It was also an intrinsically impractical calendar. Because its year-length was
approximately one and a quarter days shorter than the true tropical solar year,
it fell behind the seasons far more rapidly than did the Egyptian civil calen-
dar.^119 Observance of this calendar over a protracted period would have
caused the Biblical festivals to occur in the wrong agricultural seasons, in
violation of Mosaic Law, which most Jews are unlikely to have tolerated.
Indeed, even in Qumran sources where the 364-day calendar is prominent,
the seasonal and agricultural significance of the festivals is emphasized.^120 This
has led some to conclude that if the 364-day calendar was ever followed in
practice, it would have been abandoned early on, as soon as its drift from the
seasons was found to have become excessive (Beckwith 1992: 461).
The questions of whether, how, and by whom the 364-day calendar was
observed in practice will be addressed in further detail in Chapter 7. At
present, I shall only remark that its possible derivation from the Egyptian
civil calendar, which I have argued here, may provide fresh insight into the
problem of its drift. Indeed, the long-term drift of the civil calendar affected
the Egyptians in a similar way as with the 364-day calendar, albeit less acutely:
their seasonal festivals were celebrated, more often than not, in the wrong
seasons.^121 The Egyptian example tells us not only that that observance of
seasonal festivals in the wrong seasons was possible in ancient eastern Medi-
terranean societies—as indeed it was also, for different reasons, in Greece^122 —
but also that if the Judaean 364-day calendar was inspired by the Egyptian
calendar, its Jewish followers may have been undeterred, similarly to the
Egyptians, by its seasonal discrepancy.
(^119) On unconvincing attempts by modern scholars to conjecture that the Qumran calendar
must have been adjusted through intercalation, see Ch. 7 n. 18.
(^120) e.g. in the Temple Scroll, which adds the extra-biblical festivals of the wine and oil harvests
(cols. 17–29). The agricultural significance of biblical festivals is also emphasized in Qumran
liturgical texts (e.g. 4Q509: the‘First fruits’festival, i.e. Pentecost), and agricultural seasons are
mentioned in the context of festivals in the Community Rule (1QS 10: 7–8). Note also Jub. 6: 21
(and parallel in Temple Scroll 19: 9):‘for it [Pentecost] is the feast of weeks and the feast offirst
fruits: this feast is twofold and of a double nature 121 ’.
The seasonal and agricultural significance of Egyptian festivals may have been suppressed,
early on in history, because of the drift of the Egyptian civil calendar. Thus the Egyptian New
Year festival, although still associated with the annual, heliacal rising of the Sothis star, appears
no longer to have been associated with the inundation of the Nile (Borghouts 1986: 5). One can
imagine it would have been difficult for Egyptians to celebrate this extremely important seasonal
event at the wrong time of the year, which may explain why this original aspect of the New Year
festival was suppressed. Note, however, the reference in the Canopus Decree to the New Year as
the time of the rising of Sothis and of‘the gathering of the crops and the rise of the river’(Greek
text, l. 38: cited in full in Ch. 3). As we have just seen (previous n. ), there is no evidence of any
such suppression in Judaean 364-day calendar sources.
(^122) Lack of conformity with the seasons in Greek and also pre-Julian Roman calendars would
have been due to the irregularity of their intercalations: see Ch. 1, below, and Feeney (2007)
199 – 200. The Persian Zoroastrian New Year drifted in the same way as the Egyptian calendar
(see above, near n. 28).
TheRise of the Fixed Calendars 203