there were days in the calendar year; that is, 1,460 years; or we may say: 1,461 calendar years =1,460 Sothic (Julian) years. Without knowing it, the Egyptian was thus dealing with three different years: a 1. His calendar year of 365 days, by which most of the business of civil life was transacted and all documents were dated. 2. The Sothic (or Julian) year of 365 days, on the first of which the people celebrated the feast of the Rising of Sothis. 3. The solar (or Gregorian) year of a little less than 365 days (which was therefore slowly diverging from the Sothic year). 41. The Egyptian, as we have intimated, never learned that the Sothic (Julian) and the solar years were not identical; the divergenceb was so slow, and so slight, that it was entirely imperceptible to the masses, or possibly even to the learned, of the time. On the contrary, the difference between his calendar and the feast of the heliacal Rising of Sothis (that is, 1 and 2) must have been early observed. Nevertheless, the actual shift within an average lifetime was not so great as to occasion inconvenience. Thus each generation accepted the place of the calendar in the seasons as they found it, and without remark considered it as a matter of course that the beginning of the inundation, or the advent of summer heat, fell on about such and such a day of a certain month. Both these events had occurred aSee Meyer, op. cit., 16. bIn 4231 B. C. the summer solstice fell on July 28 (Julian); but as it was always eighteen hours and forty minutes earlier than the Sothic rising each century, it had advanced thirty-one days, to June 27, by 231 B. C. In the thirty-first century (3001-3100) B. C. it coincided with the Sothic rising on July 19 (Julian). (See Meyer, op. cit., 14 f.) at about that time since their earliest remembrance. A peasant of fifty or sixty-that is, at the end of an average life-hardly remarked that the seasons were now ten or twelve days later in the calendar than when he was a lad of ten. Unfortunately, references to the place of the seasons, or of astronomical events, in the calendar are rare; nevertheless, there are enough of such references to trace the gradual revolution of the calendar on the seasons. a 42. In the Sixth Dynasty, Uni, a nobleman who had been sent to Assuan to procure granite from the quarries there, narrates that he succeeded in landing his cargo at the king's pyramid, although it was in the eleventh month, when, he adds (as everyone knew), there was no water for such transportation. The time of advancing low water, terminating heavy transportation of this sort, normally in the eighth to the ninth month of the calendar, thus fell two months later in Uni's time (§ 323). In the Middle Kingdom a hitherto misunderstood inscription (§§ 735 ff.) narrates how an unfortunate official, dispatched to the mines of Sinai, arrived there in the third month of (calendar) winter, when he and his men suffered greatly from the summer heat! This shows a divergence of seven or eight months; as we should expect, in the centuries which have elapsed since the Old Kingdom the calendar had shifted several months. A letter from a priest in the 120th year of the Twelfth Dynasty, notifying his subordinates that the feast of the Rising of Sothis would occur on the fifteenth of the eighth month, shows us the exact amount of the shift at that C a[Later: Practically the same interpretation of the inscription has now appeared in Meyer's essay (Aegyptische Chronologie).] bAmong papyri found at Kahun, now at Berlin (Borchardt, Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache, 37, 99 ff.). <Temple entries from the same papyri, recording the offerings made at the Sothis feast, are dated the next day. time; for the feast thus fell exactly 225 days (seven months and fifteen days) after New Year's Day in the calendar. 43. The divergence steadily increased, and in the early part of the Eighteenth Dynasty, in the ninth year of Amenhotep I, it was exactly 308 days. a A Sothic date somewhere between 47 and 101 years later, in the reign of Thutmose III, shows that it had then increased to 327 days (II, 410, note). It is, furthermore, roughly indicated by the dates of his campaigns in Syria (II, 409 ff.), which, as we know, always occurred from April to October. His son Amenhotep II's campaigns carry the divergence a little farther, and some 150 years later its continuance is shown by the dates of Ramses II's campaigns (III, 307). For nearly six centuries after this we have no indication of the place of the calendar, but in the third year of Shabataka, about 700 B. C., the first day of high Nile is recorded at Thebes as occurring on the fifth of the ninth month of the calendar (IV, 887). The calendar had thus completed its revolution around the seasons, and had also shifted nearly 180 days in another revolution, since the reign of Thutmose III. The shift of the calendar can thus be traced for some 2,000 years, as determined by six different dates of astronomical or seasonal events, and a series of other significant occurrences, in terms of the calendar." aCalendar of Papyrus Ebers. bThe date of the high water in the reign of Osorkon II, in the Twenty-second Dynasty (IV, 742 ff.), will be of assistance when the correct date is known; but as given by Daressy (Recueil, 18, 181) it has certainly been incorrectly transliterated from the hieratic. The calendar of Ramses III (largely copied from an almost completely lost original of Ramses II), which places the Rising of Sothis on New Year's Day, is of course a normal calendar intended to avoid constant readjusting of its long list of dates from time to time. Such a calendar of feasts could be perpetually used without alteration, by merely allowing in each date for the then amount of the divergence. The conjecture (eo ipso very improbable) that the calendar was at irregular intervals readjusted to the astronomical year, is completely disproved by the procession exhibited by the above series. 44. These data are of significance and value in two respects. In the first place, they demonstrate the very early advance of the Egyptians in the discernment and calculation of astronomical and calendrical phenomena. For we know from the use of the Egyptian year by classic astronomers and mathematicians that the calendar coincided with the Sothic year, and that a new Sothic cycle began, some time in the period 140/41 to 143/44 A. D.a It must therefore also have coincided with the Sothic year 1,460 years earlier; that is, in 1320 B. C.; and still earlier, in 2780 B. C. Now, it is impossible that this calendar was first introduced so late as the twenty-eighth century, in the midst of the highest culture of the Old Kingdom. Moreover, the five intercalary days at the end of the year, proving the use of the shifting year of 365 days, are mentioned in the pyramid texts, which are far older than the Old Kingdom. 45. The calendar, therefore, existed before the Old Kingdom; but if this be true, we must seek its invention at a time when its three seasons coincided roughly with those of nature, as they must have done at its introduction. This carries us 1,460 years back of their coincidence in the Old Kingdom; that is, the calendar was introduced in the middle of the forty-third century B. C. (4241 B. C.). This is the oldest fixed date in history. This fact demonstrates not only a remarkable degree of scientific knowledge in that remote age, but also stable political conditions, and a wide recognition of central authority, which could gradually introduce such an innovation. The date employed was that for the rising of Sothis in the latitude of Memphis or the southern Delta, and this fact is a significant indication of the high culture prevailing in the north at this time. aCensorinus, 21, 10, and Meyer, op. cit., 28. bFor convenience, ignoring the uncertainty of four years. 46. In a second respect the calendar is of inestimable value to us in establishing the chronology of Egyptian history. Where the heliacal rising of Sothis is recorded in terms of the calendar, it is a matter of the simplest arithmetica to determine, within a margin of four years, in what year B. C. the rising occurred. As we have seen, three such dates. are preserved to us, two of which each give the year of the king's reign, and from these the entire Twelfth Dynasty, and the reign of Amenhotep I in the Eighteenth Dynasty, are established within four years in terms B. C. They show that the Twelfth Dynasty began in 2000 B. C., and the reign of Amenhotep I in 1557 B. C., thus determining the accession of the Eighteenth Dynasty as 1580 B. C. The third Sothic rising, in the reign of Thutmose III, is not dated in a particular year of the reign, so that it furnishes only a rough approximation of the date of his reign, proving that the year 1470 B. C. fell within his reign. This This approximation may be rendered precise by a computation based upon the feasts of the New Moon, which Thutmose III is recorded to have celebrated in his twenty-third and twentyfourth years (II, 430). These new-moon dates establish the date of Thutmose III's reign as May 3, 1501, to March 17, 1447 B. C. The two other early dates are chiefly of aThus: The rising of Sothis at the beginning occurs on the first day of the calendar year. From a given calendar date of its rising the amount of the shift of the calendar can be computed in an instant. In the 120th year of the Twelfth Dynasty Sothis arose 225 days after New Year's Day. As the shift occurred at the rate of one day in four years, the 225 days' shift had taken place in 900 years since the calendar coincided with nature; that is, since 2780 B. C. The 120th year of the Twelfth Dynasty was thus 1880 B. C., and the dynasty began in 2000 B. C. (or between 2000 and 1996 B. C.). bMeyer, op. cit., 46 ff. The phases of the moon occupy the same position in the calendar every nineteen years. The date of Thutmose III's reign being roughly determined by the Sothic rising, the new-moon dates can then be employed to place this reign more precisely. Without the Sothic date the new-moon dates would be of no use, as they merely present conditions recurring every nineteen years. dMeyer, loc. cit. |