above), but to thefirst day of the year (as attested elsewhere).^32 This would
account for its position at the beginning of the document: it represents New
Year’s day, but in a calendar differing from the civil calendar. This New Year’s
day coincides with the heliacal rising of Sothis, which in this year occurred on
(civil) III Shemu day 9. The next term,th
%
y, which coincides with IV Shemu
day 9, represents thefirst day of the next month, 30 days later; and so through
the entire calendar. This column is thus a record of the‘Sothic calendar’,
which is structurally similar to the civil calendar (with 30-day months) but
always begins the year at the heliacal rising of Sothis.
Although structurally similar to the civil calendar, this Sothic calendar
would have differed with regard to the epagomenal days which, in most
cases, were not positioned at the end of the year. In the year of the Ebers
calendar, for example, the day ofmnh
%
t(on line 4) coincided with I Akhet day
9, thus after an interval of 35 (or 30 + 5) days (because in the civil calendar,five
epagomenal days are inserted between the end of IV Shemu and the beginning
of I Akhet). This means that the epagomenal days of the Sothic calendar had to
be positioned, in this year, after the second month (beginning withth
%
y). As the
civil calendar drifted through the centuries, the position of this longer, 35-day
interval (which includes thefive epagomenal days) would have changed. Thus,
in a rather complex manner, the position of the epagomenal days in the Sothic
calendar would have drifted together with the drift of the civil calendar.
A further structural difference between the Sothic and civil calendars would
have been, in the Sothic calendar, the addition of a sixth epagomenal day every
four years, so as to remain in line with the heliacal rising of Sothis. According
to the Ebers calendar scheme, this extra day could only have been added at the
end of the Sothic year, and thus would have been separate from thefive
epagomenal days.
The‘Sothic’interpretation of the Ebers calendar has fallen out of favour,
partly because of the structural complexity that its Sothic calendar would
entail, and more importantly, because there is no convincing evidence of a
Sothic calendar in any other source.^33 The reference in a number of other
sources to the heliacal rising of Sothis as the‘beginning of the year’(see above,
n. 24) does not necessarily imply the existence of an alternative calendar: the
rising of Sothis could have been called‘New Year’, and even celebrated as such,
(^32) e.g. pap. Berlin 10007 (Luft 1992: 44–7) and pap. UC 32191 http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.
ac.uk/lahun/festivallistmk.html wherewp-rnptcoincides with the civil date I Akhet day 1. On
the ambiguity of this term, meaning either twelfth month or the festival of New Year’s Day, see
Clagett (1989–99) ii. 14–15, 195–9, Depuydt (1997) 56—where he calls it the‘Brugsch phenom-
enon’—and (2009) 136–7, and Bomhard (1999) 34–6. Note also pap. Berlin 10218 (Luft 1992:
107 – 9), wherewp-rnptis associated with a period beginning on IV Shemu 20 (towards the end of
the civil year). The meaning ofrnptis‘year’, but that ofwpis less certain.
(^33) Depuydt (1996b), (1997) 15, Belmonte Avilés (2003) 54–5. Clagett (1989–99) ii. 42–8,
193 – 216 partially rescues this interpretation by suggesting that the Sothic year of the Ebers calendar
was not regularly and continuously reckoned, but only anad hocarrangement for just that year.
The Egyptian Calendar 135