The Egyptian Calendars

8/12/2019 The Egyptian Calendars

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The Seasonal Calendar

In Britain we have four seasons: spring, summer,autumn and winter. In other regions of the worldsuch as parts of Africa and Asia there is a dryseason and a rainy season.

There were three seasons in Ancient Egypt andthese depended, like everything else in Egypt, onthe River Nile.

The Egyptian Calendar



Akhet (Inundation) was the season when the River

Nile was in flood

Peret (Springing forth) was the time when the fieldscould be planted

Shomu (Deficiency) was the time when the landstarted to dry up and the crops had to be harvested

Using our modern calendar these seasons were about

Akhet - mid July to mid November

Peret - mid November to mid March

Shomu - mid March to mid July




The stellar calendar (based on the stars)

To people living in towns in England today the stars are not very important - we can

only see a very few of the very brightest stars, and these not every night. But in AncientEgypt

There was no street lighting or lights left on all night in town Centre shop windows Egypt is much nearer the Equator so it gets dark much more quickly once the Sun has

set The sky was cloudless all night every night There was no air pollution

The people living in ancient Egypt saw thousands of stars blazing down on them, not just occasionally but all night and every night. To them, as to almost all the ancientpeople, the stars were very important indeed.

Cont.




The Earth's atmosphere contains lots of water vapor. As we go higher and it gets

colder some of this water vapor condenses to form droplets of water. These are theclouds we can see. Higher still the atmosphere is colder still and contains notdroplets of water but very tiny crystals of ice.

The Earth is spinning on its axis - this is why the Sun and Moon rise and set. Thepoint in the sky exactly about the Earth's North Pole is called the Celestial NorthPole, and as the Earth rotates all the stars seem to move in a circle round it. Polaris(the Pole Star) is very close to the Celestial North Pole so is always visible every nightand always due North. The stars near Polaris, the circumpolar stars (from the Latinfor around the pole), circle round Polaris but do not rise and set; the stars furtheraway from Polaris rise in the East and set in the West, just like the Sun and Moon.

Every star of course rises and sets at a different time, but every night there are alwaysplenty of different stars to see.

The first time a star reappeared after its period of invisibility was very important tothe ancient Egyptians, and to all the ancient people. This first rising of a star in thedawn sky in the East, just before Sunrise, is called its heliacal rising (from the Greekfor rising with the Sun). To the Egyptians it represented the end of the time the starhad spent in the Underworld.




The solar calendar (based on the Sun)

The time at which the River Nile starts to flood depends upon a

number of factors, and these all depend on the time taken for theEarth to go round the Sun, which gives us our seasons. This is a solar year, about three hundred and sixty five and a

quarter days - the quarter day is the reason why we have to haveleap years, when we add an extra day.

Solar year is not exactly three hundred and sixty five and a quarter

days so we must not add an extra day every four years. But, forreasons not explained here, the time between two heliacal risingsof Serpet, at the latitude of Egypt, is about twelve minutes longerthan a solar year.This means that their stellar calendar lost one dayin about a hundred years compared to a solar calendar.




The lunar calendar (based on the Moon) Most ancient religions used lunar calendars. All the religious festivals were

celebrated on a calendar based on lunar months. Each month started the firstevening the New Moon was visible, and lasted for either twenty nine orthirty days, until the first sighting of the next New Moon

The Ancient Egyptian priests also used a lunar calendar for all their religiousfestivals

In Ancient Egypt there were ( usually) twelve lunar months in the religiousyear

to keep the religious calendar in step with the seasonal calendar and theflooding of the Nile. Usually they needed to add the extra month about onceevery three years.




The Ancient Egyptians were highly organized with a very

efficient central government

they introduced a civil calendar containing twelve monthseach with thirty days, and each month containing three weeks

of ten days, and then five days of public holidays to bring theyear to three hundred and sixty five days. These five holidayscelebrated the birthdays of Osiris, Isis, Horus, Nephthys andSeth




Conclusion

We may think that the use of four different calendars all at the sametime would have been very confusing but the Ancient Egyptiansseemed to manage very well.

The Ancient Egyptians were the first people to make a calendar whichkept in step with the Sun and the seasons

Most of the ancient people ended one day, and so of course startedthe next, at sunset, but the Ancient Egyptians started their new dayat sunrise.


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The Egyptian Calendars