Hedvig Győry: Mélanges offerts a Edith Varga „Le lotus qui sort de terre” (Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts Supplément 1. Budapest, 2001)
LEO DEPUYDT: What Is Certain about the Origin of the Egyptian Civil Calendar?
may at first amaze. But it is not new in chronology at large. In fact, such discord is as old as modern chronology itself. Seth Calvisius belonged to the first generation of modern chronologists. He was a contemporary of the pioneer Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609), with whom he corresponded. In his impressive Opus chronologicum of 1620, 2 Calvisius observes, inter tot chronologos rarissime duo de una eademque re consenti[ujnt "among so many chronologists (only) very rarely do two (of them) agree about one and the same thing." How can there be room for all theories to differ? Apparently, what has happened is a feverish land rush aiming to conquer the entire territory of that which is not impossible. This realm is very large: there is so much that one might imagine having happened if one does not really know what did. By contrast, the realm of that which is positively verifiable is small. And so seem to be, frustratingly, the prospects of reaping rewards for mastering a complex problem. Still, the standard ought to be that which is positively certain. It appears that, with regard to the origin of the calendar, as with most other topics of Egyptian history, there is opportunity for all-encompassing Cartesian doubt. In the Festschrift Wente, Roth 1 recently wrote as follows about the "archaeology of Egyptian scholarship": Just as archaeologists must periodically rethink their interpretations so that the actions of people whose activities are reflected in the lower levels of their excavations are not analyzed in terms of the activities of people who lived long after them, so must historians periodically look skeptically at the entire edifice of historical reconstruction that has accumulated over the decades to eliminate the inconsistencies, unnecessary complexities, and unjustified assumptions that have crept into it over the decades. Curiosity drives the quest for truth. But how to satisfy curiosity when there is hardly any evidence? With all that has been written, a different kind of curiosity may emerge: What is certain in all that has been said, however little it may be? It is this kind of curiosity that inspires the present paper. The focus is on what is certain, if anything, about the origin of the Egyptian civil calendar. But to understand the problem, it is logically necessary to consider first what is certain about the length of Egyptian history. This is done in section 1 of this paper. Indeed, it is current notions about the length of Egyp- S. Calvisius, Opus chronologicum, Frankfurt 1650 4 , p. 1. 1 A. M. Roth, The Ahhotep Coffins: The Archaeology of an Egyptological Reconstruction, in: Gold of Praise: Studies on Ancient Egypt in Honor of Edward F. Wente, SAOC 58, Chicago 1999, pp. 361-77, at p. 375.
