The dawn of astronomy / A study of the temple-worship and mythology of the ancient Egyptians

by Sir Norman Lockyer

But after some years another attempt was made to get rid of all this confusion. The time was 23 B.C., 216 years after the decree of Tanis, and the place was Alexandria. Hence the new fixed year introduced is termed the Alexandrine year.

This new attempt obviously implied that the first one had failed; and the fact that the vague year was continued in the interval is sufficiently demonstrated by the fact that the new year was 216∕4 = 54 days en retard. In the year of Tanis it is stated that the 1st Pachons, the new New Year's Day, the real beginning of the Hood, fell on the 19th of June (Gregorian), the Summer Solstice, and hence the 1st of Thoth fell on the 22nd of October (Gregorian). In the Alexandrine year the 22nd of October is represented by the 29th of August, and the 19th of June by the 20th of April.

It is noteworthy that in the Alexandrine year the heliacal rising of Sirius on the 23rd of July (Julian) falls on the 29th of Epiphi, nearly the same date as that to which I first drew attention in the inscriptions of the date of Thothmes and Pepi. This, however, it is now clearly seen, is a pure accident, due to the break of continuity before the Tanis year, and the slip between that and the Alexandrine one. It is important to mention this, because it has been thought that somehow the "Alexandrine year" was in use in Pepi's time.

It would seem that the Alexandrine revision was final, and that the year was truly fixed, and from that time to this it has remained so, and must in the future for ever remain so. It must never be forgotten that we owe this perfection to the Egyptian Festival Calendars.

One of the chief uses of the Egyptian calendar that has come down to us was the arrangement and dating of the chief feasts throughout the year in the different temples.

The fact that the two great complete feast-calendars of Edfû and Esne refer to the only fixed years evidenced by records—those of Tanis and Alexandria—one of which was established over 200 years after the other, is of inestimable value for the investigation of the calendar and chronology of ancient Egypt.

In an excellent work of Brugsch, "Three Festival Calendars from the Temple of Apollinopolis Magna (Edfû) in Upper Egypt," we have two calendars which we can refer to fixed years, and can date with the greatest accuracy. In the case of one of these, that of Esne, this is universally recognised; as to the other, that of Apollinopolis Magna, we are indebted to the researches of Krall, who points out, however, that "it is only when the province of Egyptian mythology has been dealt with in all directions that we can undertake a successful explanation of the festival catalogues. Even externally they show the greatest eccentricities, which are not diminished, but increased, on a closer investigation."

About some points, however, there is no question. The Summer Solstice is attached in the Edfû calendar to the 6th Pachons, according to Krall, while the beginning of the flood is noted on the 1st of that month. In the Esne calendar the 26th Payni is New Year's Day. We read:—"26th Payni, New Year's Day, Feast of the Revelation of Kahi in the Temple. To dress the crocodiles, as in the month of Menchir, day 8."

Peculiar to the Esne calendar, according to Krall, is the mentioning of the "New Years Festival of the Ancestors" on the 9th of Thoth; to the Edfû calendar, publication No. 1 of Brugsch, the festival "of the offering of the first of the harvested fruits, after the precept of King Amenemha I.," on the 1st Epiphi, and "the celebration of the feast of the Great Conflagration" on the 9th of Menchir. In feast-calendar No. 1, the reference to the peculiar Feast of Set is also remarkable; this was celebrated twice, first in the first days of Thoth (? 9th), then, as it appears, in Pachons (10th). This feast is well known to have been first mentioned under the old Pharaoh Pepi Merinrā.

It is a question whether in the new year of the ancestors and the feasts of Set, all occurring about the 9th Thoth and Pachons, we have not Memphis festivals which gave way to Theban ones; for, so far as I can make out, the flood takes about nine days to pass from Thebes to Memphis, so that in Theban time the arrival of the flood at Memphis would occur on 9th or 10th Thoth. There is no difficulty about the second dating in Pachons, for, as we have seen, this followed on the reconstruction of the calendar.