Phyle (Ancient Egypt)
| Phyle in hieroglyphics | |||||
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| Old empire |
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| Determinative |
sa z3 department, troop, company |
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| Greek | φυλή | ||||
The Greek term phyle is used in Egyptology for the ancient Egyptian word z3 and denotes a certain number of people who have been grouped into a work unit for various purposes.
background
Old empire
The term z3 was used in the Old Kingdom for the organization of groups of workers and priests and originally referred to a ship's guard. Five such ship guards (one for the quarterdeck and two each for port and starboard ) formed a department that was divided into two sub-departments. In the case of larger numbers of people, a department could be formed from ten or twenty phylums. Palace workers were known as starboard guards as far back as the Thinitic period . In mortuary temples and sun shrines, priestly phyls took turns every calendar month and were subordinate to a top leader with the title mtj-n-z3 or sḥḏ-z3 in the service of the dead.
Middle realm
From the Lahunpapyri the Middle Kingdom of the tribes and the Phylenvorstehers are occupied, among other monthly bills. From these documents it can be seen that, for example, the phylums in the mortuary temples were divided into four groups, each of which performed their service alternately for a lunar month in the corresponding mortuary temple. The names of the Phylenvorsteher, however, changed monthly throughout the year. It can therefore be assumed that the Phylenvorsteher were used at different locations. The division of the roster of the Phylenes and Phylen heads was based on the Sothis lunar calendar and the accounting system of the temple year .
The first start of a new year always took place in the first lunar month after the heliacal sunrise of Sirius . In contrast to the calendar year, the temple started managing calendar first symbolically with the New Year , the first day of the month Wepet-renpet was committed. The second solemn celebration of the New Year was based on the lunar calendar of the temple year and fell as the Sothis festival on the twelfth and last lunar month or, in leap years, on the thirteenth lunar month of the year. The civil administrative calendar of the normal year was of no importance for the deployment plans of the Phylen and the Phylenvorsteher.
Greco-Roman time
In the Greco-Roman period Ptolemy III ordered . In the course of the Canopus Decree, an "additional fifth phyle" for the temple service was adopted and thus took recourse to the Old Kingdom , where temple service was also performed in groups of five up to the Middle Kingdom. After the death of Ptolemy III. the priesthood suspended the Canopus decree and thus the extension to five phyls again.
See also
literature
- Wolfgang Helck : Economic history of ancient Egypt in the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC Brill, Leiden 1975, ISBN 90-04-04269-5 .
- Wolfgang Helck: Phyle. In: Wolfgang Helck (Ed.): Lexicon of Egyptology. (LÄ) Volume I, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1975, ISBN 3-447-01670-1 , p. 1044.
- Friedhelm Hoffmann : Egypt: culture and life in Greco-Roman times. A representation based on the demotic sources. Academy, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-05-003308-8 .
- Rolf Krauss : Sothis and moon dates: studies on the astronomical and technical chronology of ancient Egypt. Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 1985, ISBN 3-8067-8086-X .
- Siegfried Schott : Ancient Egyptian festival dates. Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz / Wiesbaden 1950.
Individual evidence
- ^ Rainer Hannig : Large Concise Dictionary Egyptian-German: (2800 - 950 BC) . von Zabern, Mainz 2006, ISBN 3-8053-1771-9 , p. 708.
- ^ W. Helck in: LÄ Vol. I, p. 1044, → Phyle.