below (whereas pap. Carlsberg 9 is written in Demotic). But some Ptolemaic-
period Demotic documents suggest that even in an‘Egyptian’context, other
calendrical schemes—not conforming to 25-year cycles—may also have been
in use. Thus, a second-centuryBCElist of monthly payments to be made to
priests for food and other expenses, extending over a period of six ostensibly
lunar months, implies a repeated sequence of 29– 29 – 30 – 30 days. This
sequence does notfit any of the 25-year cycles, but its apparent regularity
suggests a schematic calendar, rather than a calendar based on empirical
observations of the moon.^83
Parker’s early dating of pap. Carlsberg 9 is also problematic. According to
Depuydt’s reading, many of the dates should be one day earlier than in
Parker’s reconstruction. This pushes the date of composition of the cycle to
the third centuryBCEat the earliest, thus well within the Ptolemaic period:
before that period, thefirst lunar month of the cycle would have begun too
early, on a day when the old moon was still visible (Depuydt 1998: 1295–6).
Furthermore, it cannot be certain that this cycle was designed to determine
lunar months beginning on the day ofpsd
ntyw, i.e. at invisibility of the old
moon, as was assumed by Parker. If its purpose was to determine temple
service months, and if these began onAbd(on the next day—see discussion
above), then the dating of this cycle can be placed veryfirmly in the early
Roman period (Bennett 2008: 542).
The significance of pap. Carlsberg 9 must therefore be reassessed. It seems
reasonably clear that by the Ptolemaic period, and probably many centuries
earlier (as reasonably argued by Depuydt 2009), Egyptian lunar calendars were
regulated by and closely dependent on the civil calendar. But the 25-year cycle
of pap. Carlsberg 9 was clearly not the only lunar scheme in Ptolemaic or
Roman Egypt, and it is also doubtful to what extent and for what purposes it
was used. The existence of a variety of lunar calendars in this period certainly
casts doubt on the notion of a standard Egyptian lunar calendar. The variety of
practices we have noted above, especially in relation to the beginning of the
month and the use of empirical or schematic methods, suggests that at any one
time there could be several ways of reckoning the lunar calendar in Egypt.
Inasmuch as the lunar calendar was not as public as the civil calendar, but
confined to the cult and organization of temples, each individual temple could
have reckoned the lunar calendar independently and on its own. It would not
have mattered much, indeed, if the lunar calendar was reckoned differently in
the different temples of Egypt.
(^83) Pap. Cairo Demotic 30801, in Parker (1950) 19–21, Depuydt (1997) 147–51, 178–84.
The Egyptian Calendar 153