dates from the sixth and second centuriesBCE, the lunar months are ascribed
the same nomenclature as in the civil calendar.^110 Intercalation is implicit
but apparently not implemented by any formal system (see discussion
above, in the context of the Ebers calendar), which may be indicative that
a fully constituted lunar calendar did not exist. The concept of a lunar year
(i.e. a period of twelve or thirteen lunar months, approximately in line with
the solar year), which would imply a continuous reckoning of lunar months,
is also only evident in the sequence of twelve lunar months of the Ebers
calendar (according to its lunar interpretation). Attempts have been made to
infer a lunar year from a document of the Illahun archive, because it lists six
lunar months alternately, hence implicitly a total of twelve months, and
moreover refers at the beginning of the document to a‘year’.^111 This‘year’,
however, could actually mean thecivilcalendar year, since the dates in this
document are given according to the civil calendar and cover all the months
of the civil year, from II Shemu (year 30) to I Shemu (year 31: Depuydt
1997: 149). A contemporary (c. nineteenth centuryBCE) inscription from the
tomb of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hasan lists a‘feast of the great year’and
‘feast of the small year’, which has been interpreted as referring to the years
of two distinct calendars, civil and lunar.^112 This evidence, at best, is
tenuous.
Furthermore, the range of lunar dates that appears in the sources tends to be
restricted to specific days within the lunar month, suggesting that the days of
the lunar month were not reckoned continuously or in succession. In the
entire Illahun archive, onlyfive days of the lunar month are represented: days
1, 2, 4, 6, and 15.^113 Later feast-lists, from thefifteenth to thirteenth centuries
BCE, contain a maximum of eleven lunar month days (Clagett 1989–99: ii. 279).
At the temple of Medinet Habu (early twelfth century), lunar dates in the
feast-list include only days 29, 30, 1, 2, 4, 6, 10, and 15 ibid. 268–9). In the
Ptolemaic period, some feast- lists contain for thefirst time all thirty days of
the lunar month ibid. 285–6: inscriptions from Edfu and Dendera); but even in
this period, double-dated documents use only a small sample of days.^114 Thus
(^110) Depuydt (1997) 161–7; Belmonte Avilés (2003) 14–17 (also, for the latter two dates,
Parker 1950: 19).
(^111) Parker (1950) 37 and Depuydt (1997) 178–84, referring to pap. Berlin 10056 (Luft 1992:
73 – 8), on which see above, near n. 60.
(^112) Neugebauer (1942), Clagett (1989–99) ii. 173–6, 185–6: a 12-month lunar year is‘small’in
relation to the civil year, which is‘great’; alternatively, the civil year is‘small’in relation to a
‘great’13-month lunar year. It is also possible that the inscription is referring to a 12-month year
and a 13-month year (both lunar). Other interpretations, involving e.g. a Sothic year or a 360-day
year (ignoring the epagomenals), are far less likely (see Belmonte Avilés 2003: 17–18).
(^113) Clagett (1989–99) ii. 184, referring to texts in Luft (1992) 159–60, 144–7, 157, 179, and
163 – 6 respectively.
(^114) Parker’s corpus of double-dated documents (1950: 17–23) has only days 1, 5, 6, 16, and 23
of the lunar month; but this may need updating in the light of more recent discoveries.
160 Calendars in Antiquity