in a purely notional or symbolic sense, without any need to construct a
calendar beginning every year on that date.^34
The theory of a Sothic calendar reckoned alongside the civil calendar
introduces an unnecessary complication in ancient Egyptian calendrical prac-
tices. It responds to a modern scholarly need to make sense of a calendar that
drifted in relation to the seasons, and to balance it out in some way with an
alternative, stable scheme. The reason why modern scholars have considered
the drift of the civil calendar as problematic is largely that it runs counter to
modern expectations of what a calendar should offer. But there is actually no
evidence that the drift of the civil calendar was ever regarded as a problem in
ancient Egypt. Although festivals were normally dated according to the civil
calendar, and consequently, festivals with specific seasonal connotations could
at times be celebrated in an entirely wrong season, this seems not to have
affected their meaning or ritual validity.^35 The drift of the calendar was a
reality which Egyptian society appears to have been completely adapted to,
and which did not demand any corrective, alternative scheme.
The only Egyptian source that might be cited as evidence of dissatisfaction
with the drift of the civil calendar is pap. Anastasi iv. 10. 1–2, dating from the
Nineteenth Dynasty (c. thirteenth centuryBCE), a prayer or invocation to
Amon that opens as follows:
Come to me, Amon, and save me in this wretched year. It has come about that the
sun rises not, winter (peret) is come in the summer (shemu), the months come
about turned backwards, and the hours are confused.^36(^34) Alternatively, these sources may be interpreted as referring to the New Year of a lunar
calendar regulated by the rising of Sothis—a possibility that will be explored below. TheCalendar
of Lucky and UnluckyDays(Leitz 1994) associates thefirst day of the year, I Akhet 1, with the
beginning of the inundation of the Nile, even though this date would have been constantly
shifting from it; Leitz suggests that this text is using an idealized civil calendar beginning from
the heliacal rising of Sothis (a‘Sothic’calendar), and thus also from the beginning of the
inundation ibid. 13–14). This interpretation, however, depends on a general assumption that
theCalendar of Lucky and UnluckyDaysprovides a list of precisely dated astronomical and
meteorological events, which could not have been dated according to the drifting civil
calendar; but this assumption is questionable (Lehoux 2007: 129–36, who also doubts whether
this particular passage is referring to the beginning of the inundation, but this is over-sceptical).
It is more likely, in this passage, that the association of (civil, not Sothic) I Akhet 1 with
the beginning of the inundation is a traditional topos with only notional or symbolic meaning. 35
On the seasonal, agricultural connotations of the festivals of Choiak and of Nehebkau
(which were dated by the civil calendar, and thus presumably could occur in the wrong seasons),
see Borghouts (1986) 5. In the Ptolemaic period, Geminus (Elem. Astr.8. 17–24, Aujac 1975:
51 – 2; see A. Jones 1999a) refers to summer festivals’occurring in the spring, winter, or autumn,
and explains that although the Isia festival was meant to be associated with the winter solstice, it
had shifted away from it by his own period; all this may have bothered Geminus a little, but even
to him it seems not to have been a major problem.
(^36) Translation from Caminos (1954) 171. Other translations do not differ substantially, e.g.
Schott (1950) 119:‘Der Sonne geschieht es, dass sie nicht aufgeht. DerWinter ist im Sommer
gekommen. Die Monate sind verkehrt, die Stunden verwirrt.’See alsoWeill (1926) 107, (1946),
136 Calendars in Antiquity