three-stage history of the Egyptian lunar calendar. This theory has become the
standard paradigm of all subsequent studies of the Egyptian calendar, but I shall
subject it to some criticism. I shall question whether at any point in history there
existed an official or standard lunar calendar, as taken for granted by Parker and
most other scholars, and indeed, whether the lunar dates and other evidence
extant indicate the existence of any‘lunar calendar’at all. Butfirst, the char-
acteristics of Egyptian lunar reckoning will be examined.
The lunar monthThe old moon crescent is visible for the last time, at the end of the lunar month,
when it rises shortly before sunrise above the eastern horizon (after sunrise, it
disappears from sight). It is generally agreed that the Egyptian lunar month
began the next morning, i.e. when the old moon was no longer visible.^50 The
disappearance of the old moon marked the end of the month and, simultan-
eously, the beginning of the new. Beginning the month on the morning of
invisibility is consistent with the view, for which there is independent evidence,
that the Egyptian day-unit began in the morning. Thus in every respect the
Egyptian lunar month differed from the Babylonian and Greek months which
beganwhenthenewmoonwasfirst visible on the western horizon in the evening.
The evidence, however, is late and limited on the whole to double-dated
documents (with civil and lunar dates, which enable us to determine when the
lunar month began) from the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. Before the third
centuryBCE, most documents are insufficiently dated—particularly with regard
to their years—for reliable inferences to be made. Regnal years are often
provided, but the names of the kings frequently not; and our ignorance of
the absolute chronology of Egyptian dynasties compounds the difficulty of
assigning dated documents to specific years. As a result, little can be inferred
from documents about the way the lunar calendar was reckoned in the
Pharaonic period.^51
(^50) Parker (1950) 13–23; Grzybek (1990) 140–1, 146–51; Clagett (1989–99) ii. 22, 280–90 (but
with some reservations, as in his viewfirm evidence is only available in pap. Carlsberg 9, i.e. the
Ptolemaic or Roman periods).
(^51) Absolute chronology is only securely known from the 7th c.BCEonwards; thus only double-
dated documents from the later period are useful to calendrical analysis (Depuydt 1997: 172).
Luft’s attempt (1992) to establish an absolute chronology for the documents of the Illahun
archive (19th c.BCE) depends on a given date of the heliacal rising of Sothis, which is itself
inconsistently recorded in the sources (pap. Berlin 10012 A and B, 1997ibid. 54–8; Luft’s solution
is unconvincing). Conversion of this Sothic dating, for our purposes, into a Julian date (e.g. 17
July, as commonly assumed for this period) is moreover uncertain for a variety of astronomical
reasons that have been explained above. There are too many variables in Luft’s reconstruction
(pp. 224–9) for it to be used asfirm evidence of how the lunar month was reckoned.
The Egyptian Calendar 143