widely: the lunar month could begin at the disappearance of the old moon or
alternatively one day later, and it could be based on a variety offixed lunar
cycles and schemes. Parker’s simple and over-neat distinction between‘old’
and‘new’lunar calendars (the former regulated by the rising of Sothis, the
latter tied to the civil calendar) is problematic not only because it assumes the
existence of standard and official lunar calendars, and not only because it
classifies them according to one, arbitrarily chosen criterion, but also because
evidence of Sothic regulation of the‘old’lunar calendar derives entirely from a
single document, the Ebers calendar, whose interpretation remains conjectur-
al, whilst evidence of‘new’, schematic calendars tied to the civil calendar can
now be traced back to Illahun as early as the nineteenth centuryBCE. Lunar
calendar variety was far more complex than previously assumed, and suggests
that no method of lunar reckoning was either normative or standard. Indeed,
for reasons explained above, it is unclear whether lunar reckoning constituted,
in ancient Egypt, an autonomous lunar calendar.
The only calendar that is clearly attested in ancient Egypt as standard and
official was the civil calendar. Throughout the history of Egypt, this calendar
served as the principal or perhaps the only method of continuous time
reckoning and dating. It is no surprise that outsiders such as the Greeks
identified the civil calendar asthecalendar of Egypt. It is on this calendar,
therefore, that we now need to focus.
In the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern world, the Egyptian civil
calendar was unique in its design and in its very concept. Everywhere else,
until about the Roman period, ancient calendars were almost all lunar; they
were irregular,flexible, and therefore unpredictable. Their flexibility and
unpredictability could depend, to varying degrees, on empirical lunar phe-
nomena and on interference by political rulers (see for example Chapters 1–2).
The Egyptian civil calendar, in contrast, was not lunar but (approximately)
solar; it wasfixed,^117 regular, and completely predictable; and it was free from
all political interference (the Ptolemaic, Canopus decree was an unusual
attempt to interfere, which in the event failed). Unlike all other calendars,
the Egyptian calendar drifted through all the seasons of the year; but even more
unique and original was the very concept of afixed, schematic calendar, which
was alien to other calendars and emulated only much later (see Chapter 4).
It is legitimate to ask why such a radically different calendar arose, very early on,
in Egypt.
The normal explanation (or better perhaps, assumption) has always been
that afixed calendar was instituted in Egypt to suit the specific needs of its
highly bureaucratic kingdom. Parker, for example, argues that the lunar
calendar (which, in his view, preceded the institution of the civil calendar in
(^117) By‘fixed’I mean of course that it was changeless. I am not referring to the Sothic calendar,
which is often referred to as‘fixed’because it would not have drifted in relation to the seasons.
162 Calendars in Antiquity