Wepet-renpet
| Wepet-renpet in hieroglyphics | ||||||||
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Wepet-renpet Wpt-rnp.t Opener of the year |
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Name attachment of the month :
Peret-Sopdet Prt-Spd.t Origin of the goddess Sopdet |
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Wepet-renpet referred to the first month of the year in the Egyptian calendar at the time of the Old and Middle Kingdom , which was based on the heliacal rise of the star Sirius .
background
Old and Middle Kingdom
There are only a few inscriptions from the predynastic period and the beginning of the Old Kingdom about the calendar regulation in connection with the New Year month . At this time Sirius had his heliacal rising in late May / early June and migrated to the beginning of the Middle Kingdom in Elephantine on June 9th and in Memphis on June 15th. The pyramid texts show that the month of Wepet-renpet was always closely related to the flood of the Nile and the goddess Sopdet . The kings of that time identified with the Nile and the deities Horus and Sopdu . Up to the 4th dynasty, Horus himself represented both the sun and the moon and, in equating Sopdu, was considered to be "Sa-Sopdet (son of Sopdet) who is in her".
From the texts of the cult of the dead it emerges that Sopdet, as the “daughter of the king, bears the name Year and prepares the annual gift”. In the Memphite form, Sopdet appeared as a sachmet . In conjunction with the Nile flood and the month of Wepet-renpet, epidemics went hand in hand. The different roles assigned to the Sopdet as the New Year's star can also be seen in the colors of Sirius, who shimmered in a reddish color when rising and thus associated fire, anger and blood. In the night sky, on the other hand, Sirius shone bluish, the color of the Nile , with which the positive properties of rebirth were associated.
In this context, Otto Neugebauer referred to records of the Nile levels in the early days, which averaged a year of 365 days. Further connections between Nilschwemme and Sopdet as New Year's star are attested in other papyri : “Star that appears before a happy new year”. This formulation refers directly to the season Heriu-renpet , since "the new year is born on the night of the fifth day of the season Heriu-renpet". With the first rays of sunshine from 1st Achet I , the new year arrived a few hours later. With the onset of the flood of the Nile, Sopdet took over the role of Isis and was also known as the " Ba des Osiris". This mythological idea becomes visible in the pyramid texts , in which Sopdet helped Osiris to new life and awakened the dead or aging king to new life.
The sun god Re only took over the function of Horus as the star of the day from the 4th dynasty and from then on initiated the calendar New Year as the month Wepet-renpet together with Sopdet until the beginning of the New Kingdom : “What is done on 1st Achet I in view of the Emergence of Sopdet: All stars are created by the emergence of Sopdet. The fact is that Sopdet appears together with Re at the rise and follows the path of the stars, which is described in the Book of Dissolution. ”On this occasion, the New Year's bottles were made for the 1st Achet I during the New Year's celebration . Through his ascent to supreme god, Re had taken on the role of father for Sopdet, who, as the bearer of the eye of Re, now watched over the timeliness of the Nile flood on his behalf. The Egyptians were aware of the irregularity of the arrival of the Nile, as they compared the timely arrival with a race and saw Sopdet "as the beautiful girl of the sun god", who "if you are late, will be taken by Re at the beginning of the Wepet-renpet".
New kingdom
Amenophis I set Wepet-renpet as the first month of the Sothis cycle and the first month of the year beginning June 19 in his personal calendar according to the old calendar rule . At the same time, he pointed Wepet-renpet the third Schemu -month to.
Alan Gardiner as well as Richard-Anthony Parker suspect that Wepet-renpet soon changed the year form, which is why in the further course of the New Kingdom Wepet-renpet was postponed to the twelfth month and received the new name Mesori .
In the burial chamber of Senenmut as well as in the associated festive calendars of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III. Wepet-renpet appears as New Year's festival in the twelfth month. In the hourly calendar of Ramses II , the New Year festival is also recorded for the twelfth month under the name Mesori, although Ramses II. In his festival calendar of Medinet Habu the "appearance of Sopdet with Re" and the associated Wepet-renpet festival for the first half of the month of the first month of Achet.
Ramses III. later took over the festival calendar from Ramses II and supplemented the festival dates with his own additional celebrations. What is remarkable is the fact that Ramses III. the dating of the New Year celebration was taken over by Ramses II. The "appearance of Sopdet with Re" as Wepet-renpet was still scheduled for the first half of the first Achet month, although the heliacal rise of Sirius in the old calendar system had shifted by about 25 days to the second Achet month.
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 .
- 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 : Wine, women and song: rituals for the dangerous goddess. In: Carola Metzner-Nebelsick: Rituals in Prehistory, Antiquity and the Present - Studies on Near Eastern, Prehistoric and Classical Archeology, Egyptology, Ancient History, Theology and Religious Studies. Interdisciplinary conference from 1-2. February 2002 at the Free University of Berlin. Leidorf, Rahden 2003, pp. 47-48.
Individual evidence
- ^ Siegfried Schott: Ancient Egyptian festival dates. Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz / Wiesbaden 1950; P. 11, plate 1195.