calendar didnotconform to Parker’s cycle; it could have been based instead,
for example, on empirical observation of the new moon.^98
A slightly different argument applies to the 25-year cycle of pap. Rylands
inv. 666, which in this context has been given surprisingly less attention by
modern scholars. This cycle, like that of pap. Carlsberg, cannot account for
Ptolemaic Macedonian dates because the latter tend to occur several days later.
Nevertheless, consideration needs to be given to the cultural context of pap.
Rylands; for as mentioned above, this document is distinctly Greek. This is
evident from its being written in Greek, and from an account of debts in the
same manuscript that contains almost entirely Greek names.^99 In addition, an
implicit opposition may be read in the text between the‘Egyptian’calendar
and the 25-year lunar cycle,^100 perhaps implying that the latter was considered
not Egyptian but specifically Greek. The purpose of the 25-year cycle is not
stated, but several possibilities can be suggested. The reference in one of
the papyrus fragments to Hermes, Demeter, and Hephaistos together with
the new moon suggests perhaps a list of festivals in honour of these gods; the
purpose of the 25-year lunar scheme might thus have been to determine the
dates of these festivals.^101 It is also possible that the cycle was designed to
facilitate the conversion of Egyptian civil dates to and from Macedonian lunar
dates, even if in practice, as the evidence of double-dated documents shows,
Macedonian lunar dates were seldom based on thisfixed cycle.^102 At the very
(^98) So Jones; however, dates that deviate from Parker’s 25-year cycle do not all conform to
empirical lunar observation, and are better explained, I would suggest, as the result of arbitrary
intercalation or suppression of days (as common in other Greek calendars: see Ch. 1). Bennett
(loc. cit.) argues alternatively that Macedonian dates that do not conform to the lunar month (as
defined by empirical lunar observation) are confined to documents from outside Alexandria,
where the Macedonian lunar calendar was not consistently or carefully reckoned (since this was
chiefly the calendar of the Alexandrian, Macedonian ruling elite). He also argues that in some of
the double-dated documents the Macedonian date can be interpreted as correctly lunar if the
corresponding Egyptian date is assumed to be Canopic (see above, n. 46).
(^99) Turner and Neugebauer (1949–50) 80–2, 87, 92, according to whom the account of debts
and the lunar calendar are written in different hands, but still on the same papyrus and from the
same period. The account suggests to them (p. 87) that the document belonged to a gymnasium
or some other Hellenistic association.
(^100) On ll. 94–8. Although this passage is fragmentary, and thus its reconstruction is open to
criticism (e.g. on the reconstructedðÆæÜð[ŪìÆ], see Roberts and Turner 1952: 62), it is worth
citing here in full:ðÆæÜð[ŪìÆ ô]Hí ŒÆô[aó]åºÞíÅí íïìÅíåH[íuòåNóØŒ]Æôa[ôaò ]ìÝæÆò ôH[í]
ŒÆô’`Nªıð[ôßïıò äøäå]ŒÆìÞ[íø]í ôåôƪìÝíÆØ, which translates as:‘calendar (parapegma)of
lunar new moons, how they are arranged in relation to the days of the Egyptian twelvemonth’.
(^101) Turner and Neugebauer (1949–50) 87; Roberts and Turner (1952) 57. The fragment in
question (fr. 7) is difficult to place in relation to the rest of the document, although it clearly
belongs to it.
(^102) This suggestion depends on Bennett’s revised dating (2008; see above, n. 86) of the lunar
Macedonian calendar as having persisted in Egypt until the mid-2nd c.BCE, thus after the
redaction of pap. Rylands in 180BCE.
The Egyptian Calendar 157