Hourly calendar of Ramses II.
The hourly calendar of Ramses II names the associated hour division of the day and night and dates from his ninth year of reign (1271 to 1270 BC). The hour papyrus , which is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo , was found by archaeologists in the Ramesseum in Thebes-West .
background
Month names
Alan Gardiner as well as Richard-Anthony Parker suspect that the months shifted by one month in the course of the calendar history, which is why the New Year celebrations, the former first month of Wepet-renpet under Amenhotep I , shifted to the twelfth month.
The names of the most important festivals assigned to the months represent an ideal form of the calendar, which begins together with the heliacal rise of the star Sirius as the embodiment of the Sopdet . The shift of the seasons in the ancient Egyptian administrative calendar is well documented using the example of the annual calendar of Ramses II.
The festivals assigned to the months are also idealized and do not correspond to the connections to the ancient Egyptian administrative calendar at that time, since many ceremonies were linked to the ancient Egyptian lunar calendar , which was used independently of the usual administrative calendar .
Hour division
The division of the hours does not correspond to the actual Egyptian day and night times , as the average day and night length fluctuates from 10 h 21 min (December 21/22) to 13 h 44 min (June 21/22 ) included. Taking into account dawn and dusk with two hours each, however, the limit values are six and 18 hours.
Egyptologists such as Siegfried Schott , Richard-Anthony Parker, Alexandra von Lieven and Christian Leitz were able to establish a direct reference to the ancient Egyptian hour division , which resulted from the entries on diagonal star and shadow clocks . Further connections to the book of the night , book of the day , Nutbuch and the hour deities are documented.
| month | season | Daytime hours | Night hours | Month name |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Djehuti | July to August | 16 hours | 8 hours | drunkenness |
| Pa-en-Ipet | August to September | 14 hours | 10 hours | Opet festival |
| Hathyr | September to October | 12 hours | 12 hours | Sokar festival |
| Ka-her-ka | October to November | 10 hours | 14 hours | Osiris festival |
| Ta-abet | November to December | 8 hours | 16 hours | Month of sacrifice |
| Mecher | December to January | 6 hours | 18 hours | Mecher Festival |
| Pa-en-Amenhotep | January to February | 8 hours | 16 hours | Great festival of King Amenophis I. |
| Pa-en-Renenutet | February to March | 10 hours | 14 hours | Renenutet festival |
| Pa-en-Chonsu | March to April | 12 hours | 12 hours | Chons festival |
| Pa-en-inet | April to May | 14 hours | 10 hours | Valley festival |
| Ipip | May to June | 16 hours | 8 hours | Ipip festival |
| Mesut-Re | June to July | 18 hours | 6 hours | New year celebration |
literature
- Jaroslav Černý: Catalog des ostraca hiératiques non littéraires de Deir el-Médinéh . Inst. Français d'Archéologie Orientale, Cairo 1935
- Christian Leitz: Ancient Egyptian Star Clocks , Peeters, Leuven 1995, ISBN 90-6831-669-9
- Christian Leitz: Studies on Egyptian Astronomy , Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1991, ISBN 3-447-03157-3
- Richard-Anthony Parker: The calendars of ancient Egypt . Chicago Press, Chicago 1950
- Siegfried Schott: Ancient Egyptian festival dates . Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz / Wiesbaden 1950
- Alexandra von Lieven: Floor plan of the course of the stars - the so-called groove book . The Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Ancient Eastern Studies (among others), Copenhagen 2007, ISBN 978-87-635-0406-5