although we detect, at least by the Ptolemaic period, a development towards
representations of a continuous lunar month, the focus tends to remain on
specific days. Many of these days correspond to distinctive points in the
monthly cycle of lunar phases (old moon, new moon, full moon, lunar
quarters) that were celebrated in the temples as lunar monthly feasts. Most
of these days are identified not by number, but by name; each day bears the
name of the feast celebrated in it, and some names or their hieroglyphs refer
explicitly to the lunar phases.^115 Thus, it may be argued that the lunar days in
Egyptian sources refer tolunar eventsrather than calendar dates. The use of
day-names rather than numbers suggests that the days of the lunar month
were not counted, and thus not conceived as part of a continuous lunar
reckoning. Instead, it is possible that the date of each lunar feast was deter-
minedad hoc, on the basis of observation or calculation of the phases of the
moon, and then dated according to the civil calendar.^116
Even the later, elaborate 25-year cycles of the Ptolemaic period do not prove
the existence of a continuous lunar calendar, because these cycles only provide
the starting date of each lunar month. They may have been used as schemes to
calculate the dates of lunar festivals (new moons, full moons, etc.) in relation
to the civil calendar, but they do not mean that a lunar calendar, albeit implicit
in these cycles, was continuously or consistently reckoned and used (Depuydt
1997: 151–2).
- THE CIVIL CALENDAR AND SOCIETY
IN ANCIENT EGYPT
The common paradigm of two calendars in Egypt, civil and lunar, with further
subdivisions between‘civil’and‘Sothic’365-day calendars on the one hand,
and‘old’and‘new’lunar calendars on the other, is very misleading. The Sothic
365-day calendar, as we have seen, is a modern scholarly hypothesis that has
not been satisfactorily substantiated; there is little evidence that the drift of the
civil calendar, for which the Sothic calendar is supposed to have compensated,
was ever regarded as a problem. Lunar dates are well attested but still relatively
rarely; they are restricted to the cultic context of the temples, and limited in
range. As we have seen, methods of lunar reckoning appear to have varied
(^115) e.g.Abd(day 2, represented by a moon crescent; see n. 8),smdt(day 15, a half-moon), etc.
The only days referred to by number are lunar 6 (e.g. in pap. Berlin 10018: Luft 1992: 60–1, 179;
Depuydt 1997: 167, 184) and 10 (both at Medinet Habu). Those aside, three double-dated
documents, from 559BCE(Thebes) and 142 and 140BCE(Edfu), have both lunar month-names
(see above, n. 110) and numbered days (see Parker 1950: 18–21, Depuydt 1997: 172–7).
(^116) As may be inferred from pap. Berlin 10282: see discussion above, and references cited in
n. 58.
The Egyptian Calendar 161