New Year Celebrations (Ancient Egypt)
| New Year celebrations in hieroglyphics | |||||||||
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| Old empire |
Heb mesiu Re-Harachte Ḥb msjw Rˁ-w-ḥr w-3ḫ.tj Feast of the birth of Re-Harachte |
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| 12th dynasty |
Heb mesiu Re Ḥb msjw Rˁ festival of the birth of Re |
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| Fixed date |
Tpj-rnp.t wpt-rnp.t First day of the year, opener of the year |
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The ancient Egyptian New Year ( Heb mesiu Re ) was celebrated on the first day of the month Wepet-renpet under the surname Heb-tepi-renpet wepet-renpet , at the same time in the Old and Middle Kingdom the first month of the Achet season and the birthday of the deity Re-Harachte or Re .
background
The New Year celebrations were set in the Egyptian administrative calendar and had its origins in the Sothis lunar calendar . The celebrations were celebrated on the fixed calendar date regardless of the flood of the Nile . The ancient Egyptian New Year began "on the night of the fifth day of the Heriu-renpet season ". With the first rays of the sun from the first Achet I , the new year arrived a short time later, whereby the “birth of Re” began in the old year and was completed in the new year at the time of the “appearance of Re”.
The Egyptians called the second New Year celebration the Sothis festival , which was tied to the heliacal rising of Sirius . The Egyptians therefore usually celebrated the New Year festival twice a year. The four years in the Sothis cycle were an exception , when the heliacal rising fell on the first day of the first month of the year. This rare event did not repeat itself until about 1,452 years.
Old and Middle Kingdom
In the Old and Middle Kingdom the first days of the month were called "Openers". In the festival calendar of Niuserre , which was part of the decorations in the solar sanctuary of Niuserre , the New Year celebration is connected with the first month of the Achet season. Another synonym is the month of the Re-Feast. The festival calendar of the acrobatic troupe dates from the 12th dynasty , in which the New Year festival was also on the first month of Achet.
New Kingdom and Late Period
With the beginning of the New Kingdom , the term “opener” changed to “first day”. The only term that remained was the designation of New Year's Day with "Opener of the Year".
Alan Gardiner as well as Richard-Anthony Parker suspect that the "month of the Re-Festival" changed the form of the year in the course of calendar history, which is why the New Year festival was postponed to the twelfth month under the new name Mesori from the New Kingdom .
See also
literature
- Richard A. Parker : The calendars of ancient Egypt (= Studies in ancient Oriental Civilization. Volume 26, ISSN 0081-7554 ). University of Chicago Press, Chicago IL 1950.
- Paule Posener-Kriéger: Msjw-Ra. In: Revue d'Égyptologie. (RdE). Volume 22, 1970, ISSN 0035-1849 , p. 137.
- Siegfried Schott : Altägyptische Festdaten (= Academy of Sciences and Literature. Treatises of the Humanities and Social Sciences Class. (AM-GS). 1950, Volume 10, ISSN 0002-2977 ). Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences and Literature and others, Mainz and others 1950.