the early third millenniumBCE) was inadequate for the economy and admin-
istration of a‘well-organized kingdom’; the civil calendar was instituted for the
purposes of administrative, economic, andfiscal efficiency, as a‘simple and
easily workable instrument for the measurement of time’.^118 Neugebauer
expresses the same view, adding that in Babylonia afixed calendar of this
kind was not necessary because the Babylonian Empire was not as centralized
and each city state within it could manage the calendar separately.^119 But
instead of solving the problem, Neugebauer draws our attention towards it: for
he does not satisfactorily explain why the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires,
which—as we have seen in Chapter 2—strove to some extent towards calen-
drical integration and unity, did not adopt afixed calendar as was adopted in
Egypt.
This explanation of the Egyptian civil calendar, essentially functionalist,
also errs in emphasizing its administrative advantages but ignoring its dis-
advantages. It is true that the civil calendar made it possible to calculate
backwards any date in the past (an advantage which late antique, medieval,
and early modern historians and astronomers exploited), as well as to predict
any date in the future (particularly useful for drawing up contracts and
schedules). The complete predictability of the civil calendar meant that it
could be reckoned exactly in the same way in any part of the‘two kingdoms’
of Egypt (Upper and Lower), without having to transmit any calendrical
information between them. This eliminated the problem of communications
which (for example) made it impossible, in the Achaemenid Empire, for Jews
and Arameans in Elephantine in southern Egypt to reckon the Babylonian
calendar in the same way as it was being set in Babylon (see Chapter 2). The
availability of a single, widely known and predictable calendar in ancient
Egypt was undoubtedly a valuable asset for the effective administration of its
relatively extensive territory along the Nile valley.
But in functional terms, the civil calendar also had significant disadvan-
tages. For ordinary people, it was actually not that easy to use. If someone did
not know the current date, s/he had no way of working it out alone: the only
way tofind it out was by asking someone else who knew it. Since the civil
calendar was independent of the moon and (to a lesser extent) of the sun and
seasons, the current date could not be estimated on the basis of natural
phenomena—unlike in Babylonia, or wherever lunar calendars were used,
where it was possible for anyone, at any time of the month, to glance at the
shape of the moon (provided it was visible) and make a reasonable guess as to
the current date. Seasons (such as the inundation) were not much use to
estimate Egyptian civil dates, partly because seasons are prone to irregularity
and not clearly defined, and partly because the civil calendar itself was
(^118) Parker (1950) 53, cited and endorsed by Clagett (1989–99) ii. 34.
(^119) Neugebauer (1942); see Clagett (1989–99) ii. 31–2.
The Egyptian Calendar 163