Egypts Calendar ~ The full title of the Egyptian Calendar. ~ An introduction to The Beginning of Infinite Time and The End of Eternity, which the gods and the goddesses of the shrine, and the assembly of the Paut have made, and which the Majesty of Thoth has gathered together in the Original House in the presence of the Lord of The Universe (Re), and which was found in the Library in the Rear-House of the Paut. House of Re! House of Osiris! House of Horus! Season One: Akhet, June 27 to October 24 Season of the Inundation. The Nature of this season is Hapy, the Nile in flood. Months: Thuthy. June 27 to July 26. Thoth. Paopy. July 27 to August 25. Ptah. Hathys. August 26 to September 24. Hathor. Choiach. September 25 to October 24. Sakhmet. Season Two: Poret, October 25 to February 21 Season of The Emergence. The Nature of this season is Khopry, the Rising Sun. Months: Tyby. October 25 to November 23. Montu. Menchir. November 24 to December 23 Rekeh-Ur, Great Flame. Famenoth. December 24 to January 22 Rekeh-Netches, Little Flame. Parmuthy. January 23 to February 21 Rennetet, She Nutures. Season Three: Shomu, February 22 to June 21, Season of The Harvest. The Nature of this season is Re, the creator. Months: Pachons. February 22 to March 23. Khonsu Paony. March 24 to April 22. Khenthy Horus Epipy. April 23 to May 22. Apt, patron of midwives. Mesore. May 23 to June 21. Horus of The Horizons. ~ Mystics And Mentors Egypt and Europe unified their shaman and calendar systems using similar conceptual metaphors. Shaman = Follow the Sun through the horizon. Herds, artists, elite, mystical, Osiris. “I talk to myself.” Calendar priest = First scientists, democratic, knowledge available with study. Crook and Flail = Herds and Grain. Pharaoh’s staffs of power. “I talk to the gods.” As our population grew, we reached that critical mass at which our shamans became astronomers, maintaining their role as psychopomp, spirit guide and advisor to the new and varied roles of behavior created by settling into the village life of farming. This era in our history was our first over-population crisis. We had been predators, carnivores, Lords of the Wilderness for time beyond count. We needed great stretches of land for the Great Hunt. The wild herds could no longer support our numbers. The gatherers and the innovators of our Hunter-Gatherer traditions found solutions to our survival. We became villagers. We no longer needed the shaman’s knowledge to keep track of the grander time-cycles of the Great Herds and the mysteries of the deep silences of the Wild World and the Sky. We needed sky-priests to know when to prepare for, to plan for and to identify the more complex cycles of the Plant World. The stability of the Sun’s cycles as a metaphor of the patterns and order of reality is a feature of cultures of the Nile. The Sun is more reliable than the Nile. By contrast, in global North, the Sun misbehaves, and that shaped the nature of northern gods. In that far north land, the fleeting rainbow, despite evanescence, is more reliable a feature of light than dayhours or the brightness of the Sun. Even the night sky is more reliable over the Nile. Aurora spirit-lights do not dance between Earth and Heaven, silent beings of awe, terror and unassailable mystery. The world does not annually cloak itself in the cold whiteness of death. The mystery in Egypt was the inner world, the darkness and lights of the soul/self, the heat of the soul’s energy. ~Time and the Ancient Almanac Measuring time in seconds is a modern fascination and the measure of a civilization’s technological level can be made by the quality and quantity of its clocks. This has not always been so. Prehistoric humans lived by the circadian rhythms of their own bodies, the seasonal behavior-patterns of their animal companions and by the regular transformations of their environment. Days and months, even years, could go by uncounted, especially when survival was moment by moment and one step in front of the other. Civilization provides peace and security. A price paid for that security is attention to a calendar, obedience to a clock. Hardly a day goes by that you do not find yourself needing to know, for one reason or another, the date of the month. It’s easy to keep track of the days of the week, especially with the lure of the weekend ahead drawing you forward. The date of the month, that’s trickier. A global industry exists, employing millions of people, to provide you with a paper or electronic calendar that orders the days of the year for you and keeps the date at your fingertips. Our modern lifestyle ticks along in mutual progression because we have collectively agreed to live our individual lives by this annual pattern. Chinese New Year included, whatever variations we create within the multi-cultural strata of our lives, that 365.25-day round has been pinned down to the nanosecond, and the date printed on your business invoice will be accepted around the world. We began as human beings, however, in a timeless world. Your day started when you and your family awoke, and it ended when the night became too dark for work. Until we had migrated far enough northward, we did not even need to worry too much about when to unpack our winter woolens. We followed the herds. We danced animal-patterned dances and we wondered at the sky. The phases of the Moon were humankind’s first time-keeper, the first calendar. No matter where our nomadic lifestyle took us across the face of the Earth, we could look up to the same face of the Moon. The patterns of the stars might change in confusing array and, if we wandered too close to the cold realms of the North Star, even the Sun behaved strangely. The Moon was always the Moon. The calendar made its first appearance in the late Paleolithic when women worked out the relationship between the Moon’s phases and their own bodies, counting the days of the Moon’s changes with nicks carved into pieces of antler, bone or shell. The days and months were yet unnamed and the years went by on their own, but we had begun to count time, keeping track of the regularly irregular Moon. Plants grow according to the Sun’s cycles, not the Moon’s. The round of the agricultural season is the gestation not of women but of the Earth. That relationship became the pattern of survival. Farming and the regular village life that grew up alongside the fields created fixed points on the horizon by which the patterns of the Sun could be marked. This solar calendar was more difficult to mark than the Moon’s, with the result that we have always used both calendars side-by-side, interweaving the patterns and teaching ourselves complex mathematics along the way. In this new millennium, fewer and fewer of us live by the Moon’s phases, but we still celebrate our holidays, religious and civil, by complicated algorithms of the Full Moon/New Moon cycle and the days of the week. Ancient Egypt was the first great civilization of humankind and our first great agricultural empire, and a cornerstone of their success was that they were the first to use the 365-day calendar. The inconsistencies in their method did allow the calendar to “drift” through the seasons, making it seem primitive compared to our own, but it was, nevertheless, the most sophisticated of its era. The Roman calendar, for example, had an unfixed number of days, from 304 to 354 or 355. There were only three day-names, Kalendae, Idus, and Nonae. The rest of the days were related to these by counting, for example, “three days before the ides.” The Roman calendar began on March 1, but only covered ten months. Winter was evidently so discouraging a period that they did not even bother to count those days. It was not until the time of the Emperor Augustus, when Egyptian influence was strong in Rome, that the 365-day Egyptian-style system was adopted as the Roman calendar, called the Julian Calendar. Our modern seven-day week gained popularity with the introduction of Sabbath days and the rise of Judaism and Christianity. The Egyptians had many holy days with the command, “Do no work today.” The Egyptian week was ten days in length, determined by the regular attention in the temples to the ten-day patterns of the thirty-six decan stars, astronomical signs that changed regularly every ten days. This pattern became the basis of the ten-day market-week that remains in use in rural Africa even today. The stellar pattern of the decan stars was a backup measurement that made it possible to weave together the patterns of the Moon, the Sun and the Nile. ~The Ancient Calendar in Modern Dates The Egyptian civilization was long-lived and successful enough that the stars and the Sun had time to shift in their patterns around the horizon. The calendar of the river’s Inundation had to be adjusted to the written date on official documents and to dates, in many cases, literally carved in stone. The empire had become wide-spread enough that they needed matching dates on letters and on written documents relating to business and government in order to maintain the smooth functioning of society. They survived these necessary calendar-adjustments with little disruption themselves, but they have left us with something of a dilemma once we try to layer the grid of our modern 365.25-day year upon the ancient structure. The Egyptians used two benchmarks for the calibration of their system, one on the Earth, in the day-to-day world and one in the sky, a fixed point in eternity. The earthly marker was the annual rising of the Nile at about the time of the Solstice. The celestial marker was the heliacal rising of the brilliant star, Sirius. (Sopdet in Egyptian, Sothis in Greek.) In 4,000 to 3,000 B.C., the rising of the Nile and the rising of Sirius coincided, which suggests the era in which the calendar originated. In our times, in the latter half of the Twentieth Century and the opening of the Twenty-first, Sirius rises in August. • The “rising” here is the heliacal rising, which means that the star first appears over the horizon just before the rising of the Sun. • Acronychal rising is the opposite, in which the star first appears just as the Sun sets. Our modern dilemma stems from the debate of which of these benchmarks should be aligned with our own calendar, the rising of the Nile in summer or the modern heliacal rising of Sirius in August. This dilemma is deepened by modern interference, since the building of the Aswan Dam has disrupted the ancient cycle. The question then is whether the calendar is more “authentic” if it begins in June, when the Nile begins its flood, or in August, the current time of the rising of Sirius. • The Nile Rising Calendar begins on June 27, and the Sirius Rising Calendar begins on August 1. There is evidence, within the nature of the mythological story that drives the round of the year, that the last day of their year would be our June 21, the day of the Summer Solstice. This is the day of the most hours of sunlight and the time during which the Sun reaches its highest point in the sky. The word “solstice” comes from the Latin, and means the “Sun Standing Still.” From this point of paramount ascension and fullest power, Re the Creator, father of the gods, is able to “stop time” for the Five Days when the world dips below the horizon to let the sacred silt of the river flow into the world. During these Five Days outside of time the gods are born into the world, crossing the threshold from eternity into daily life to begin the round of the year again. The Solstices are also known as the “Poles of The Year,” the axis around which the year turns. It is from this still point that divine energy enters. Horus of The Two Horizons is the Nature of the last month of the year, Mesore. Horus of The Two Horizons is represented by the Sun at zenith, ruling the horizons of both dimensions of reality, the daily and the eternal. On the last day of the year, time stands till and Re reaches the topmost point of heaven. From that lofty place he brings forth the gods and gives the wheel of the year another spin. Modern text books, most notably Bob Brier’s Egyptian Magic, align the ancient calendar with the modern date of the heliacal rising of Sirius, beginning on August 1 and placing the omens and auspices of each day in the Egyptian calendar according to this template. Anyone interested in the decan cycle and their relationship to the texts would do best to use this August 1 New Year’s date. Students should also keep in mind that this August 1 date will be the reference point of any Egyptian dates used in most text books. Those who are interested in the ceremonies, rituals and annual round of daily life in ancient times, however, might want, instead, to use the Nile Rising Calendar alignment. For example, ending the year on the Summer Solstice not only puts Re’s birthday on the longest day, it also aligns the Autumn Equinox, Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox with days and ceremonies more appropriate to these events in the story of the year. The Autumn Equinox in the Nile Rising Calendar system falls on Hathys 27. The ceremonies of this day and the days before and after are focused on the tension between Sutekh and Horus. “The judgment between Sutekh and Horus stops the hostility. They hunt down the followers of the two Natures, and put an end to the tumult. It satisfies the Two Lords and causes the two doors to open.” This is the time in which the night and day are of equal length, and Sutekh and Horus represent, in their most primal form, the darkness and the daylight. There are three days of ceremonies involved in the division of the world between Sutekh and Horus, and the Nile Rising Calendar places the Autumn Equinox right in the middle of these events relating to the balance of dark and light. By contrast, the Autumn Equinox in the Sirius Rising Calendar (beginning August 1) falls on Paopy 22, and the omen is “Do not bathe this day. It is the day they cut the tongue of Sobek’s enemy.” The ceremonies and events of the Spring Equinox and Winter Solstice events also fit more appropriately in the Nile Rising Calendar, occurring on days named “Jubilee of The Sky.” For the Winter Solstice, the shortest day and the longest night of the year, the ceremonies are for Osiris. “Osiris is pleased. The spirits are joyful and the dead are in festivity.” Elaborate festival days lead up to the Winter Solstice, ceremonies of the silence and of the heart, the places in the inner world of the soul. Alas, the details of the calendar on the days in March around the Spring Equinox have been lost to papyrus damage, so this evidence is incomplete. Again, by contrast, the Sirius Rising Calendar places these events on days named “Last Quarter Day,” and the ceremonies are out of context with the solar events. After the Yearly Five Days that are the bridge of the old year and the new, the first day of the new year is listed in the calendar as “The birth of Re.” Having achieved his fullest status in the Solstice, and having brought the gods into the world, Re himself enters the world to begin the year again, descending and ascending in his annual round. The substance of the eternal dimension, manifest in the black silt of the River, begins to flow into the world. The energy of the eternal pours into the world in the form of the Sun quickening the plant and animal life in the black mud, providing the bounty of Egypt. Re is the Nature dedicated to the final season, Shomu. During the days of Shomu the hours of daylight lengthen once again, culminating in the Solstice. In the Nile Rising Calendar, Re’s birthday falls on the Summer Solstice. In the Sirius Rising Calendar, Re’s birthday is July 26, diminishing the importance of Re’s role in the annual round of time. The heliacal rising of Sirius does mark the beginning of the round of the thirty-six decan stars, the ten days that measure out the turning of the night sky around the horizon. The astronomical clock of the decan stars measures out the turning of Duat, the divine realm of the gods and of the dead that is the night sky and stars enfolding our waking world. This night-sky calendar measured out the mathematics of the solstice, since the timelessness of Duat overhead is not interrupted by the Yearly Five Days of timelessness that reign on Earth. There are 72 half-decan counts in the 360 days of the mundane year, and the seventy-third half-decan count during those sacred Five Days. Sutekh has 72 minions who put Osiris in his coffin, and it is specifically this betrayal of one brother by another that is the opening of the divine drama which underlies the agricultural cycle of River and land. The Egyptian mind did not perceive these discrepancies between the decan count and the Nile Rising count as contradictory or, indeed, as discrepancies at all. The dual dimensions of the land below the Sun and the eternity of the sky below the horizon were part of the Egyptian world-view. The calendar-count was seen as a triumph of humankind’s mentality, finding our proper place in the plan of the Cosmos. The first month of the year is dedicated to Thoth and, although the first day of the year is the birth of Re, the day itself is dedicated to Thoth. The Natures had established the round of the year and the physical expressions of our daily journey through time, ordering both realities into orderly patterns. The mind of man was needed to harness that cosmic pattern for the service of civilized life. ~ Five Days Outside of Time: Recycling The Circle of The Year The dynamic tension by which Egyptian religion sustained the nation was a careful balance between the timelessness of the eternal, immortal dimension that existed “beyond the horizon” and the rounds of time in mortal existence “on top of the Earth.” Osiris, supreme symbol of the immortal and divine nature of the human soul, was the personification of the timelessness of eternity. Osiris was the link between daily life and the eternal dimension out of which you were born and to which you will return at death. The rich, black silt deposited by the Nile was the foundation of Egypt’s farming wealth and its annual return sustained the entire nation. This silt was the matter of Osiris’ sacrificed body as it decayed, the manifest residue of divine existence. During the Five Days of the New Year, the “Yearly Five Days,” this sacred substance pours into the waking world from eternity. The ceremonies of the agricultural year were based upon the events in the story of Osiris, Isis, Sutekh and Horus. Re, Creator of the Natures of space and time, leads the daily events that mark the progress of their story. Egypt developed twelve months of thirty days each, measured out by the ten-day span of the rising of the decan stars. This made a neat, orderly round of 360 days, simplifying the mathematics of every event. The Five Days which remain “leftover” served a unique purpose, one which has no true counterpart in the Western world. The closest we can get is our regular celebration of the New Year, reaching its most enthusiastic and dramatic expression in the events accompanying the start of the new millennium, the “Y2K” events. The Egyptian Five Days came at the end of the year and preceded the start of the next year. They were not part of the annual round. They were “outside of time,” an instant of eternity pouring into time/space, the world dipping below the horizon to become saturated, once more, with divine energy. In these Five Days we find the ancient faith. Within the span of these days the Natures were born. The energy of eternity pours into the human sphere through this break in the circle that is not a break, but rather an interface of dimensions, giving a spin to the spiritual gyroscope that maintained society’s balance. Properly directed, this intersection provided the psychic, emotional, spiritual and living energies that sustained the round of the year ahead. Our own deeply rooted cultural superstitions about New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are dim echoes of the spiritual value once attributed to the completion of the magical round of time. The dimension of eternity enfolding the space/time dimension was envisioned as the sky enfolding the Earth. The blazing star-field of the night sky was counterpoint to the daily world of the Sun. The horizon is the final dividing line between these two dimensions, between the eternal and the everyday. The world turns on the wheel of the horizon. The measure of time is in the enormous turning of that sky-sized clock-face around the fixed horizon. Once a year, as the turning of that clock-face turns around to its beginning point, the horizon dips into or passes through the eternal dimension for five, magical, transforming days that are outside of time, outside of the everyday. These Five Days function as the link between the dimensions. Energy pours into the world during those five days as water pours over the rim of a full bowl that has been tilted. This is the energy that pours through the land of Egypt in the Nile River. It pours through the your body as the eternal energy of your soul. These are the Yearly Five Days that are neither the end of the old year nor the beginning of the new, but the immersion of reality into eternity. Osiris was Khent Amentiu, “Foremost of The Westerners.” He gave a human shape to the dimension of eternity, symbolized by the unreachable nature of the land to which the setting Sun descends “beyond the horizon.” No matter how far you travel across the face of the Earth, the horizon moves with you, keeping you in the field of space/time. The land “beyond the horizon” was the ultimate metaphor of the experience of the internal territory of the psyche, the heart and the soul. Returning to Osiris beyond the horizon was the ultimate inward withdrawal. The ceremonies of the Yearly Five Days celebrated and established the outpouring of energy from that same source, filling the land with the stuff and substance of life, thus recycling death into new life in the circle of the year. The Five Days were a national celebration. The very personal nature of that belief is shown in the name for the amulet created each year as part of the ending ceremony: “This charm is called Self-dedication Contract.” The ceremonies and rituals of these events were not performed in order to make the dimensionsl intersection happen. The Nile will flood with or without prayer and ritual. The rituals were designed to focus this outpouring of spiritual energy into channels of human intention, to direct its flow toward human purpose, human enlightenment, human comfort and peace. Egyptians had learned how to use the natural forces of the river currents and winds to carry human traffic. In the same fashion, they also learned how to use the natural forces of spiritual energy to carry them through daily life. The first day of the New Year is the birthday of Re. The land celebrates that another year of the Sun has begun. In ancient Egypt’s day, everyone honored this by starting out the New Year with a nice, long bath! Charm To Be Spoken. Say these words at sunrise on the first day: “The Great Ones are born. As for the Great Ones whose forms are not mysterious, beware of them. Their occasion or deeds will not come. Birth of Osiris! Birth of the Original Horus! Birth of Sutekh! Birth of Isis! Birth of Lady of The House! I, who know the names of the days, will not hunger. I will not thirst, and Bastet will not overpower me. I will not enter into the Great Law Court. I will not die through an enemy of the pharaoh and will not die through the pestilence of the year. I will last every day until death arrives. No illness will take possession of me. I, who know them, (i.e., the names of the days,) will prosper, and my speech is important to listen to in the presence of Re.” (Repeat the above charm each day, adding the appropriate name of the Nature or naturit born on that day.) The Birth of Osiris. Words to be said on this day:“Oh, Osiris, bull in his cavern whose name is hidden, child of his mother, hail to you! Hail to you! I am your son, oh, father Osiris. The Name of this day is: The Pure One.” The Birth of the Original Horus. Words to be said on this day:“Oh, Horus of The Spirit! It is repeated anew. It will provide good protection because of it, you make (lost...) The name of this day is: Powerful Is The Heart.” The Birth of Sutekh. Words to be said on this day: “Oh, Sutekh, son of Nut, great of strength, protection is in your hands of holiness. I am the son of your son. The name of this day is: Powerful of Arm.” The Birth of Isis. Words to be said on this day:“Oh, Isis, daughter of Nut the Eldest, Mistress of Magic, Provider of The Book, Mistress Who Appeases The Two Lands, her face is glorious. I am the brother and the sister.” The name of this day is: He Who Makes Awe.” The Birth of Lady of The House. Words to be said on this day: “Oh, Lady of The House, daughter of Nut, sister of Sutekh, she whose father sees a healthy daughter, stable of face, stable of face. I am divine power in the womb of my mother Nut. The name of this day is: The Child Who Is In His Nest.” These words are to be spoken over a protective amulet on the last day before sunset. Draw the images of Osiris, The Original Horus, Sutekh, Isis and Lady of The House on fine linen and place it around your neck. Then say four times: “Hail to you, oh, Great Ones according to your names, children of the Naturets who came forth from the sacred womb, Natures because their father, Naturets because of their mother, without yet knowing eternity. Behold! May you make protection! May you happen again, and may you protect me, for I am one who is on their list. This charm is called: Self-dedication Contract.” ~The Story of The Yearly Five Days Re is the light of consciousness in the mind. Re is the light which created the Universe. Re wakened time. He wakened Space. He measured out our world. Thoth is thought. He is curiosity. Thoth is wisdom and knowledge. He is science. Thoth is the Searcher, The Measurer, and he reads the weights in the scale. Thoth is the sheer desire to know that wakes anew in every child born. Thoth went to Re the Creator. Thoth told Re that his children Geb the Earth and Nut the starry Sky were in love. Thoth knows the outcome of every oracle, so Thoth knew that Geb and Nut would create the Nation of The Sun, all the splendor of Egypt and the Nile. Thoth told Re of this prophecy and Re rejoiced. Thoth saw, however, that there was a problem. The creation of Re’s world was delayed by the intense devotion of Geb and Nut, Earth and Sky, who could not bear to separate from each other, so great was their delight together. Their love was so powerful that they breathed together. Heaven and Earth were merged. Re realized that humanity could not begin until the children of Geb and Nut were born. To this purpose, Re sent Shu to stand between them, raising Nut up to form the sky arching above the Earth and touching the horizon. Shu is the atmosphere standing between the ground and the sky and he is the living breath in the lungs. Nut caresses Geb with breezes and dew, and Geb keeps his face turned ever upward to his beloved Sky. Thoth saw that this act had caused a paradox -- how could these children be born if they were separated from Earth and time inside their Mother, in Heaven? The children of Geb and Nut needed a magical link to be born. Re saw that there was no day or night which could release them. He thought to himself, “I am Re, the namer of all things. I have measured out the hours of the day, the days of the year and the great cycles of time. I have seen to it that there are 360 days of the year. I see that with this action I have lain a curse upon Nut -- she cannot give birth during any hour of any day of this year or of any year to come.” Nut was deeply sorrowful and mourned that she might not give birth to her children. The Powt Natures grieved with her, Thoth especially, because he knew what he had done. The clever god of wisdom came up with a scheme to save them. Thoth went to the Moon god Khons and invited him to a game of Sundancer. (sennet) Khons readily agreed for he loved to his games. “The loser shall forfeit something to the winner,” Thoth said. “Let it be so,” Khons said. They began playing that very night. Thoth won easily for he was the cleverest of the gods. “What shall I pay you?” “Give me a little of your moonlight,” Thoth said. Khons quickly agreed, for he had plenty of moonlight to spare. No sooner had they finished one game then they began another. Khons was determined to win. Yet the Moon was no match for the wise Thoth. Again Thoth won and again he asked Khons for a little moonlight in payment. So it went for the rest of the night and by dawn Khons had lost so much moonlight that he had to be careful and not squander what remained. From then on the light of the moon diminished each night for half the month and slowly grew back to its full brightness as Khons carefully rationed his supply. The moon is at the fullness of its splendor only one night each month. To honor this contribution, there are feasts to Khons on the first and fifteenth of each month. With the moonlight Khons had given him in payment for his victories, Thoth had light to make five more days. He inserted these between the end of the old year and the beginning of the New Year so that they were not part of any year. Nut was able to give birth during this time which was not a part of the round of the year created by Re. Re was content because now the children of Geb and Nut could be born and the world he so eagerly awaited could begin. Osiris was the oldest, born on the first day. The Name of this day is: The Pure One. Horus The Elder was born on the second day. The name of this day is: Powerful Is The Heart. Sutekh was born on the third day. The name of this day is: Powerful of Arm. On the fourth day, Nut gave birth to Isis. The name of this day is: He Who Makes Awe. On fifth and final day, then Nephthys, “Lady of The House,” was born. The name of this day is: The Child Who Is In His Nest. When Osiris was born, a voice -- no one knows whose voice it was -- declared to the world that the greatest of the Natures had been born. These five days were the holiest of the year, when the horizons of the waking world and the Dream Time intersect. The energy of eternity flows into space/time, revitalizing the world for another year. ~**~ This story tells of two important events -- the creation of human beings and the beginning of the solar calendar. Osiris is the living Soul/Self within you. He and his family are born anew every year in the magical Five Days between the old year and the new. These Yearly Five Days were the New Year’s celebration of Egypt. The entire nation annually spent five days partying, attending miracle plays and temple events, up and down the land. The first act on awaking on the first day of the New Year, July 27, was to have a bath. A practical people. ~ The Egyptian Book of Days Thirty days has September, April, June and November, but every month of the Egyptian year had thirty days. We have carved our month into four weeks of seven repeated day-names, Monday, Tuesday and so on. The child in ancient Egypt had to learn thirty day-names, one for each of the thirty days of the twelve months of the yearly round. The first day of every month was named New Month Day. The fifteenth day of each month was named Half Month Day. The sixth day was always named Sixth Day, followed by First Quarter Day, which seems simple enough. The days in between were as mythological in their source as modern references to Sun and Moon and various Roman and Norse gods. This regular round of twelve times thirty (plus the Yearly Five Days outside of time) was only one of the calendar rounds by which the Egyptians measured time. Since their entire civilization was born, existed and was vanquished before the birth of Christianity, the “B.C./A.D.” system which we have used for two thousand years to establish the count of years did not exist. The passage of years was marked by the “civil calendar,” based on the reign on the currently living Pharaoh. (Similar calendars are still in use in the Far East today.) The first year of a Pharaoh’s reign was “Year One of Pharaoh X.” Clearly, the ancient Egyptians were immersed in an environment of eternity. The other major calendar-system they worked with was the seasonal round of planting and harvest, and the annual inundation of the River’s silt deposit was the central theme of this calendar. The ceremonies of the agricultural year were based on the events in the story of Osiris, Isis, Sutekh and Horus. Re, creator of the cosmos of space and time, led the rounds of changing stars that mark the progress of that story. We ourselves have several types of calendar superimposed one upon the other, yet we are so accustomed to it that we do not think of them as different calendars. We have the seven days of the week in their unchanging succession. We have the twelve months, also in their unchanging round and unchanging count. Those two rounds do not match up, so there is a constantly changing interaction of dates of the month and days of the week. Holidays that are tied to the monthly calendar are on different days of the week every year. Holidays and events that are tied to specific weekdays, such as weekend events and “church on Sunday” fall on different dates of the month each year. The current practice in some states in America of assigning the official day off to the Monday before a holiday which is tied to a specific date of the month, such as President’s Birthdays or Independence Day, is an indication of the ways in which these differing calendar-systems are reconciled. We have even incorporated different “New Year” days, in that the fiscal year begins in July and the school year in September. We have even begun to celebrate Chinese New Year, and every single person has their own, personal “New Year’s Day” on their birthday, measuring out the cycle of years with their own lives. The modern Copts of Egypt are the only surviving descendents of the actual citizens of ancient Egypt and, even though they have adopted the Christian religion, they have done so in Egyptian fashion. They retain, within the sacred calendar of their Church, the ancient month names. The pronunciation has softened through the centuries, but they are yet recognizable: “Tout, Paopy (Pronounced “Baba,”) Hator, Kiahk, Twby (Pronounced “Toba,”) Meshir (Pronounced “Amshir,”) Paremhat (Pronounced “Baramhat,”) Farmothy (Pronounced “Baramouda,”) Bashans, Paona, Epep, Mesra, Nasie.” (See below for comparison.) The most immediate difference between the modern Coptic calendar and the ancient calendar also demonstrates the most immediate difference between the ancient religion and modern Christianity. The Coptic Church calendar still uses the twelve months of thirty days each, but the Five Days have been demoted to being simply a thirteenth month, extended to six days during Leap-year. The circle of the horizon has been closed, and the last day of the old year opens only into the first day of the new year. The Egyptian calendar system created the first successful overlay of such measurement systems. The subtle complexity of the mythological interactions of days and months, Moon, stars and Sun, gave great depth to their cultural experience and to their daily lives, as well as unifying the nation in rhythmic participation in the universal dance of the days. Every hour of the day and night had its own set of gods who watched over that span of time, and each day of the month and each month of the year, as well as each season, but the primary gods of the calendar are the five who are born during the Yearly Five Days of the Epagomenal, the opening in eternity through which the New Year arrives. These are Osiris, The Original Horus (Horus The Elder) Sutekh, Isis and Lady of The House (Nephthys.) These five gods rule throughout the year, and the stories from which the names, festivals, ceremonies and auspices arise are the stories of these five, their struggles, loves, births and deaths. Since the calendar tells the eternal story of the round of time in the human community, the gods are those which form the core of each human being. ~ The Name And The God of Each Day: 1. New Month Day—Thoth. 2. New Crescent Day—Horus. 3. Arrival Day—Osiris. 4. Zem Priests Go Forth—Isis. 5 Altar Offerings Day—Hapy. 6. Sixth Day—Star of His Mother (Duatmutef). 7. First Quarter Day—Qebsennuf. 8. Main Going Forth—Mayatet-f. 9. Hidden One—He Does The Talking is the Nature. 10. He Who Protects His Royal Name—He Makes His Name Himself. 11. Great Lady Protector—Sakhmet is the Naturet. 12. Love Making—Bring The Advocate is the Nature. 13. Approach of Re—Re is the Nature. 14. Progress of The Ba—Consider The Ba is the Nature. 15. Half Month Day—Amauai is the Nature. 16. Two Houses Figh—Horus and Sutekh are the Natures. 17. Second Arrival Day—Re is the Nature. 18. Moon Day—Ahi (The Moon) is the Nature. 19. Hear His Commands—He Carries His Mother is the Nature. 20. Offering Meat— Opener of The Way (Ipuait) is the Nature. 21. Day of Anubis—Anubis is the Nature. 22. Passing of Sothis—Nai is the Nature. 23. Last Quarter—The Original (Ur) is the Nature. 24. Darkness—Nekhbet is the Naturet. 25. Departing—Shem is the Nature . 26. House of Appearances—Mayatef-f is the Nature. 27. Funeral Offerings—Khnum is the Nature. 28. Jubilee of The Sky—Nut (The Sky) is the Naturet. 29. Weakness—Utettef-f is the Nature. 30. Awaken—Horus Advocates For Him is the Nature. ~ Egypts Seasons Egypt is the gift of the Nile, and the cycles, the moods and the landscape of the Nile are the substance of the Egyptian view of the universe and of humanity. The heartbeat of Egypt was the Nile’s ceaseless round of Inundation, Emergence and Harvest. “Nile” is from the Romans. Iter is the Egyptian word for “river.” The Nile was the Mother of All Waters. When an Egyptian used iter, it likely referred to only one River. Hapy is the god of the Nile’s inundation and abundance. No matter what they called it, the River flowed through the center of their lives. It is not surprising then that the Egyptian calendar is based on the seasons of the River. Converting the bounty of rich, black silt into rich, green fields requires carefully coordinated effort. The formal structure of the seasonal calendar provided common ground for agreement in the chaos of mud. Egyptians linked the beginning of the inundation to the appearance of Isis’ star, Sirius, (Sopdut. Greek Sothis.) They had to go to some effort to keep their methodical 365-day calendar count aligned. There is record of pharaohs officially shifting the calendar around to “reset” the alignment of the seasonal pattern of names with the actual seasons. No matter when Sirius makes its appearance, however, the Nile’s Inundation begins in summer and culminates in September (by our modern dates). An “ideal” year is one in which the Nile’s Inundation actually does coincide with the appearance of the star. ~ The Names of The Seasons and of The Months Season One: Akhet, the season of The Inundation The Nature of this season is Hapy, the Nile in flood. • Thuthy. The Nature is Thoth. • Paopy. The Nature is Ptah. • Hathys. The Nature is Hathor. • Choiach. The Nature is Sakhmet. Season Two: Poret, the season of The Emergence. The Nature of this season is Khopry, the Rising Sun. • Tyby. The Nature is Montu. • Menchir. The Nature is Rekeh-Ur. • Famenoth. The Nature is Rekeh-Netches. • Parmuthy. The Nature is Rennetet. Season Three: Shomu, the season of The Harvest. The Nature of this season is Re, the creator. • Pachons. The Nature is Khonsu. • Paony. The Nature is Khenthy. • Epipy. The Nature is Apt. • Mesore. The Nature is Horus of The Two Horizons. ~ Akhet , Inundation, Season of Hapy, The Nile’s Abundance Months: Thuthy, Paopy, Hathys, Choiach The season of Inundation was the beginning of the year’s cycle, a time for public works and prayers. Offerings were dropped into the Nile in hope of assuring that the coming flood would be neither to high or to low. Temporary levees and canals guaranteed that the water would leave its rich silt behind. This was so important that one of the Forty-Two Negative Confessions reads, “I have not held back water in its time.” The cooperative irrigation of the fields was the backbone of the nation, and therefore the greatest weight of responsibility of one citizen to the community was the contribution of time and effort to maintain the system. Families went hungry if the Nile did not reach the fields. No farming could be done during the inundation because the fields were flooded. The greatest wealth of pharaoh was the workforce of farmers freed during these months. This workforce was ready, willing and able to dig irrigation canals, to build levees, wharves, palaces, tombs and temples. Relief from farm duties gave women the opportunity to concentrate on craft-skills: weaving, spinning, knitting, sewing, sandal- and basket-making, pottery, etc. The word akhet is related to words for horizon, for the divine soul, and for the greening fields. Hapy isthe god of the Nile’s inundation, a figure ancient even in the Old Kingdom era, shown as a man with pendulous breasts. The Hapy of the North Nile and the Hapy of the South Nile were depicted, adorned with papyrus and lotus plants, tying the knot of unity between them that was emblem of the nation and of pharaoh’s power. ~Poret, Emergence, Season of Khopry, The Awakening Land Months: Tyby, Menchir, Famenoth, Parmuthy The season of Emergence began as soon as the water receded. Boundaries were established by “String Stretchers,” ancestors of the modern surveyor, using string and strict record-keeping to measure out and to re-assign private fields in the flat, featureless mud. Evidence of sophisticated fiber technology has been discovered around the world, dating as far back as the Paleolithic. The Egyptians developed this technology with great success, using a wide variety of fibers and techniques. String was as all-purpose a tool then as duct-tape is today. Their use of string to define field boundaries demonstrates their ability to apply practical solutions to complex social concerns. While the land was muddy, they sowed the crops. To assure that these would flourish, Egyptian farmers spent countless hours lifting Nile water onto the fields, using shadufs, levers made of long poles with a bucket at one end and a heavy rock to balance at the other. Smaller crops of a variety of herbs, vegetables and flowers were planted in household plots and alongside the roads. Food supplies were supplemented by goods stored the previous year. The name of the third month of this season, Famenoth, is the root of the modern word “famine,” via the Latin. In bad times of low Inundation, the last weeks of this season could be filled with hungry days, as stored supplies dwindled and crops were not yet ready to harvest. The word poret (also spelled peret, pert or proyet,) is related to words for the emergence of that which is contained, as a person emerges from the container of the home, as frogs, snakes and insects emerge from the black mud, as plants emerge from the container of the seed, as leaves emerge from the stem. The sacred substance of Osiris flows into the world from the dimension of eternity during the season of Akhet. Spiritual energy “pours forth” from the black mud into the many forms of life, both plant and animal, that grow there in the season of Poret. Khopry, the god of this season, is represented most often by the now-familiar scarab. Khopry was manifest in the moment of the Sun’s rising, the birth of new light, of revelation and of enlightenment. “Light dawns” as a metaphysical expression of awakening consciousness is the psychological revelation of Khopry, and his most sublime expression is the moment of the awakening of the Cosmos itself. ~Shomu, Harvest, Season of Re, Wealth And Taxes Months: Pachons, Paony, Epipy, Mesore The season of Harvest brought bounty, happiness and, if the flood had been a good one, taxes. Harvest was the season of bread, beer and festivals. Excess grain was stored outdoors in time of great abundance, covered by straw mats to prevent birds from stealing it. There was a great deal of work to be done. Fields were harvested; grain thrashed, winnowed and stored away. Taxes were assessed and paid. The temples gave thanks, and made ready for the most important festival of the year, the Five Days. Sopdut, (modern Sirius) rose on the horizon at the end of Shomu, marking the Birth of Re and his Ennead, leading to the start of the New Year. The word Shomu is related to words for heat and dryness, the shimmer of heat rising off the desert sand. It could well be the root of our modern word, “summer.”
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:50:03 +0000
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