season comprises four months numbered I to IV. The season names are, with
their common translations:^9
Akhet (Ah
%t),‘inundation’
Peret (prt),‘emergence’(growth, seed, winter)
Shemu (šmw),‘low water’(dryness, summer)The months of the year are thus called, in Egyptian sources, I Akhet, II Akhet,
etc. Egyptian months also had individual names, sporadically attested in the
New Kingdom period (second half of the second millennium), but these only
came into systematical use in the Achaemenid period (fifth–fourth centuries)
and Ptolemaic periods (from the third centuryBCE), when they appear in
Greek texts as Thoth, Phaophi, Athyr, Choiak, Tybi, Mechir, Phamenoth,
Pharmuthi, Pachons, Payni, Epiphi, and Mesore.^10
The earlier nomenclature (which persisted even after the Ptolemies, with
I Akhet equivalent to Thoth, etc.) suggests that the dominant feature of the
calendar was agricultural or seasonal, whereas the subdivision of seasons
into four months was only for a schematic, arithmetic convenience. Seasons
such as the inundation (of the Nile) follow the solar year, and are thus
independent of lunar phenomena. The month-names of the civil calendar
suggest, therefore, that the origins of this calendar were not lunar but
seasonal. The institution of afixed, 365-day calendar may have represented
an attempt to schematize the seasonal year. But because this scheme was
short of one day every four years, the Egyptian civil calendar soon lost its
relationship with the seasons (for example with I Akhet occurring, for
considerable historical periods, outside the actual season of inundation
and thus representing‘inundation’only by name).
Scholars generally assume that the Egyptian calendar was originally lunar,
and later replaced by the civil calendar.^11 However, the possibility that it was
originally seasonal must also be given serious consideration.^12 It is also
possible that the calendar originally combined both features, i.e. lunar months,
but with a system of intercalation that maintained these months in the same
seasons. In the absence of evidence, the question remains open.
The civil calendar of 365 days is attested very early on, with evidence going
back to the third millenniumBCE. The entries in the royal annals of the Fourth
(^9) On these names and their translation, see Depuydt (2007) 72–3.
(^10) Clagett (1989–99) ii. 4–5, Depuydt (1997), 2009 (134). In the Achaemenid period, the same
names are attested in Aramaic (see Porten and Yardeni 1986–99); and in late Antiquity they are
attested in Coptic. A list of twelve other month-names appears in the Ebers calendar (late 16th c.
BCE), but clearly not pertaining to the civil calendar; the nature of these months will be discussed
below.
(^11) Parker (1950, 1974); Neugebauer (1942); Clagett (1989–99) ii. 31–6; Depuydt (1997)
16 – 12 18.
Clagett (1989–99) ii. 4.
The Egyptian Calendar 129