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THE NAMES and FACES of the HOURS* to Identify Portions of The FRANCIS MADDISON AND ANTHONY TURNER THE NAMES AND FACES OF THE HOURS* To identify portions of the day for communal use by an arbitrary and invariable numerical grid imposed upon the nychthemeron, the time unit defined by two solar transists across the same meridian, was a development made by a sophisticated society in historical time. This development may be located in John North's favourite fourteenth century in Europe and it is a development about which he has had something to say.1 But if the introduction of this equal hour reckoning, as it is called, into social use can thus be temporally located with relative precision, the origins of the system which it replaced—unequal hour reckoning—are rather more difficult to determine. To divide up the period of daylight and the period of night separately seems, for the activities of everyday life, the most natural way of operating. The system is of great antiquity and it offers the advantage of maximum exploitation of natural light in ages innocent of artificial illuminants. For the activities of everyday life in early agrarian societies an abstract numerical grid, even a variable one, was not necessary and may even not have been conceptually possible. The origins of a numerical time or hour division and of ways of distinguishing different periods within the unequal spans of day and night are therefore not coterminous. Locating oneself in temporal space by expressions referring to some daily activity such as the yoking or unyoking of oxen, eating, the watering of livestock or to some natural, easily remarked event such as the changing position of the Sun, the nature of the daylight, 'the cry of the partridge' or 'the stirring of flies' has a long and rich history,2 one which continued in parallel with numerical hour-counting and probably preceded it. Counting the hours however reaches at least as far back as the third millenium BC in Egypt and may have originated there. More important in the present context is that as they counted the hours, the Egyptians also designated them. We are greatly indebted to Dr Emilie Savage-Smith, Wellcome Unit for the History of Médecine, Oxford, for assistance with the Greek and Arabic hour-names and discussing the entire paper with us. 1 Chaucer's Universe, Oxford 1988, 76ff. 2 M. P. Nilsonn, Primitive Time-reckoning. A Study in the Origins and first development of the Art of counting time among the primitive and early Culture Peoples, Lund 1920, who offers numerous examples in the first chapter of his study. 126 FRANCIS MADDISON AND ANTHONY TURNER The Egyptian invention of a system for dividing up the night into a series of equal parts3 originated in the need of priests to be able, mentally and ritually, to accompany the Sun-god Re along the different stages of his dangerous nightly journey through the dark regions, the abode of the dead, of gods and spirits. This journey, which was seen spiritually as being equivalent to that of the soul after death, offers many variants in the different versions in which it is recounted. Essentially, however, during the day the Sun-God Re, in his solar ship traverses the outside of the belly of the goddess Nut which, stretched out over the earth, forms the sky. During this period it was essential that the various daily rites should be performed at the correct times.4 At nightfall Re enters the goddess's mouth (placed on the western horizon). Thence he travels through twelve staging places, each equivalent to one unequal hour, to be reborn from her lower parts at dawn of the next day.5 Each of the God's twelve ports of call, where he regulates the life of the underworld, is identified by the name of the god or goddess governing the hour (Table 1), by the part of the anatomy of Nut wherein Re finds himself (Table 2), by the name of an identifying decanal star,6 or by a word or phrase descriptive of the hour.7 3 M. Clagett, Ancient Egyptian Science, a source Book. Volume II Calendars, Clocks, and Astronomy, Philadelphia 1995, 48ff citing the earlier literature. The locus classicus lying behind Clagett's work is of course that of O. Neugebauer and R. A. Parker, Egyptian Astronomical Texts, 3 vols, Providence-London, 1960-1969. Division of the night into equal parts had already begun by the 24th century BC. It seems to have proceeded the equivalent division of the day. 4 S. Sauneron, 'Le prêtre astronome du Temple d'Esna', Kêmi. Revue de philologie et d'archéologie Egyptienes et Coptes 15 (1959), 36-41 speaks of a 'préoccupation' with the exact determination of the hours (p. 36). Elsewhere he notes that astronomical knowledge served the priests 'essentially, in a practical manner, to determine the hour of the rites which rigourously divided the various elements of the cult', Les Prêtres de l'ancien Egypte (1957), Paris 1998,174, which work describes the general context of priestly activity in Egypt. 5 The clearest text describing all this is probably 'The Book of Amaduat' (Amdat) (alternatively entitled 'the Book of what is in the Netherworld'), translated in M. Clagett, Ancient Egyptian Science, a source Book. Volume I, Knowledge and Order, Philadelphia 1992, 491-510 with commentary and introduction 471-490. For an even more complex picture compare that given in 'The Book of Nut' as presented in Clagett ii, 357-392. The texts painted on the corridors of the tomb of Ramses VI are excellently presented, commented, transcribed and translated by A. Piankoff and E. Drioton, Le livre du jour et de la nuit, Cairo 1942 (Institut français d'Archéologie orientale, Bibliothèque d'Etude xiii). 6 Examples of such hour-indicating names can be seen in the 'Book of Nut', translated in Clagett, ii, 371-383. The names of the stars, and the corresponding body positions given for them, noted for identifying the sequence of hours in the Rammeside star clocks could also have given rise to hour names. For the star clock text in translation see Clagett, ii, 405-456. 7 E.g. the description of the 12th night hour in the Hete coffin text at Edfu as nb sp tnm kk (mistress of light), the 1st day hour as Nna or bn-t (goddess of sunrise), and the 12th day hour as xnm(t) nx (reunion with life). H. Brugsch, Matériaux pour servir à la reconstruction du calendrier des anciens égytiens, Leipzig 1864. .
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