Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/381

 EGYPT

333

EGYPT

(Somu). la ancient times months had no special

names, they were simply designated by ordinal num- bers in each season, as " the first month of the inunda- tion" and so on. Each month (as also the decades and hours), however, had as a patron one of the divini- ties whose feast occurred during that month, and the patrons, it seems, varied according to time and local- ity. At a rather late period the names of those pa- trons passed over to the months themselves, hence the names transmitted to us by the classical writers (see table below). Each month was divided into three decades (the Egj'ptians do not seem to have ever used, or even known, the week of seven days) ; each day into 24 hours, 12 hours of actual day time and 12 hours of actual night time. The hours of day and night, con- sequently, were not always of the same length. The sixth hour of night corresponded to midnight, and the sixth hour of day to noon. There were further sub- divisions of time, but their relation to the hour is un- known. The day most likely began with the first day-time hour; some, however, think it began with the first hour of night.

The year began with the first day of Thoth (Inun- dation I) which, of course, was supposed to coincide with the first rise of the river. The first of Thoth was also supposed to coincide with the day of the heliacal rising of Sirius, which was called New Year's Day and celebrated as such each year with a great festival. Isis, tj-pified by Sirius, her star, was believed to bring with the inundation a promise of plenty for the new year; this takes us back into the first centuries of the fifth millennium, when the simimer solstice, which pre- cedes by a few days only the inundation, actually co- incided -with the heliacal rising of Sirius. We know, besides, from the classical writers that the latter phe- nomenon occurred on the 19th or 20th of July (ac- cording to the Julian Calendar), which points to Mem- phis as the home of the Egyptian Calendar. The Egyptians, however, must have perceived in course of time (if they had not foreseen it) that their calendar of .365 days would not, as they evidently believed at first, bring back the seasons every year at their re- spective natural times. Their year being about one- fourth of a day shorter than the Sirius year, on the fourth anniversary of its adoption, it had retroceded a whole day on the heliacal rising of Sirius; 486 years later, the retrocession was of about 120 days, so that the calendar indicated the opening of the inundation time when in fact the harvest was only beginning; and so on until, after 1461 revolutions of the civil year and 1460 only of .Sirius, the first of Thoth fell again on the same day as the heliacal rising of that star. This period of 1460 Sirius years (1461 Egyptian years) re- ceived later the name of Solhic period from 'ZCiBii, a Greek form of Sopdet, the Egj-ptian name of Sirius. Long before the end of the first Sothic period it was found necessary to consider the first of Thoth as a New Year's Day also, the civil New Year's Day. As early as the Fourth Dynasty we find the two New Year's Days recorded side by side in the tombs.

To the common people, who, as usual, were guided by the appearances, the calendar was steady while Sirius and the natural seasons were moving around it. Consequently Sirius's New Year's Day — which seems to be all they knew or ever cared to know of the Sirius year — was a movable feast, the date of which was to be announced every year. The fact that they esti- mated its precession on the calendar at six hours ex- actly, which was not correct except in 32.31 B. c. (see E. Meyer, " Aegyptische Chronologie ' ', p. 14), tends to show that the date was not obtained from astronomi- cal observation, but in a mechanical way on the sup- position that every four years it would fall one day later, this rule having been ascertained astronomically once for all, and considered as correct (E. Meyer, op. cit., p. 19).

The cycle of the Sothic periods has been established

in different ways by various scholars, with slight vari- ations in the years of beginning of the several periods (see Ginzel, " Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie", 187 sqq.). According to E. Meyer (op. cit., 28), a new period began: —

19 July, A. D. 140-141

19 July, 1321-20 B. c.

19 July, 2781-80 b. c.

19 July, 4241-40 B. c. These dates have been adopted by Breasted in his chronology (Ancient Records of Egypt, I, sec. 44), which we shall follow in the chronological arrange- ment of the Egj'ptian djTiasties (see below).

We have no evidence of the EgjT^tians having ever become aware of the difference between the Sirius year and the solar year, which accounts for the shifting of the summer solstice and, consequently, of the begin- ning of the inundation from 25 July, in 4236 b. c, to

21 June, in 139 a. d. (see Ginzel, op. cit., 190). This divergence, however, was too slow, and amounted to so little, even in the course of several centuries, that the Egyptian astronomers might well have over- looked, or at least ignored, it with regard to the calen- dar. It is still more remarkable that, after noting the retrocession of their vague year, they should not have tried to even it up with the Sirius year. But the as- tronomers were also priests and, as such, custodians of the religious side of the calendar, which in their eyes could not have been the less important. The simple insertion of an intercalary day would have been sufficient when the two years agreed, but that hap- pened rarely ; and the need of a reform was not felt by the contemporary generation. When that need was most acute, as in the midille of a Sothic period, the in- tercalation was not enough; the reform, to be satis- factory, would have demanded the bringing back of the seasons to their right times (at least in the measure allowed by the shifting of the summer solstice), which could not be done without passing over several months and days (cf. the Gregorian Reform), and conse- quently almost as many feasts or popular festivals. Indeed, in Ptolemaic times, when, prompted by press- ing politico-religious reasons, the priests finally imder- took a reform, they were satisfied with the insertion of a si.xth epagoraene day every four years. This fi.xed year, known as the Canopic or Tanitic year, began on

22 October, 238 B. c. (Julian), the first day of Thoth happening then to coincide with that date. It met with but scant favour and was abandoned rnider Ptolemy IV (Philopator) in honour of whose prede- cessor, Ptolemy III, the decree had been issued. A second attempt on the same limited scale, and prob- ably in the same spirit of flattery, was made in the early years of Augustus, in connexion with the estab- lishment of the era of Alexandria. The Egyptian year was then brought into harmony with the fixed Julian year, inasmuch as it received every four years an intercalary day. That day was inserted after the 5th epagomene, preceding the Julian intercalary year. The first of Thoth, however, remained where it was when the reform overtook it, viz., on 29 August, ex- cept after an intercalary year, when it, fell on 30 Au- gust. The first year with an intercalary day, it seems, was 23 b. c. (see Ginzel, op. cit., I, 224-28). This fi.xed year, which is still in use in the Coptic Church, was first adopted by the Greek and Roman portions of the population, while the Egj^Jtians proper for several centuries clung still to the old vague year.

As we have seen in the beginning of this section, the whole arrangement of the Egyptian year and its rela- tion to the astronomical and climatic phenomena of chief importance to the ancient Egyptians indicate that it must have been established at a time when one of the heliacal risings of Sirius coincided with the be- ginning of the inundation, which takes place shortly (according to the Coptic Calendar three days) after the summer solstice. This points clearly to the begin-