reinstatement of the Julian calendar in what the Egyptians knew to be its
authentic, accurate form.
However, if the primary motivation of the calendar reform was to synchro-
nize the Egyptian calendar with the Roman, this scholarly correction would
have been misplaced: no matter how inaccurate, leap years needed to be made
every three years, at the same time as at Rome.Why synchronization with the
Roman calendar was ignored demands an explanation that goes beyond the
concern for purely scientific accuracy.
The political context of the calendar reform needs at this point to be
considered. A question that is rarely asked, although quite fundamental, is
who instituted the Alexandrian calendar. Elsewhere in the Roman East, it is
usually assumed that the adaptation of local calendars to the Julian year was
carried out by local political authorities, i.e. the city councils or provincial
leagues of cities (although evidence for the province of Asia, which will be
examined below, shows that involvement of the Roman governor could also be
considerable). But in Egypt, after the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty in 30BCE,
there was no indigenous political authority that could have carried out a
reform of the calendar and enforce it across the whole province. The city
council of Alexandria would never have wielded such authority over Egypt.^87
The only political authority that could have reformed the calendar for the
33 CE 30/8 30/8
44 CEd 29/8 4 29/8
5 29/8 29/8
6 29/8 29/8
7 7 30/8 30/8
8 8 29/8 8 29/8
aYears from January to December during which, late in August, a sixth epagomenal day was added at the end
of the Egyptian year.
b‘Roman’designates the calendar that was actually used in this period by Romans.‘Julian calendar’(in the
last two columns of this table) designates a theoretical, backward projection of the Julian calendar, a
convenient chronological time-scale used by historians and scientists for dating ancient events, even those
from long before Julius Caesar’s calendar reform (see Jones 2000: 159 n. 1). Inclusion of this time-scale in this
table helps us to plot the development of the Roman and Egyptian calendars in this period.
c1 Thoth (or I Akhet 1) is the Egyptian New Year, immediately after the epagomenal days (see Chapter 3). In
this column, the dates before 22BCErefer to the Egyptian civil calendar, which has no leap year and drifts from
the solar year (or the theoretical Julian calendar) by one day every four years. From 22BCEonwards, the dates
refer to the reformed, Alexandrian calendar. Dates in this column are given in the form of day/month.
dFrom 4CEonwards, leap years occur every four years, in conformity with the Julian calendar (and as in the
fifth column of the table).
(^87) The designation of the new calendar as‘Alexandrian’appears to be late, being attested from
the 4th c. in Theon’sCommentary on the Almagest, 908 (Mosshammer 2008: 175) and then in
thehemerologia, but not in ancient inscriptions (see below, n. 89); it should not be taken as
indicative of any specific connection to the city of Alexandria.
Fragmentation: Babylonian and Julian Calendars 267