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?

sis the author propounds. The thesis is called the theory of the "sliding" calendar. First of all, it is not clear what is new about this concept. The Egyptian year is 365 days long and the rising of Sirius occurs about every 365% days. Therefore, after four risings, about 1461 days (365%4 x 4) have passed. But four Egyptian years are only 1460 days (4 x 365) long. Therefore, if the rising fell on Day 1 of the Egyptian year, it will fall on Day 2 four years later and thus progressively "slide" forward in the year at a rate of one day in four years. No one has ever doubted that the rising of Sirius is "sliding" forward in this sense. It is therefore puzzling that von Bomhard seemingly elevates this "sliding" motion to the status of a discovery. Von Bomhard's nemesis is the concept that ancient calendar-makers "added a day." What is at stake is the above-mentioned difference between 1460 days and 1461 days. But the author seems to be fighting her own creations. First of all, a Sirius year of 365% days is postulated. This Sirius year was widely accepted in earlier Egyptology. But no evidence of a Sirius year with Sirius months ever emerged. As a result, hardly anyone nowadays accepts that a Sirius year existed. On the other hand, no one denies that the rising of Sirius was viewed as an important kind of beginning every year. The sources are unambiguous about this. However, it is not because one eagerly expects the arrival of spring every year as a new beginning that we have such a thing as a spring calendar or a spring year structured into spring months. It is not because we acutely feel that another year has passed whenever spring comes around that we have a spring calendar. Spring can easily be a marker of the passing of solar or seasonal years without there being a spring calendar. Likewise, the rising of Sirius may well have made some Egyptians acutely aware that another seasonal cycle had ended and a new one was beginning. But that awareness by itself is not a calendar. For the purpose of a calendar, days have to be grouped into certain ways and then counted successively. Thus, in the civil calendar, a group of 30 days forms a month and the days within the month are identified by consecutive numbers from 1 to 30. There is no evidence of Sirius months and Sirius days. In sum, von Bomhard accepts what everyone accepts, the sliding of the rising of Sirius in the civil calendar, and she rejects a concept of unclear definition that no one thinks existed anyhow, namely an elusive type of adding a day