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Sirius was known as Sothis to the Greeks who rendered the Egyptian name. The period of approximately 1,460 years, during which the vague years of the Egyptian calendar move through the tropical year and return again to the helical rising of Sirius, is termed a Sothic cycle. |
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9.2.1.1.3
Egyptian Language |
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Ancient Egyptian is a Semitic language, and in common with related languages, vowels are omitted in the written language. Ancient Egyptian consists of consonantal indicators only. It should also be noted that special orthographic symbols or characters are normally used to indicate sounds not present in English. In this discussion, I use the consonantal forms in common use in the literature but omit any special symbols, using English approximations. |
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9.2.1.1.4
The Three Seasons |
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Ancient Egyptian society recognized three seasons, relating to the all-important cycle of the Nile River. The seasons were flooding or inundation, the time of planting and harvesting, and the time of dryness or heat. These names may be roughly rendered as kht, prt, and smw. Given vowels, they are usually rendered as akhet, peret, and shemu, respectively. |
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9.2.1.2
The Original Lunar Calendar |
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The idea that a lunar calendar existed in Egypt prior to a civil calendar was, until recently, based only on analogy with information gathered about other early cultures. |
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More recent studies have shown that a lunar calendar was the first Egyptian calendar of record. At a later date, the civil calendar, with its vague solar year of 365 days was introduced and, slightly later, another lunar calendar, derivative and formalized. |
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The beginning of the year was based upon the heliacal rising of Sirius. This event was termed wp rnpt, or "The Opener of the Year". The 12 months of the common year were divided into three seasons, kht, prt, and smw, of four months. |
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The structure of the day determines the nature of the events, which are visible and may be used to define months. Cultures that start the day at dusk look for events first visible at dusk and hence focus on the first visibility of the lunar crescent. The Egyptians, however, started their day at dawn and were thus looking for a lunar event in the morning. This can only be the waning of the moon in the eastern sky. They observed the disappearing lunar crescent at dawn and counted the new month from the first day on which it was not visible. Such a system is also practiced in Africa by the Wadschagga and Masai. |
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The first month of the year therefore began with the first day of invisibility of the moon before sunrise after wp rnpt. This first day of the year was called tpy rnpt. Individual months were named after the most important feasts to occurred within them. The 12th month of the year was named wp rnpt. Whenever the first month began |
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