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HOOFDARTIKEL EGYPTIAN LUNAR DATES and TEMPLE SERVICE MONTHS Chris BENNETT 1. Introduction Richard Parker's Analysis of The

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HOOFDARTIKEL EGYPTIAN LUNAR DATES and TEMPLE SERVICE MONTHS Chris BENNETT 1. Introduction Richard Parker's Analysis of The 1710_BIOR_2008/5-6_01_Tekst 30-01-2009 10:44 Pagina 525 525 EGYPTIAN LUNAR DATES AND TEMPLE SERVICE MONTHS 526 HOOFDARTIKEL This conclusion was based on Parker’s analysis of syn- chronisms between civil and lunar dates. He used two classes of data for this analysis. The first was a set of direct syn- EGYPTIAN LUNAR DATES AND TEMPLE chronisms between civil and lunar dates. The second was a SERVICE MONTHS set of civil dates of temple service months. A temple service month was a period of time in which a group of priests was Chris BENNETT1) required to perform various temple duties. For this purpose, priests were organized into groups known as “phyles”. Each 1. Introduction phyle was identified by a phyle number. For most of pharaonic history there were four phyles. The Canopic reform Richard Parker’s analysis of the regulation of Egyptian of 238 B.C. added a fifth. lunar months in Ptolemaic and Roman times has influenced While a direct synchronism allows the date of the start of all subsequent discussions of many important calendrical and a lunar month to be determined by simple subtraction, a tem- chronological topics, including the schematic lunar cycle of ple service date requires knowledge of the lunar date on pdem Carlsberg 9, the Macedonian calendar under Ptolemy which a service month began before it can be used to deter- II-VI, and the precise chronology of the 12th dynasty.2) mine the date of the start of the lunar month. Parker assumed The problem of regulating the lengths of lunar months that the first day of temple service fell on the first day of the arises because a calendar month is only an approximation to lunar month, ps∂ntyw.5) Since we have no explicit statement the length of an astronomical lunation, the time it takes for to this effect, the only way to verify it is to compare known the moon to cycle around the earth to the same position rel- civil dates for the start of temple service to the moon and to ative to the sun. A calendar lunar month is a count of the the Carlsberg cycle. number of days it takes for a chosen reference phase of the Although Parker used nine temple service dates from moon to repeat itself. In many cultures, such as Babylonia, Ptolemaic and Roman times, seven of these came from a the reference phase is the first visibility of the lunar crescent papyrus which did not give a year: pdem Cairo 30801 recto. around sunset. In Egypt, it was the day in which the lunar These dates clearly show that the first day of temple service crescent ceases to be visible at dawn. The name of the first was based on a lunar month, but, without a year, they do not day of the Egyptian lunar month, ps∂ntyw, reflected this con- allow us to determine which day in the lunar month was the cept.3) Similarly, the second day of the month, bd, was first day of the month of service. Parker dated them to year regarded as the day of first crescent visibility.4) 26 of Ptolemy VIII = 145/4 B.C. by assuming a priori that Since the moon does not cycle around the earth in an exact they represented the most recent ps∂ntyw to fall on the named number of days, and the time taken can vary slightly from civil dates, according to the Carlsberg cycle, before the date cycle to cycle, the length of a lunar month varies between 29 of the verso, year 41 of Ptolemy VIII = 130/29 B.C. and 30 days from month to month. There are several possi- Only two of the Julian dates of Parker’s temple service ble methods for determining the first day of a lunar month. documents were certain.6) These came from two documents In Babylonia, the start of the lunar month was determined by from the reigns of Nero (iMoscow 145) and Commodus observation of the first crescent, although in poor weather (oThebes D31). Both directly equate a day of temple service conditions it would be necessary to estimate the occurrence to a civil date in an unambiguously named year.7) However, of this event. Another approach is to use an algorithm that only one of the dates that Parker derived for the first days of predicts the behaviour of the moon. Such algorithms may not the two lunar months actually corresponded to the day of be perfectly accurate, but can be sufficiently accurate on aver- lunar invisibility according to the astronomical tables he used. age that they allow the start of a lunar month to be predicted The other fell on the following day. Parker reconciled this independently of the moon, with an error margin of one day, conflict by noting that both dates fell on the first day of the for a long period of time. Parker concluded that one such schematic lunar months of the Carlsberg cycle, which he algorithm, the schematic lunar cycle of pdem Carlsberg 9, assumed was ps∂ntyw. He concluded that temple service was used to regulate the Egyptian lunar calendar in Ptolemaic months were regulated by the Carlsberg cycle in both Ptole- and Roman times. maic and Roman times, even though a data set of only two samples is clearly too small to draw such a conclusion with any certainty. 1) My thanks to Mark Depauw and Sandra Lippert for helpful comments Thissen noted several additional temple service dates in on earlier drafts of this paper, particularly for their guidance on demotic the Medinet Habu graffiti from the later Ptolemaic period, issues. Preliminary versions of parts of this paper were presented to the annual meeting of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) in 2006 some of which appeared to be aligned with bd, not ps∂ntyw, and placed on the web in 2005 at http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/ Egypt/ptolemies/chron/egyptian/chron_eg_anl_lun.htm. 2) R. A. Parker, The Calendars of Egypt (Chicago, 1950), 9-29, 63-69. 5) Parker (n. 2), 17 §67, with reference to the temple service month Parker’s theories of the Carlsberg cycle were first applied to the Macedonian given by oThebes D31: “we may take IIII prt 28 to be ps∂ntyw.” Depuydt calendar by A. E. Samuel, Ptolemaic Chronology (Munich, 1962), 54-61. (n.4), 177, describes the assumption as “reasonable”. 3) Cf. L. Depuydt, “The Hieroglyphic Representation of the Moon’s 6) Cf. Depuydt (n. 4), 184-185. Absence (Ps∂ntyw)”, in L. H. Lesko (ed.), Ancient Egyptian and Mediter- 7) iMoscow 145: W. Spiegelberg, “Eine neue Bauinschrift des Parthe- ranean Studies in Memory of William A. Ward (Providence, 1998), 71-89. nios”, ZÄS 66 (1930), 42-43; S. Hodjash & O. D. Berlev, The Egyptian 4) For bd as notional first crescent visibility, Parker (n. 2), 12 §38-39; Reliefs and Stelae in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts Moscow (Leningrad, as the day after ps∂ntyw, L. Depuydt, Civil Calendar and Lunar Calendar 1982), no. 145. oThebes D31: A. H. Gardiner et al., Theban Ostraca: ed. in Ancient Egypt (Leuven, 1997), 149. Astronomical invisibility can last for from the originals, now mainly in the Royal Ontario museum of archaeol- two or even three days (B. E. Schaefer, “The Length of the Lunar Month”, ogy, Toronto, and the Bodleian library, Oxford (Toronto, 1913), 51-52. Archaeoastronomy 17 (1992), 32-42 at 33), so the moon must often, in prac- oThebes D31 actually gives both a start and end date for a service month, tice, have been invisible on bd. Parker (n. 2), 13 §44, suggests that the but Parker only considered the start date usable; this question is discussed name of day 3 (mspr — arrival) covers this case. further below. He did not use the service start date given in oThebes D235. 1710_BIOR_2008/5-6_01_Tekst 30-01-2009 10:44 Pagina 526 527 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXV N° 5-6, september-december 2008 528 on the Carlsberg cycle.8) Parker suggested to him that this received some attention for their chronological value,13) nei- phenomenon reflected the lunar alignment of the Macedon- ther they nor the dates given by the service contracts have ian calendar, whose months, according to Samuel, were been studied for the information they provide about the lunar intended to start on the evening of the second day of Carls- date of the start of temple service. berg cycle months, i.e. on the evening of bd, which notion- The problem is of interest for several reasons. First, the ally represented first crescent visibility. Parker supposed that data allows us to assess Parker’s proposal that lunar months this arrangement had been imposed on the Theban priest- were governed by a schematic cycle in Graeco-Roman times. hood after the suppression of the Theban revolt by Ptolemy Parker’s specific proposal of the Carlsberg cycle has domi- IX in 88 B.C. Neither scholar explained why the Alexan- nated discussions of both Egyptian and Macedonian Ptole- drian government should have taken such a step some 60 maic lunar cycles for several decades, but it has recently been years after it had itself ceased to use the lunar Macedonian questioned for several reasons. Spalinger and Jones both calendar.9) noted that the data Parker used was insufficient to validate In addition to the Medinet Habu graffiti, Kaplony-Heckel the theory.14) Depuydt’s reanalysis of the papyrus led to a has recently collected and republished a set of ostraca con- reconstruction of the cycle that differs from Parker’s.15) taining contracts leasing or exchanging months of temple While only one of the points at which they differ is reflected service at various Theban temples,10) and a papyrus from the in the data Parker used — the entry for III prt in pdem Cairo Fayyum has been published containing a temple service date 30801 — this is sufficient to show that the Carlsberg cycle from Socnopiau Nesos.11) Further, Lippert has recently was not used in Gebelein if Depuydt is correct, since the inferred a set of temple service dates from grain receipts match should be perfect.
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