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?

tian history that make associating the calendar's origin with the rising of Sirius and the inundation attractive even if not certain. The length of Egyptian history is therefore logically prior. In section 2 follows an attempt to produce a statement about what can reasonably be said about the origin of the Egyptian calendar, however little that may be. Historical details are produced only to the extent that they contribute to the logical coherence of the outline. A recent survey of Egyptian chronology is von Beckerath's.

4 Another survey is planned for the Handbuch der Orientalistik. Section 3 is an appendix. It discusses the latest theory on the Egyptian calendar. 1. What is Certain about the Length of Egyptian History? 1.1. What is Certain about the Civil Calendar Itself? Modern accounts of the history of the Egyptian calendar all begin in the fourth or third millennium B.C. in the middle of darkness. True, proceeding in chronological order is the clearest way of describing a given theory once all its elements are in place. One just tells the story of what happened. Storytelling has a way of captivating readers and retaining their attention. However, any such narrative account about the calendar is doomed to begin with statements for which there is no evidence. Nor can such an account clarify the proper sequence of how calendrical theory was shaped over many decades. Accepted scientific procedure demands that one move from what is certain to what is less certain. For this reason, the present account will begin at the other end of Egyptian history. Pharaonic civilization still flourished when Athens and Rome made their mark on history. In Egyptian sources dating to the thousand-year period from about 500 B.C. to about 500 A.D. a specific calendrical structure emerges with blinding clarity. Suffice it to mention Ptolemy of Alexandria's work in astronomy (second century A.D.). This calendar exhibits the following undeniable features: 1. Its year is exactly 365 days long. 2. Its 365-day year is always subdivided into 12 months of 30 days plus five days, in hieroglyphic and Demotic sources also into three seasons of four months or 120 days each called iht, prt, and Smw. * J. von Beckerath. Chronologie des phanionisehen Ägypten: Die Zeitbestimmung der ägyptischen Geschichte von der Vorzeit bis 332 v. Chr., MAS 46, Mainz 1997.