calendar. It was issued at Canopus, near Alexandria, in the form of a trilingual
text (more precisely, Greek and Egyptian bilingual, with the Egyptian text in
hieroglyphic and demotic scripts). A number of copies have been discovered
in various locations, suggesting that the decree was circulated across the whole
of Egypt, as indeed the text of the decree stipulated that it should be (Greek
text, ll. 73–6). The object of the decree wasfirstly to institute an annual festival
in honour of the rulers on the day of the rising of Sothis—which was reckoned
as occurring in that year on 1 Payni (i.e. II Shemu 1)—and secondly to stabilize
the calendar by adding an extra epagomenal day every four years, thus
arresting for ever the drift of the civil year. To cite from a translation of the
Greek version (ll. 35–46):^38
(be it resolved) for there to be held each year a public festival in the temples and
throughout the whole country in honor of King Ptolemy and Queen Berenike, the
Benefactor Gods, on the day on which the star of Isis rises, which is reckoned in
the sacred writings to be the new year, and which now in the ninth year is
observed on thefirst day of the month Payni, at which time both the little
Boubastia and the great Boubastia are celebrated and the gathering of the crops
and the rise of the river takes place; but if, further, it happens that the rising of the
star changes to another day in four years, for the festival not to be moved but to be
held on thefirst of Payni all the same, on which (day) it was originally held in the
ninth year, and to celebrate it forfive days with the wearing of garlands and with
sacrifices and libations and what else that isfitting; and, in order also that the
seasons may always do as they should, in accordance with the now existing order
of the universe, and that it may not happen that some of the public feasts held in
the winter are ever held in the summer, the star changing by one day every four
years, and that others of those now held in the summer are held in the winter in
future times as has happened in the past and as would be happening now, if the
arrangement of the year remained of 360 days plus thefive days later brought into
usage, (be it resolved) for a one-day feast of the Benefactor Gods to be added
every four years to thefive additional days before the new year, in order that all
may know that the former defect in the arrangement of the seasons and the year
and in the beliefs about the whole ordering of the heavens has come to be
corrected and made good by the Benefactor Gods.It is evident from the text of the decree that the second measure—the addi-
tion of an extra day every four years—served, above all, the purpose of the
first: to stabilize for ever the date of the new festival, 1 Payni, on the day of
the rising of Sothis. However, it also served a more general purpose: to ensure
(^38) The standard edition of the Greek text is in Dittenberger (1903–5) i. no. 56 (see also Pfeiffer
2004: 57–65, with German translation); an English translation by R. Bagnall, which is cited here,
is available at http://www.columbia.edu/itc/classics/bagnall/3995/readings/b-d2-9.html. For
the hieroglyphic and demotic texts (with translation and discussion), see Clagett (1989–99) ii.
326 – 31 and 338 n. 10, with drawings infig. III 94a–c, and Pfeiffer (2004), with separate
translations of each version.
138 Calendars in Antiquity