥ Spdt	Unknown
23	<hiero>D46:N35-M17-X1:V11-W3</hiero>	Dnı͗t	"Partial"; the third-quarter day.
24	<hiero>V31:N35-V28-G43-N2-W3</hiero>Template:Efn	Knḥw	Unknown
25	<hiero>F29-N8-Z2:W3</hiero>	Stt	Unknown
26	<hiero>O1:D21-X1:W3</hiero>	Prt	"The Going Forth"
27	<hiero>G43-N37-D58-W3</hiero>Template:Efn	Wšb	Unknown
28	<hiero>O23-W24*X1:N1-W3</hiero>	Ḥb Sd Nwt	"The Jubilee of Nut"
29	<hiero>P6-A47-W3</hiero>	Ꜥḥꜥ	Unknown
30	<hiero>O1:D21-X1:D54-O34:R12:X1*Z4-W3</hiero>Template:Efn	Prt Mn	"The Going Forth of Min"

Civil calendar

File:Hubble heic0206j.jpg

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.

File:Digaonalsternuhr.jpg

A Middle Kingdom star chart

File:Théodule Devéria (French - (Elephanta Calendar) - Google Art Project.jpg

A hieroglyphic calendar at Elephantine.

Template:Stack end Template:Further 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 (Template:C.Template:NbspBC, Dynasty IV) and certain attestation during the reign of Neferirkare (mid-25th centuryTemplate:NbspBC, Dynasty V).Template:Sfnp It was probably based upon astronomical observations of SiriusTemplate:Sfnp whose reappearance in the sky closely corresponded to the average onset of the Nile flood through the 5th and Template:NowrapTemplate:Efn 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-millenniumTemplate:NbspBC),<ref>Template:Citation.</ref> 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.Template:Sfn

The civil year comprised exactly 365 days,Template:Efn divided into 12 months of 30 days each and an intercalary month of five days,Template:Sfnp which were celebrated as the birthdays of the gods Osiris, Horus, Set, Isis, and Nephthys.Template:Sfnp The regular months were grouped into Egypt's three seasons,Template:Sfnp which gave them their original names,Template:Sfnp and divided into three 10-day periods known as decans or decades. In later sources, these were distinguished as "first", "middle", and "last".Template:Sfnp 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.Template:Sfnp 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.<ref name=poormountaineer>Template:Harvp.</ref> For example, the New Year occurred on Template:Nowrap

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The importance of the calendar to Egyptian religion is reflected in the use of the title "Lord of Years" ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}})<ref>Template:Citation.</ref> for its various creator gods.<ref name=beverlyhillbilly>Template:Harvp.</ref> Time was also considered an integral aspect of Maat,<ref name=beverlyhillbilly/> 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 Template:Nowrap 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 19Template:NbspJuly (Julian), only two or three days later than its occurrence in early antiquity.Template:Sfnp<ref>Template:Citation.</ref>

Following CensorinusTemplate:Sfnp and Meyer,Template:Sfnp 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 Template:Nowrap; 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 Template:Nowrap 1460 years after the calendar's inception,Template:SfnpTemplate:Efn an event known as "apocatastasis".<ref name=gauche>Template:Citation.</ref> 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".<ref name=gauche/> For example, an account that Sothis rose on Template:Nowrap—the 181st day of the year—should show that somewhere 720, 721, 722, or 723 years have passed since the last apocatastasis.Template:Sfnp Following such a scheme, the record of Sirius rising on Template:Nowrap in 239Template:NbspBC implies apocatastases on 1319 and 2779Template:NbspBC ±3 years.Template:SfnpTemplate:Efn Censorinus's placement of an apocatastasis on 21Template:NbspJuly ADTemplate:Nbsp139Template:Efn permitted the calculation of its predecessors to 1322, 2782, and 4242Template:NbspBC.<ref name=holygrail/>Template:Failed verification The last is sometimes described as "the first exactly dated year in history"<ref>Template:Citation.</ref> 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.<ref name=olejed/>Template:Efn

Heliacal rising of Sirius at HeliopolisTemplate:Efn

Year	Date
	Egyptian<ref>Template:Citation.</ref>	JulianTemplate:Sfnp	Gregorian<ref>Template:Citation.</ref>
3500Template:NbspBC	Template:Nowrap	July 16	June 18
3000Template:NbspBC	Template:Nowrap	July 16	June 22
2500Template:NbspBC	III Akhet 8	July 16	June 26
2000Template:NbspBC	III Peret 14	July 17	June 30
1500Template:NbspBC	III Shemu 19	July 17	July 4
1000Template:NbspBC	III Akhet 19	July 17	July 8
500Template:NbspBC	III Peret 25	July 18	July 13
ADTemplate:Nbsp1	III Shemu 30	July 18	July 16
ADTemplate:Nbsp500	IV Akhet 2	July 20	July 22

The classic understanding of the Sothic cycle relies, however, on several potentially erroneous assumptions. Following Scaliger,<ref>Template:Citation. Template:In lang</ref> Censorinus's date is usually emended to 20Template:NbspJulyTemplate:Efn but ancient authorities give a variety of 'fixed' dates for the rise of Sirius.Template:Efn His use of the year 139 seems questionable,Template:Sfnp as 136 seems to have been the start of the tetraëterisTemplate:Sfnp and the later date chosen to flatter the birthday of Censorinus's patron.Template:Sfnp 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.<ref name=holygrail/> 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.Template:Sfnp 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<ref name=gauche/>Template:Sfnp according to the civil years by Egyptians and the Julian year by the Greeks and Romans.Template:Sfnp The occurrence of the apocatastasis in the Template:Nowrap so close to the great political and sun-based religious reforms of Template:Nowrap/Akhenaton also leaves open the possibility that the cycle's strict application was occasionally subject to political interference.Template:Sfnp 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.Template:Efn 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,Template:Sfnp 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,<ref>A Chronological Survey of Precisely Dated Demotic and Abnormal Hieratic Sources</ref> 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

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} 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 ADTemplate:Nbsp4. As the personal ruler of Egypt, he also imposed a reform of its calendar in 26 or 25Template:NbspBC, possibly to correspond with the beginning of a new Callipic cycle, with the first leap day occurring on 6 Epag. in the year 22Template:NbspBC. This "Alexandrian calendar" corresponds almost exactly to the Julian, causing 1Template:NbspThoth to remain at 29Template:NbspAugust except during the year before a Julian leap year, when it occurs on 30Template:NbspAugust instead. The calendars then resume their correspondence after 4Template:NbspPhamenothTemplate:Nbsp/ 29Template:NbspFebruary of the next year.<ref>Alexandrian reform of the Egyptian calendar</ref>

Months

For much of Egyptian history, the months were not referred to by individual names, but were rather numbered within the three seasons.Template:Sfnp As early as the Middle Kingdom, however, each month had its own name. These finally evolved into the New Kingdom months, which in turn gave rise to the Hellenized names that were used for chronology by Ptolemy in his Almagest and by others. Copernicus constructed his tables for the motion of the planets based on the Egyptian year because of its mathematical regularity. A convention of modern Egyptologists is to number the months consecutively using Roman numerals.

A persistent problem of Egyptology has been that the festivals which give their names to the months occur in the next month. Alan Gardiner proposed that an original calendar governed by the priests of Ra was supplanted by an improvement developed by the partisans of Thoth. Parker connected the discrepancy to his theories concerning the lunar calendar. Sethe, Weill, and Clagett proposed that the names expressed the idea that each month culminated in the festival beginning the next.Template:Sfnp

Months

Egyptological	English<ref name=poormountaineer/>	Egyptian			Greek<ref>Template:Citation. Template:In lang</ref>		Coptic
		Seasonal<ref name=poormountaineer/>	Middle Kingdom	New KingdomTemplate:Sfnp
I	I Akhet Thoth	1st Month of Flood 1 Ꜣḫt	Tḫy	<hiero>H_SPACE:t-G26-H_SPACE:Z4-G7-W3:N5</hiero> Ḏḥwti	lang}}	Thōth	lang}}	Tôut
II	II Akhet Phaophi	2nd Month of Flood 2 Ꜣḫt	Mnht	<hiero>p:n-i-p*t:O1</hiero> P(Ꜣ) n-ip.t	lang}}Template:Efn	Phaōphí	lang}}	Baôba
III	III Akhet Athyr	3rd Month of Flood 3 Ꜣḫt	Ḥwt-ḥwr	<hiero>O6-t:O1-Hr:r-I12</hiero> Ḥwt-ḥr(w)	lang}}	Athúr	lang}}	Hatûr
IV	IV Akhet Choiak	4th Month of Flood 4 Ꜣḫt	KꜢ-ḥr-KꜢ	<hiero>kA-Hr:Z1-kA</hiero> KꜢ-ḥr-KꜢ	lang}}Template:Efn	Khoiák	lang}} {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}	Koiak Kiahk
V	I Peret Tybi	1st Month of Growth 1 Prt	Sf-Bdt	<hiero>t-A-a:H_SPACE-b-t:Z5-W3:N5</hiero> TꜢ-ꜥ(Ꜣ)bt	lang}}Template:Efn	Tubí	lang}}	Tôbi
VI	II Peret Mechir	2nd Month of Growth 2 Prt	Rḫ Wr	<hiero>p:n-G41-A-m:a-x:Z4-rw:Z1*O1</hiero> P(Ꜣ) n-pꜢ-mḫrw	lang}}Template:Efn	Mekhír	lang}}	Meshir
VII	III Peret Phamenoth	3rd Month of Growth 3 Prt	Rḫ Nds	<hiero>p:n-<-i-mn:n-G7-Htp:t*p->-G7</hiero> P(Ꜣ) n-imn-ḥtp	lang}}	Phamenṓth	lang}}	Baramhat
VIII	IV Peret Pharmuthi	4th Month of Growth 4 Prt	Rnwt	<hiero>p:n-r:n-nw:Z7-t:H8-I12</hiero> P(Ꜣ) n-rn(n)-wt(t)	lang}}Template:Efn	Pharmouthí	lang}}	Barmoda
IX	I Shemu Pachons	Template:Nowrap 1 Šmw	Ḫnsw	<hiero>p:n-x:n-sw-Z7-G7</hiero> P(Ꜣ) n-ḫns.w	lang}}	Pakhṓn	lang}}	Bashons
X	II Shemu Payni	Template:Nowrap 2 Šmw	Hnt-htj	<hiero>p:n-i-in:n-t:N25</hiero> P(Ꜣ) n-in.t	lang}}Template:Efn	Paüní	lang}}	Baôni
XI	III Shemu Epiphi	3rd Month of Low Water 3 Šmw	Ipt-hmt	<hiero>i-p-i-p-W3:N5</hiero> Ip(i)-ip(i)	lang}}Template:Efn	Epiphí	lang}}	Apip
XII	IV Shemu Mesore	4th Month of Low Water 4 Šmw	Template:Nowrap Wp Rnpt	<hiero>ms-s-Z7:t-G7-Z3-r:a-N5-G7</hiero> Mswt Rꜥ "Birth of the Sun"	lang}}	Mesorḗ	lang}}	Masôri
—	[[Intercalary month (Egypt)|IntercalaryTemplate:NbspMonth]] EpagomenalTemplate:NbspDays	—		Template:Nowrap Hryw Rnpt	lang}}	epagómenai	lang}}	Bikudji en abod

Lucky and unlucky days

Calendars that have survived from ancient Egypt often characterise the days as either lucky or unlucky. Of the calendars recovered, the Cairo calendar is one of the best examples. Discovered in modern-day Thebes, it dates from the Ramesside Period and acts as a guide to which days were considered lucky or unlucky. Other complete calendars include Papyrus Sallier IV,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and the Calendar of Lucky and Unlucky Days (on the back of the Teaching of Amenemope).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The earliest calendars appear in the Middle Kingdom, but they do not become codified until the New Kingdom. It is unknown how staunchly these calendars were adhered to, as there are no references to decisions being made based on their horoscopes. Nevertheless, the different copies of the calendars are remarkably consistent with each other, with only 9.2% of the determinations of adversity or fortuitousness being due to a defined textual reason.<ref>Template:Cite thesis</ref>

Scientific Basis

The Calendars of Lucky and Unlucky Days seem to be based on scientific observation as well as myths. Periodicity has been established between phases of the moon as well as the brightening and dimming of the three-star system Algol as visible from earth.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Predictions

The calendars could also be used to predict someone's future depending on the day they were born. This could also be used to predict when or how they would die. For example, people born on the tenth day of the fourth month of Akhet were predicted to die of old age.<ref name=":1">Template:Cite book</ref>

Epagomenal days

The epagomenal days were added to the original 360 day calendar in order to synchronise the calendar with the approximate length of the solar year. Mythologically, these days allowed for the births of five children of Geb and Nut to occur and were considered to be particularly dangerous. In particular, the day Seth was supposed to be born was considered particularly evil.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref>

Legacy

File:Calendar Icon Sinai 11th century.jpg

An 11th-century Coptic calendrical icon displaying two months of saints, by John Tokhabi.

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} The reformed Egyptian calendar continues to be used in Egypt as the Coptic calendar of the Egyptian Church and by the Egyptian populace at large, particularly the fellah, to calculate the agricultural seasons. It differs only in its era, which is dated from the ascension of the Roman emperor Diocletian. Contemporary Egyptian farmers, like their ancient predecessors, divide the year into three seasons: winter, summer, and inundation.

The Ethiopian calendar is based on this reformed calendar but uses Amharic names for its months and uses a different era. The French Republican Calendar was similar, but began its year at the autumnal equinox. British orrery maker John Gleave represented the Egyptian calendar in a reconstruction of the Antikythera mechanism.

See also

• Egyptian chronology
• Egyptian astronomy
• Egyptian days

References

Bibliography

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External links

• Detailed information about the Egyptian calendars, including lunar cycles
• Date Converter for Ancient Egypt
• Calendrica Includes the Egyptian civil calendar with years in Ptolemy's Nabonassar Era (year 1 = 747 BC) as well as the Coptic, Ethiopic, and French calendars.
• Civil, ver. 4.0, is a 25kB DOS program to convert dates in the Egyptian civil calendar to the Julian or Gregorian ones