Temple year
| Temple year in hieroglyphics | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Old empire |
Renpet-hut-netjer Rnpt-ḥwt-nṯr year of the house of God |
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 (photomontage) |
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The ancient Egyptian temple year comprised of billing reasons just 360 days, which in the ancient Egyptian lunar months were divided, with the five extra days calculated though, were not explicitly mentioned in the definition. The first month of a temple year began with the first lunar month after the heliacal sunrise of Sirius .
The calendar of the temple year showed only minor deviations from the solar year . The star Sirius takes about 365.25 days to reappear in the same position next year. This duration corresponded, for example, to the later Julian , Greek and Roman calendars .
Normally, the length of a Sirius year, similar to the Julian calendar, would have caused a deviation of one day in relation to the seasons in about 128 years . However, the interplay of proper motion , precession and the variable sunrise times caused Sirius to wander one day backwards through the season about every 115 years compared to the actual solar year. So the difference became noticeable only very slowly; after about 1150 years a difference of ten days. This period is to be equated with the epoch from the beginning of the Old Kingdom to the beginning of the New Kingdom .
Old empire
In the Old Kingdom, the five additional annual days stood at the beginning of the temple year. In the later course of ancient Egyptian history, one can read in the grave of a prince :
“See, a day of the temple is 1/360 of the year. The temple's (annual) income from bread, beer, meat and all other things is broken down into 360 parts. 1/360 of the income counts as the day of the temple. "
The arithmetical division over 360 days made temple accounting and planning easier for each year. The five additional days were regarded as "superfluous", but mentioned in the accounts. Still under Ramses III. the associated festival calendar contained 360 days.
Middle realm
From the Lahunpapyri of the Middle Kingdom it emerges that, for example, the phylums in the mortuary temples performed their service in the corresponding mortuary temples alternately for a lunar month. The division of the roster of the Phylenes and Phylen heads was based on the Sothis lunar calendar , which also determined the beginning of a temple year.
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.
New kingdom
Administrative and calendar reforms took place in the 19th dynasty of the New Kingdom at the latest . The previous lunar months were divided into units of 30 days each, so that the dependency on the lunar calendar was eliminated. At the same time, the previous months of the administrative calendar shifted to the previous month; for example, the first month so far Wepet-renpet was after that as Mesut-Re in twelve.
See also
literature
- 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
- ^ Siegfried Schott: Ancient Egyptian festival dates. Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz 1950, p. 5.