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?

1.2. Views on the Length of Egyptian History before the 1940s and 1950s It is not possible to understand current thinking about the origin of the Egyptian calendar without understanding what is now commonly thought about the length of Egyptian history. History is defined here as usual as the period from which we have written sources. What comes before is prehistory. In early Egyptology, a long line of Pharaohs was reconstructed from Manetho and hieroglyphic sources. While countless details remain uncertain to this day, the overall sequence is firm. But how many years does this sequence of kings cover: 3000, 4000, 5000? Consider Menés, the first ruler of the first dynasty according to Manetho (third century B.C.), whose work survives in citations by others from the first century A.D. onward. Borchardt

5 lists many proposed dates. Whether Menés existed or not is irrelevant. What matters here is that he symbolizes the beginning of Egyptian history. The dates listed by Borchardt for the beginning of Egyptian history span a period of two thousand years. As late as 1910-1911, scholars as familiar with the sources as Gaston Maspero and William Flinders Petrie dated Menés to as early as 5000 B.C. and 5546 B.C. That places the building of Giza's pyramids before 4000 B.C. Two of the most diligent students of Egyptian chronology in the early twentieth century, Eduard Meyer and Ludwig Borchardt, still dated the beginning of Egyptian history to before 4000 B.C. But from the nineteen twenties onwards, the notion that Egyptian history began later, around 3000 B.C., gained prominence. The principal advocate was Alexander Scharff' Scharff relied mainly on archaeological evidence and synchronisms with the Ancient Near East. As late as 1935, in his influential manual of Egyptian chronology, Borchardt

7 declared Scharff

's theory "indefensible," noting that Scharff himself had described such a late dating as "far from really provable (fern von wirklicher Beweisbarkeit)." Borchardt even adduces a scientific argument from geology against Scharff's dating. Writing on the origin of the Egyptian calendar, Neugebauer* follows Borchardt, yet states in a final footnote (p. 194 note 1) that Scharff's arguments are "not less probable" than Borchardt's. L. Borchardt, Die Annalen und die zeitliche Festlegung des Alten Reiches der ägyptischen Geschichte. Quellen und Forschungen zur Zeitbestimmung der ägyptischen Geschichte 1, Berlin 1917, pp. 48-51. " A. Scharff, Grundzüge der ägyptischen Vorgeschichte. Morgenland 12, Leipzig 1927, p. 54. L. Borchardt, Die Mittel zur zeitlichen Festlegung von Punkten der ägyptischen Geschichte und ihre Anwendung. Quellen und Forschungen zur Zeitbestimmung der ägyptischen Geschichte 2, Cairo 1935, p. 35 with note 3. * O. Neugebauer, Die Bedeutungslosigkeit der "Sothisperiode" fur die älteste ägyptische Chronologie, AcOr 17 (1939), pp. 169-95.