the archive confirm that this day was treated as a festival,^22 and so does a
contemporary document from the temple of Amon-Re in Thebes.^23 But its
calendrical significance only becomes evident in the Ebers calendar, dating
from the sixteenth centuryBCE(more on this text below), where the rising of
Sothis appears as a marker of the beginning of the year.^24 The assumption that
the same tradition existed more than a millennium earlier is simply unwar-
ranted. It is quite possible, indeed, that the association of the New Year with
the rising of Sothis was only developed at a later stage.
A more plausible theory of origins is that of Neugebauer, who argues that
the civil calendar could not have been established on the basis of an astro-
nomical criterion (the heliacal rising of Sothis), because the calendar’s drift of
one day every four years would have disrupted the relationship between Sothis
and the New Year almost from the outset. Instead, Neugebauer suggests that
the calendar was originally based on a seasonal criterion, whereby the New
Year, I Akhet 1, was intended to coincide with the beginning of the inundation
of the Nile, as indeed the name Akhet (‘inundation’) suggests.^25 Unlike the
heliacal rising of Sothis, the inundation of the Nile was not a punctual event
but a gradual process, which started every year in southern, upper Egypt a little
after the summer solstice, and then spread downstream to lower Egypt during
the following two months.^26 Thus, the beginning of inundation was not an
event that could be precisely defined. If the original intention had been to set
the New Year at the beginning of inundation, it may have taken a long time for
anyone to realize that the calendar was drifting away from it (by one day every
four years), which means that the calendar would not have been invalidated
(^22) Pap. Berlin 10007, 10012 B, 10344 (Luft 1992: 44–7, 57–8, 122–4, 321–4).
(^23) Clagett (1989–99) ii. 259, 271. Similar evidence from Elephantine, early 15th c.BCE: ibid.
325 – 6 (alsoWeill 1926: 124).
(^24) Clagett (1989–99) ii. 9–11, 167–70 (refuting earlier evidence adduced by Parker 1950),
and 193–216 (for the text of the Ebers calendar, on which see further below). Other texts
that associate the rising of Sothis with the New Year are pap. Chester Beatty 1 (see below,
near n. 37) and the early 12th-c.BCEtemple inscription of Medinet Habu (Weill 1926: 8,
128). Much later, in the 3rd c.BCE, the inscriptions on the statue of the astronomer and
temple priest Harkhebi associate Sothis with the New Year (Clagett 1989–99: ii. 489–96),
whilst the decree of Canopus (238BCE) presents it as a well-established tradition:‘the day
on which the star of Isis (i.e. Sothis) rises, which is reckoned in the sacred writings to be
the New Year’(l. 36 of the Greek version, cited below; see also Clagett 1989–99: ii. 326–31,
with Greek text infig. III 94b, and Depuydt 1997: 15) and Pfeiffer 2004: 121–3, both
translating the demotic version as‘beginning of the year’and the hieroglyphic version as
‘festival of opening of the year’); there is no indication of how ancient these‘sacred
writings’might be.
(^25) Neugebauer (1942); the interpretation of the name Akhet as‘inundation’is questioned
by Depuydt (2007) 70–3, but see below, n. 34.
(^26) Belmonte Avilés (2003) 21–2. I say‘was’because with the construction of the Aswan dams
in 1970, the inundation of the Nile has become completely disrupted.
132 Calendars in Antiquity