III. 6 LUNAR DAYS, LUNAR , AND THE QUESTION OF THE ‘CIVIL-BASED’ LUNAR

Rolf Krauss

The Days of the Lunar

The ancient Egyptians observed the phases of the ; they counted and named the days of the as well. Early on Brugsch compiled a list of the names of the lunar days; they are readily acces- sible in Parkers’s .1 The earliest attestations for lunar days occur in private and royal inscriptions of Dyns. 4 and 5. The Palermo stone preserves the earliest royal example: LD 6 = snwt, a of offering at Heliopolis in regnal 6 of Weserkaf.2 The lunar days ps≈ntyw, #bd, snwt, dnjt and smdt, i.e. LD 1, 2, 6, 7 and 15 are attested as days of rituals in the Pyramid Texts.3 Spalinger has collected and analysed the private feast lists of all periods.4 The early lists mention the lunar days #bd and smdt as well as s#≈,5 but not ps≈ntyw. As Spalinger notes, “when one descends in from the Old Kingdom to the very last phases of Pharaonic civ- ilization, the number of lunar-based feasts diminishes”.6 But lunar days are attested throughout Egyptian history and can be utilized for chrono- logical analysis, if they are combined with dates of the civil calendar.7

1 Parker, Calendars, 11–12; cf. also Belmonte, “Questions”, 35. 2 Wilkinson, Annals, 153–155.—The reading of A. Roccati, La littérature historique sous l’Ancien Empire égyptien (Paris, 1982), 43, “dnjt: quarter day” in the entry for year 6 of Weserkaf (Cairo fragment) is baseless, cf. Wilkinson, Annals, 219. 3 For example PT § 657, 716, 794, 1260, 1711, 2056. 4 Spalinger, Lists, 23–24; 28–29; 33. 5 Spalinger, Lists, 101–103. 6 A. J. Spalinger, Studies, VIII, cf. idem, BSEG 19 (1995), 40. 7 For the non-chronological background to the Egyptian lunar days, see Spalinger, “Dating”, 383–387. lunar days, lunar months 387

Beginning of the Lunar Month

Historians presumed that the ancient Egyptian lunar month began on new crescent day down until 1864 when Brugsch suggested that the lunar month started with . He cited a Ptolemaic text in Karnak: “He (Khonsu, the moon-god) is conceived on ps≈ntyw; he is born on #bd; he grows old after smdt”.8 Ninety later Parker para- phrased the text as follows: The moon-god is conceived in the dark- ness of invisibility on the first day of the lunar month, he is born as the new crescent on the day, and he wanes after the day of , the 15th day.9 Parker also cited an earlier, MK text with a similar assertion: “I know, O souls of Hermopolis, what is small on [#bd ] and what is great on [smdt]; it is Thoth.” Parker commented: “Thoth is, of course, the moon, small on the day of new crescent and great on the day of full moon”.10 Brugsch’s contemporaries were less enthusiastic than Parker.11 Only Mahler, and later Sethe, accepted conjunction as the beginning of the lunar month. Subsequently others disagreed, arguing that conjunction is not observable and thus cannot have marked the beginning of the lunar month.12 Around 1920 Borchardt realized that the Egyptian lunar month must have begun with the first day of invisibility after old (or last) crescent day,13 i.e. with an observable event.14 Shortly thereafter Schoch came to the same conclusion independently.15 Parker argued in detail that the Egyptians reckoned the lunar month from the first calendar day of the moon’s invisibility, coinciding with the day of con- junction in ca. 88% of the cases, the day before conjunction in ca. 10.5% and the day after conjunction in ca. 1.5%.16 Parker based his

8 H. Brugsch, Matériaux pour servir à la reconstruction du calendrier des anciens ègyptiens (Leipzig, 1864), 58–60; Parker, Calendars, 9, 12. 9 Parker, Calendars, 9–10. 10 Cf. also Book of the Dead, title of Spell 135. 11 Cf. Parker, Calendars, 9. 12 For example, Meyer, Chronologie, 49–50; D. R. Fotheringham, PSBA 18 (1896), 101; and E. F. Edgerton, AJSL 53 (1937), 195. 13 L. Borchardt, OLZ 28 (1925), 620 n. 2; idem, Mittel, 19, 30 n. 10. 14 Actually two events: the first day of invisibility can only be recognized with cer- tainty if the crescent had been observed the day before. 15 C. Schoch, Die Neumondfeste (Berlin-Steglitz, 1928); Reprint: Astronomische Abhandlungen. Ergänzungshefte zu den Astronomischen Nachrichten Bd. 8, Nr. 2 (Kiel, 1931), B11–B13; cf. W. Hirschberg, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 66 (1933–34), 245. 16 Parker, Calendars, 9–13.