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* Original Historical Documents*

<#start>
	Part AA <sothic_star.html>
Part CC <sothic_star3.html>

	SOTHIC DATING EXAMINED 	

	* THE SOTHIC STAR THEORY OF THE EGYPTIAN CALENDAR
Dense pack
(A Critical Evaluation)*
By DAMIEN F. MACKEY (MA. B PHIL.)
October, 1995 Sydney, Australia. 	

	PART THREE (A): PRE-MENOPHRES ERA CITATIONS (i.e. Pre-1320 BC)

Chapter Five <#c5>: The Illahun Papyrus
Chapter Six <#c6>: The Ebers Papyrus
Chapter Seven <#c7>: The Elephantine Stele

PART THREE (B): POST-MENOPHRES ERA CITATIONS (i.e. Post-1320 BC)

Chapter Eight <#c8>: The 'Era of Menophres'
Chapter Nine <#c9>: The Decree of Canopus
------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER FIVE: THE ILLAHUN PAPYRUS

Introduction

The earliest Sothic-dated source used by Meyer and his colleagues for
establishing their mathematically precise scheme of chronology were the
two papyrii fragments discovered by Ludwig Borchardt in 1899, in a
precinct of the Illahun Temple at Fayyum. The Illahun Papyrus, as it is
called, does not give the beginning of a Sothic cycle, but instead a
calendar date - year 7 of an un-named pharaoh - for the rising of
Sirius. This date, when retrocalculated according to the method
explained in Chapter Three - yielded the approximate figures of
1876-1872. As we are going to see, the key Sothic date for the Middle
Kingdom is now derived from these two fragments.

With Borchardt's having assigned the Illahun Papyrus to the reign of
Sesostris III of the Twelfth Dynasty, Meyer accordingly was able to
settle upon 1876-1872 BC as being the Sothically-precise time for the
7th year of that same pharaoh. This date quickly became the accepted
one. Edgerton, indeed, attested the fact that in the days of Meyer and
Borchardt it was universally agreed upon that the Illahun Papyrus
belonged to the time of Sesostris III, when he wrote (1):

"From 1899 until 1937, inclusive, all publications on the chronology of
the Twelfth Dynasty seem to have accepted the view that a certain
fragment of the el-Lahun [Illahun] temple register foretold a heliacal
rising of Sothis on the sixteenth day of the eighth month in the seventh
year of Sesostris III. No king is named in the fragment".

If what certain Egyptologists say is true, the importance of Borchardt's
decision should not be underestimated. It has become a vital factor in
determining the Sothic chronology of the pre-New Kingdom period of
ancient Egypt and of the nations chronologically tied to Egypt. The
currently accepted date for the 7th year of Sesostris III is regarded
now, following the universal rejection of Meyer's 4240 BC date, as being
the oldest fixed date in Egyptian chronology (2). It, together with the
Turin summary of approximately 950 years from 'Menes' to the end of the
Sixth Dynasty, has served as the foundation stone even for the
chronology of the Old Kingdom.

Long, from a chronological point of view, attributed to Borchardt's
decision concerning the Illahun fragment an even more far-reaching
significance. On what he called "this supposition" of Borchardt, rested
- he said (3): "... the chronology of the Middle Kingdom, the likewise
dependent absolute dating of the Old Kingdom, and the First
Intermediate". And, regarding the dependence of the historians of the
non-Egyptian nations on Borchardt's estimate, for determining the eras
of the earlier Archaeological Ages, Long further claimed that "the
dating of the Early and Middle Bronze Ages in Palestine, Greece and
Mesopotamia are to a great degree founded on faith in the veracity and
accuracy of the document [as interpreted by Borchardt]" (4).

With the Twelfth Dynasty having proven to be the most difficult of all
the early dynasties to reconstruct, and to harmonise with acceptable
precision (5), it is not hard to understand why the majority of the
Egyptologists might have welcomed with open arms the
Sothically-calculated date for the 7th year of Sesostris III. Today
there is no longer any major disagreement. Based on Borchardt's original
date, the Twelfth Dynasty has since been arranged according to the
highest known years, and supplemented by data from Manetho and the Turin
Papyrus, according to the following approximate form (6):

TABLE IV

TWELFTH DYNASTY RULERS

Amenemhet I ------- 1991-1962 BC
Sesostris I ------- 1971-1928 BC
Amenemhet II ------- 1929-1895 BC
Sesostris II ------- 1897-1877 BC
Sesostris III ------- 1878-1843 BC
Amenemhet III ------ 1842-1797 BC
Amenemhet IV ------ 1798-1790 BC
Sebeknofru ------- 1789-1786 BC

The Basis for Borchardt's Identification

Of the two Illahun fragments under consideration, the more important
from the point of view of Meyer's theory is the one containing the date
of a Sothic rising. Addressed to a priest named Pepi-hotep, this
fragment is dated in the 7th year of an un-named pharaoh. Borchardt has
reproduced it hieroglyphically as follows (7):

Long correctly interprets this statement as being "a suggestion,
twenty-one days in advance, that preparations be made for the festival
of the rising of Sothis" (8). For the document, dated Year 7, third
month of winter (or Phamenoth), on the 25th day of that month (9),
anticipates the rising of Sirius on the 16th day of the fourth winter
month (i.e. Pharmuthi) of that same (presumably) seventh year. Of
greatest interest for us here, apart from the date, is the latter
section of the hieratic record, referring to the rising of Sirius.
Translated from Borchardt's original German into English, this portion
reads (10):

"You ought to know that the rising of Sothis takes place on the the 16th
of the 8th month. Announce it to the priests of the town of
Sekem-Usertesen and of Anubis on the mountain and of Suchos ... and have
this letter filed in the temple record".

Important for Meyer's theory was the fact that the Illahun Papyrus made
reference to a rising of Sothis within the context of a hard historical
date. Not surprisingly, therefore, Meyer seized upon the information
thus provided, so that it became - according to his scheme - a key
Sothic citation for establishing a historical basis especially for the
dynasties of the Old Kingdom.

The second fragment is also dated to the 7th year of an un-named
monarch, but this time on the 17th day of the fourth winter month -
presumed to be the day after the heliacal rising of Sirius (11):

It contains a very brief inscription from the temple register recording
the offerings of bread and beer made on the day of the Sothic festival.

Borchardt's main concern with regard to these two documents - and the
one with which he was immediately confronted - was to determine to which
pharaonic reign they ought to be assigned. That this was indeed a real
difficulty is noted by Long when he pointed out, not only that both of
the Illahun inscriptions lacked "the all important name of the pharaoh
in whose reign the events occurred", but even that "no name of a ruler,
not even a partial cartouche, or any other evidence of a pharaoh is to
be found in the Illahun papyrus" (12).

After some deliberation Borchardt - mainly on the basis of palaeography
- narrowed down his choice to two pharaohs of the mid-Twelfth Dynasty:
viz. Sesostris III and Amenemhet III (13). On further palaeographical
considerations, Borchardt decided upon Sesostris III (14); for he
considered that the handwriting of the Illahun Papyrus was identical
('von gleicher Hand') to that of certain fragmentary pieces of papyrii
that are assumed to refer to the death of Sesostris II, predecessor of
Sesostris III (15). These latter fragments were discovered in the same
Temple at Illahun.

Some Reactions to Borchardt's Decision

Borchardt's crucial choice has not been entirely free from controversy.
Though perhaps most scholars would concur with James's recent view that
the Illahun fragments were "reasonably attributed to Senusret III [i.e.
Sesostris III] on palaeographical grounds" (16), Neugebauer, for one,
had been highly critical of the fact that scholars had been drawing
conclusions - especially about the identity of the pharaoh - from an
incomplete text (17). Thus Neugebauer asked (18): "Is the
palaeographical evidence from the (still incompletely published Kahun
papyrii) sufficient to determine the pharaoh referred to ...?"

More than three decades later, Neugebauer's problem with the papyrus
apparently had still not been resolved; for Long was able to write as
late as 1974 that (19): "Any doubt as to the Sesostris III arrangement
or desire to read the hieratic itself is hindered and frustrated by the
fact that the papyrii have not as yet been published".

The Illahun Lunar Dates

Though "technically", as Long has noted, "palaeography not astronomy, is
the foundation of this [Illahun] Sothic date" (20), the documents have
nonetheless evoked certain comments from astronomers too. These usually
centre around the notion of the heliacal rising of Sirius and the fact
that a series of lunar dates in the Illahun documents are used, in
conjunction with the Sothic information, to anchor the chronology.

The lunar evidence from the Illahun archive consists of four documents,
known as A,B,C and D. (For a more complete discussion of these four
documents, see Appendix C). Of these, by far the most important appears
to be Document D, in which 12 lunar dates are provided. It should be
noted, however, that the first of these 12 dates is severely damaged.

Obviously there is good sense in using a combination of lunar and Sothic
data; but only if this latter is highly accurate.

Certain astronomers have indicated that, due to possibly contradictory,
independent data, the Illahun documents may be open to other
interpretations from a chronological point of view (21). Thus Neugebauer
demonstrated that certain new moon information from Illahun and the
Sothic figures co-ordinated equally well in chronological schemes for
the Twelfth Dynasty whose totals differed, one from the other, by about
one century (22).

Neugebauer has recently come under heavy criticism from Professor Rose
(23) for having dismissed, on the basis of the one damaged date of
Document D - as Rose says - what he called the "trivial consequences" of
the remaining eleven dates. (Here Rose is referring to Neugebauer's
article on the "Chronology of the Hammurabi Age").

Rose, who believes that (24): "Document D does indeed provide us with an
excellent opportunity to get a handle on Twelfth Dynasty chronology",
and who thinks that "both Borchardt and Parker deserve special credit
for their efforts to exploit that opportunity", has called this "an
uncharacteristic lapse on Neugebauer's part". He then adds by way of
conclusion, with reference to Neugebauer, that:

"In the absence of additional information, there is no way to deduce the
next eleven dates as "consequences of the first one". And if these
twelve consecutive empirical dates from D really do enable us to find a
"firm anchor" for the Twelfth Dynasty, that is hardly something that
should be dismissed as "trivial".

Van Oosterhout had his own difficulties with the series of lunar dates
provided by the Illahun documents. Various solutions, he said, had been
put forward by proponents of the Sothic theory to solve what he
described as "the notorious problem of an impossible lunar month of 31
days between No:7 and No:8 [in the lunar series]", arising from the
current interpretation. These Illahun lunar dates constituted, he said,
"a most severe test for any chronology because they require a matching
of any sequence of 12 successive lunar dates" (25). But van Oosterhout
found that such solutions as were offered by the Sothic theorists - e.g.
"the intervals are not lunar months", or "scribal errors", or "overlap
of the phyles" - were unconvincing (26).

From the point of view of establishing an absolute chronology James -
with reference to Parker (27) - has contrasted what he considers to be
the valueless single lunar dates (for the New Kingdom) with the far more
significant Illahun lunar references, "giving sufficient data to
determine the length of lunar months over an entire year". But his
conclusion about this succession of lunar dates, based on Read's
research (28), is quite surprising:

"John Read calculated that the observations recorded in the papyrus
match perfectly with the pattern of lunar conditions in the year 1549
BC. Therefore, in Read's opinion, this 'placement of the Illahun
[el-Lahun] calendar with an apparent 12 for 12 fit has to constitute one
of the greatest chronological anchor points in ancient recorded history'".

Despite Read's confidence in this absolute date, an immediate problem
arose from the fact that it falls - in terms of Meyer's Sothic
arrangement - early in the Eighteenth Dynasty (29). The Illahun Papyrus
on the other hand, as we have just seen, has always been assigned a date
in the Middle Kingdom, some two and a half centuries earlier.
Consequently Read had to argue for a re-dating of the text (in the
relative sense) to the Eighteenth Dynasty.

Parker, as James further noted (30), had supposedly demonstrated that
this was impossible on historical grounds. The Illahun Papyrus certainly
dates to the late Twelfth Dynasty. Parker rejected Read's interpretation
in favour of his own, which, even after emending one of the entries on
the papyrus, still allows for a match of only ten of the twelve recorded
dates with modern retrocalculations for the year 1813-1812 BC (31).

Parker's method had already been resolutely dismissed by Read (32):
"This type of chronology, where one claims the historical record is
wrong rather than his own analysis, is no chronology at all".

Heliacal Rising of Sirius

Van Oosterhout further considered that a major factor in the
interpretation of the Illahun Papyrus was the determination of the
phrase 'prt spdt'. usually translated as '(heliacal) rising of Sirius'
(33). Whereas 'prt spdt' as described in the ancient Egyptian texts was,
as he said, clearly a spectacular phenomenon, the heliacal rising of
Sirius strictly speaking is not. Thus, in a discussion of "trieteris"
(space of three years), he offered a tentative interpretation of the
phrase other than that usually given for the Illahun phenomenon (34):

"After the introduction of a trieteris, e.g. by decree, the correctness
of the rule "one day in four years" will be guaranteed for at least two
centuries. Prediction of prt spdt is neither difficult nor necessary.
The only Egyptian text where prt spdt is predicted (Illahun archive)
possibly is not a prediction at all but a decree of a trieteris".

Difficulties Chronological and Stratigraphical

Hall was sceptical of Borchardt's interpretation of the Illahun data on
the grounds that it reinforced what he considered to be Meyer's
unacceptably short span for the duration of the Second Intermediate
Period. "It does not seem impossible", he tentatively suggested, "that
our interpretation of the date given by the Kahun [Illahun] temple-book
has been in some way faulty" (35).

Whilst personally leaning towards a date earlier by in excess of fifty
years than that computed by Meyer for the seventh year of Sesostris III
(36), Hall well understood what would be the implications of such a
choice for the entire Sothic chronology. Thus he wrote (37):

"But it must be remembered that, if we do not accept the placing of the
Sothic date of the Kahun book so late as 1945 BC or 1882-79 BC, we have
no really firm ground for any Egyptian chronology at all before the
beginning of the XVIIIth Dynasty".

Almost half a century later, Gardiner stressed what he called the
"formidable difficulty" of limiting the Second Intermediate Period to
200 years, since - as he claimed - "there were over 100 kings to be
squeezed into that short space" (38). And, having admitted the
"hypothetical character" of the Sothic computations, Gardiner echoed the
tone of Hall's sentiments when he stated, resignedly (39):

"To abandon 1786 BC as the year when Dynasty XII ended, would be to cast
adrift from our only firm anchor, a course that would have serious
consequences for the history, not of Egypt alone, but for the entire
Middle East".

As regards stratigraphy, some scholars (40) are of the opinion that,
within the Sothic framework, the stratigraphical material dated to the
time of the Twelfth Dynasty does not correlate properly with
Syro-Palestinian archaeology. Ehrich (41), for instance, points to what
he considers to be an inexact correspondence between the historical and
stratigraphical data of the early period, when he candidly states that:

"The synchronization of the First Intermediate period with the Middle
Bronze I of Syria and Palestine is not established by specific
archaeological correlations. These periods fall into place opposite each
other merely as the successors of the Old Kingdom and the Early Bronze
period".

Ehrich went on to contrast what he saw as the more satisfactory Old
Kingdom period correlations with the far less convincing ones of the
Twelfth Dynasty era. Unlike Old Kingdom finds, he said, these Middle
Kingdom materials seemed not to provide - except for some notable
exceptions - any direct and highly satisfactory Syro-Palestinian
connections (42):

"In fact, the synchronisms of the Twelfth Dynasty with the Middle Bronze
IIA period must be substantiated by discoveries outside of Egypt, such
as ... the temple dated by the names of the Twelfth Dynasty Pharaohs
Amenemhet III and IV and by the circumstances that the following Middle
Bronze IIB period is again directly correlated with Egypt".
------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTES:

(1) Edgerton, W., "The Chronology of the Twelfth Dynasty", JNES 1
(1942), 307.
(2) See e.g. P. O'Mara's The Chronology of the Palermo and Turin Canons
(La Canada, 1980), 67.
(3) Long, R., "A Re-examination of the Sothic Chronology of Egypt",
Orientalia 43 (1974), 263.
(4) Ibid.
(5) See footnote (2).
(6) TABLE IV is based largely on the one given by Edgerton, op. cit., 307.
(7) Borchardt, L., "Der zweite Papyrusfund von Kahun und die zeitliche
Festlegung des mittleren Reiches der Ägyptischen Geschichte", ZAS 37
(1899), 99.
(8) Long, op. cit., 264.
(9) Note that the 3rd month of winter is actually the 7th month of the
Egyptian year.
(10) Borchardt, op. cit., ibid.
Borchardt wrote: "Du sollst wissen, daß der Aufgang des Sirius am 16.
des 4. Wintermonats stattfindet. Mögst Du ... [benachrichtigen?] die
Laienpriester des Tempels der Stadt 'mächtig ist der selige Usertesen'
und des Anubis auf seinem Berge und des Suchos .... Und lasse diesen
Brief an (das Anzeigebrett?) des Tempels machen". (English translation
provided by D. Courville, in The Exodus Problem and Its Ramifications,
Vol.II (Loma Linda, 1971), 65).
(11) Borchardt, op. cit., 99.
(12) Long, op. cit., ibid.
(13) Borchardt, op. cit., 101-102.
(14) Ibid., 101.
(15) Ibid.
(16) James, P., Centuries of Darkness (London, 1991), 226.
(17) Neugebauer, O., "The Chronology of the Hammurabi Age", JAOS 61
(1941), 61.
(18) Ibid.
(19) Long, op. cit., 265.
(20) Ibid., 263.
(21) E.g. see ibid., 265; also G. van Oosterhout's "The Heliacal Rising
of Sirius", Studs. in Astronomical Chronology 1 (Delft, 1989).
(22) See Long, op. cit., 265, where he refers to Neugebauer.
(23) Rose, L., "The Astronomical Evidence for Dating the End of the
Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt to the Early Second Millennnium: A
Reassessment", JNES 53 (1994), 239.
(24) Ibid.
(25) Oosterhout, van G., Solar Eclipses and Sothic Dating (Delft 1989), 5.
(26) Ibid.
(27) Parker, R., The Calendars of Ancient Egypt (Chicago Uni. Press,
Chicago, 1950), Excursus C; and the Berlin Museum Papyrus 10056.
(28) James, op. cit., ibid; with reference to J. Read's "Early
Eighteenth Dynasty Chronology", JNES 29 (1970), 6,10.
(29) See R. Parker's "The Beginning of the Lunar Month in Ancient
Egypt", JNES 29 (1970).
(30) James, ibid.
(31) Pareker, "Beginning", ibid.
(32) See Read, op. cit., 4.
(33) Oosterhout, "Heliacal", 26.
(34) Ibid.
(35) Hall, H., The Ancient History of the Near East (Methuen, 1913), 25.
(36) Nicklin, in Classical Review XIV (1900), 148.
(37) Hall, Ancient, 25.
(38) Gardiner, A. Egypt the Pharaohs (Oxford, 1961), 66.
(39) Ibid., 148-149.
(40) E.g. R. Ehrich (ed.), Chronologies in Old World Archaeology (1954),
19; q.v. Courville, op. cit., 111.
(41) Ehrich, op. cit., ibid.
(42) Ibid.
Top <#top>
------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER SIX: THE EBERS PAPYRUS

Introduction

After Illahun, according to Hayes (1), the "next astronomically
determinable 'anchor point' in Egyptian history is the ninth year of the
reign of King Amenophis [Amenhotep] 1, the second ruler of the
Eighteenth Dynasty". The 'anchor point' in question is the Sothic date
provided by the Ebers Papyrus, which Meyer accepted as belonging to the
era 1550/49-1547/46 BC (2). The rough parameters allowed by the two
supposedly fixed Sothic points of Illahun and Ebers have been refined by
dates drawn from comparing modern retrocalculations of past lunar cycles
with Egyptian records of the moon's phases known from the reigns of some
pharaohs.

The importance of the Ebers document is that it - dating as is generally
thought close to the rise of the New Kingdom era and the corresponding
beginning of the Late Bronze Age - has enabled the Sothic theorists to
fix with precision the important New Kingdom phase in history. Meyer,
working from the fixed date he had settled upon from the Ebers Papyrus,
and taking Manetho's reasonable figure of 25-26 years for the reign of
Pharaoh Ahmose (Amenhotep I's predecessor), had no trouble thereafter
calculating the beginning of the New Kingdom and the simultaneous era
for the expulsion of the Hyksos by Ahmose: viz. at 1580 BC (3). Thus
Long was not exaggerating when he stated that the "New Kingdom and late
Bronze chronology are largely dependent on the Ebers Sothic date for the
ninth year of Amenhotep I" (4).

Since the Ebers Papyrus immediately affects the dating of the Eighteenth
Dynasty, we provide in the following Table V a basic chronological
outline of this dynasty (5):

TABLE V

EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY RULERS

Ahmose ------- 1580-1555 BC
Amenhotep I ------- 1555-1532 BC
Thutmose I ------- 1532-1515 BC
Thutmose II ------- 1515-1495 BC
Hatshepsut ------- 1495-1473 BC
Thutmose III ------- 1473-1441 BC
Amenhotep II ------- 1441-1418 BC
Thutmose IV ------- 1418-1411 BC
Amenhotep III ------ 1411-1372 BC
(Akhnaton ) Amenhotep IV 1372-1355 BC
Smenkhare ------- 1355-1352 BC
Tutankhamun ------- 1354-1345 BC
Ay ------- 1345-1341 BC
Horemheb ------- 1341-1313 BC
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Virtually all scholars are in agreement that this date of 1580 BC saw
the beginning of the New Kingdom; even the early proponents of the
"short" and "long" chronologies, respectively, being agreed that the
start of the New Kingdom must not be 'transferred' to a later date, to
prevent any "squeezing" of the Second Intermediate Period. Hall, for
example, claimed 1580 as being "the earliest date of which we can be
absolutely certain within the margin of a few years either way" (6). And
this same view was shared by Albright (7), by Breasted (8) and by
Save-Soderbergh, who wrote that (9): "The beginning of the XVIIIth
Dynasty is dated to one of two alternatives separated by not more than
twenty years, [the rest of the reigns] between the 16th and 11th century
[having] margins of a few years only".

Even Edgerton (10), who regarded Meyer's "short" chronology as "now no
longer tenable", testified that this date of 1580 BC was "one of the
very few 'astronomically fixed' points in Egyptian history which met
with general acceptance".

The Ebers Hieratic Text

The early history of the hieratic document is extremely complicated.
Brugsch, who was the first to publish an article about what we now refer
to as the "Ebers Papyrus" (11), having received a copy of the document
from Eisenlohr (12), announced in 1870 that this newly-discovered,
fragmentary text contained a Sothic date. But Brugsch withheld
publication of the document, and the name of the pharaoh (13), because
Eisenlohr (who, in turn, had obtained the papyrus from Edwin Smith at
Luxor) wanted to publish the hieratic with his own commentary first. A
few months later, in December 1870, Eisenlohr went ahead and published
his own article on the papyrus, which he dated to the third year of
Pharaoh (14).

Confusion Surrounding the Ebers Papyrus

Real confusion about the document began to arise in 1873, when Ebers
claimed that Smith had given Eisenlohr a copy of the authentic papyrus
that was by then in Ebers' possession (15). This situation caused Long
to comment later that (16): "Eisenlohr and Brugsch had written about a
mere second-hand copy of what soon became known as the genuine Ebers
papyrus". Long also described the circumstances surrounding the Ebers
Papyrus in those days as "an intriguing web of confusion" (17).

But an even greater controversy would arise regarding the interpretation
of the hieratic document. Many regard the Ebers Papyrus as being
intrinsically unreadable. Brugsch, for example, described the document
as (18): "Dieser Text, in hoechst fluechtigen hieratischen ...". The
fairly significant amount of "divisive comments and interpretations"
(19) to which the Ebers Papyrus has given rise, seem due largely to the
problematic reading of the document.

Three main areas of difficulty in this regard may be isolated: viz. the
regnal year; the identification of the ruler; and the purport of the
text. These three points will be considered separately below.

(i) The Regnal Year

That there was a significant degree of confusion amongst the
Egyptologists, when trying to assess the papyrus in those early days, is
evident from the fact that within the space of about three years there
were presented three or four different estimations of the regnal year.
For instance, whereas Brugsch (20) and Eisenlohr (21) had, in 1870, read
the regnal year as the third year, Lepsius (22) - also in 1870 -
concluded instead that it should be read as the sixth.

Goodwin examined it in more detail. Though he would not claim to give a
"decisive solution" to the problem, he hoped that his "speculations"
might help to clear the ground for further enquiry into what he called
"this perplexing text" (23). It should be noted here that Goodwin,
according to Long (24), was referring to ''the Smith version of the
papyrus"; a version that Long regarded as being a copy of the 'original'
Ebers Papyrus. In Long's opinion, this version was a "confusing ... copy".

Goodwin, having been of the opinion that the estimations three years
earlier were the results of a misreading of the document, then proceeded
to give his own interpretation of the regnal year: namely, that it
should be read, not as year 3 (Brugsch, Eisenlohr), nor as year 6
(Lepsius), nor even as year 30 (as others had claimed), but rather as
year 9 (25). One had only to compare the numeral in the facsimile of the
papyrus with "the hieratic forms of nine given in M. de Rouge's
Chrestomathie", Goodwin claimed, to discover what he called an "obvious"
resemblance between the two (26). An even better comparison, he said,
occurred in the Boulaq Papyrus, where the figure of nine could be found
"to resemble exactly the numeral of Mr Smith's papyrus" (27).

Goodwin's tentative conclusion regarding the regnal year of the Ebers
Papyrus apparently carried the day, so that now we find his figure of
"Year 9" has become the universally accepted one. Indeed it was this
figure that Meyer absorbed into his Sothic scheme.

(ii) The Ruler

In Goodwin's words, the name of the king to whom the entry referred
"really represents little difficulty" (28). The third character, "open
to very slight doubt", he said, "is clearly the form of some bird", and
very nearly resembled the usual hieratic form of 'ba'. "What little
difference there is may be put down to the peculiarity of the scribe".
As for the second character, Goodwin insisted that "there ought to be no
doubt at all"; for it was what he described as "the ordinary hieratic
equivalent of the bird's leg and claw" (29). In regard to this
particular point, Goodwin referred the reader to the lists of
hieroglyphic signs given, respectively, by Brugsch (30) and Pleyte (31).
And Goodwin added, with further reference to Brugsch (32), that the sign
undoubtedly stood sometimes for 'remen', the "arm", and was also used as
the equivalent of in "from which it may be inferred to have the value of
'n', or 'nen', or perhaps 'nu'". From all of this Goodwin concluded that
the name of the king would be expressed hieroglyphically as : i.e.
Remen-ba-ra or Nen-ba-ra.

Goodwin's immediate problem now was to associate this decipherment of
his with any particular pharaoh or known cartouche. He could not believe
that the name which he considered to be its nearest resemblance, viz.
'Ba-en-ra' (the name of Ramses II's son, Merneptah), could be a variant
of it. As he explained (33):

"In the first place the substitution of the very unusual sign for n
commonly found in the name of Ba-en-ra is not probable; and next in all
examples of this cartouche with which I am acquainted the follows the a
distinction not to be overlooked in a name of this simple character".

Thus Goodwin found himself obliged to look for the name, 'Remen-ba-ra',
as he said, "in the obscurer parts of Egyptian history, either amongst
the dynasties which preceded the 12th or amongst those between the 12th
and 18th". In Manetho, Goodwin found the name of a king, viz. Bicheres
of the Fourth Dynasty - whose name, he said, was lacking in the Abydos
and Saqqara tables - who seemed to be a likely candidate. Prior to this,
Goodwin had already calculated the Sothic era of the Ebers papyrus, as
he thought, at 2870-2867 BC; which era he located during the Fourth
Dynasty. Thus he was delighted to note what he believed to be the
following striking coincidence (34):

"The name of Bicheres, probably the of Eratosthenes has all the
appearance of having contained the element ba; and, what I can only
regard as a happy accident, the first year of this king in Lepsius's
table is precisely BC 2878".

Thus Goodwin reached his conclusion that the solution to the enigma of
the hieratic cartouche was that it belonged to Ba-en-ra, whom he
identified with Bicheres of Manetho's Fourth Dynasty.

Ebers

Ebers, who would later change his mind several times, boldly informed
his colleagues in 1873 that the authentic papyrus mentioned a Sothic
rising during the reign of Dsr-k3-R', whom Ebers identified as Amenhotep
I (35). Stung by Goodwin's implication that the Smith papyrus was the
best one available, and also by his identification of the pharaoh as one
of the Old kingdom rulers, Ebers re-asserted the identity of what he
claimed to be the correct text.

But in 1890, Ebers again changed his mind and repudiated his most recent
reading of the cartouche (36). In language that Long claimed to be "as
convincing and filled with conviction as that with which he [Ebers] had
previously defended the interpretation of the bird or ba sign" (37),
Ebers returned to his original identification of the pharaoh as
Dsr-k3-R' (Amenhotep 1), which he had discarded for many years.

Eisenlohr however, in the same year, rejected the renewed defence by
Ebers (and his colleague Erman) of the Dsr-k3-R' reading; claiming - in
the following words - that Ebers had misread the second hieratic symbol
in the cartouche (38):

"[Ebers] ... continues what I consider an erroneous reading of the royal
name ... [he] reads ... , Ka, in order to find to find the name of
Amenophis 1 [Amenhotep] 1, while , which occurs more than fifty times in
the papyrus, has never that form".

Concluding Remark

Though Ebers' choice of Amenhotep I as the pharaoh of the hieratic
papyrus is the one that is generally accepted today, we have found that
there was a tendency amongst Egyptologists in Ebers' day to regard the
document as being a product, not of the New, but of the Old Kingdom.
Chabas too, according to Long (39), "transliterated the cartouche into a
hieroglyphic cartouche which could have belonged to more than one king
of the Old Kingdom".

(iii) Document's Astronomical Significance

(a) Calendar Adjustment

A great deal of controversy and uncertainty has also arisen in regard to
the astronomical significance of the document. Before Meyer's
interpretation of the document had become the accepted one, Goodwin had
offered the suggestion that there was in the Ebers Papyrus the record of
an alteration of the Egyptian calendar. Others, since Meyer, have argued
over whether the latter's now accepted version of the Sothic date as
(40): "Year 9 under King Amenhotep I: Feast of the (astronomical) New
Year = ninth day of the eleventh month (of the civil calendar) =
heliacal rising of Sothis", is really the correct one.

Goodwin came across what he called "some puzzles", when looking further
down the column listing the eponyms of the months (41). Having already
accepted that the 9th day of the eleventh month, Epiphi, had coincided
with a New Year's Day feast, Goodwin was surprised to find indications
in the text that the same phenomenon had occurred on the 9th day of each
month. He explained why he believed this interpretation of the text to
be the necessary one in the following words:

"The dot underneath in the eleven lines after the first seems to
indicate a repetition of these words in each line, so that we have a
rising of Sothis corresponding to each successive 9th of the month".

Apart from this obvious absurdity from an astronomical point of view,
Goodwin had found some further "difficulties", as he claimed, inasmuch
as he could not ascertain whether this 9th of Epiphi of the Egyptian
vague year corresponded with the 1st of Mesore, or with the 1st of
Thoth, of the fixed year.

In the case of the former, Goodwin estimated that the heliacal rising
would have occurred in the era of 1410-1407 BC; whereas, in the case of
the latter (his choice here being identical to Meyer's own estimate) it
would have occurred in 1550-1547 BC. However, because Goodwin found
himself unable to identify any king of these particular eras with his
'Remen-ba-ra', he turned back to what he estimated to be the earlier
Sothic cycles in each case - viz. 2870-2867 BC and 3018-3015 BC,
respectively - situated, as he believed, during the era of the Fourth
Dynasty.

Since, at this point Goodwin had arrived at his identification of the
pharaoh of the cartouche with Bicheres of the Fourth Dynasty, he now
proceeded to attempt an explanation of the document's apparent
anomalies. The fact recorded in the papyrus ''seems to be", he proposed,
"that in the 9th year of a certain king, the 9th days of the several
months of the vague year corresponded to the 1st days of the month of
the fixed year". He wondered whether there might be any relation between
this, and the fact mentioned in the Edfu calendar, as cited by Brugsch
(42), that the 9th day of Thoth was a New Year's Day "according to the
ancients".

Goodwin tentatively concluded from all this that the hieratic papyrus
was actually meant to be taken as a reference to what he described as
"some rectification of the Calendar made in the 4th dynasty ..." (43).

(b) Astronomically Fixed Date

There erupted a new controversy over the interpretation of the Ebers
Papyrus during the 1930's. Borchardt not only rejected Meyer's
explanation of the key Sothic reference in the hieratic document, but he
also rejected the corresponding 'astronomically fixed' dates for the
Eighteenth Dynasty. Borchardt's own rather unique version of the
hieratic signs was as follows (44):

"Year 9 under King Amenhotep I: Beginning of the intercalary month
Hb-wpt-rnpt of the (older) lunar year = day of the new moon in the
eleventh month (of the civil calendar) = heliacal rising of Sothis".

Essentially, as we can see, Borchardt's new version of the text was
based on his substitution of "day of the new moon" for a hieratic group
in line 2 of the papyrus that hitherto had been translated as "ninth day
of the month" (45). This, when combined with other evidence, led
Borchardt to a revised date for the Ebers Papyrus: viz. that the
thirteenth day of the eleventh month, in the ninth year of Amenhotep I,
was 1522 BC (17 July, Julian) - about a quarter of a century later than
Meyer's estimate (46).

Edgerton (47), however, was critical of this new equation of Borchardt's
that, he said, had been put forward "with the same conviction of
absolute certainty which characterized the contrary statements of his
predecessors". Whereas Borchardt had translated the hieratic group as
"day of the new moon", Edgerton insisted that it was nothing other than
the ordinary hieratic numeral 9, which - he said - "has the phonetic
value psd". Edgerton could thus find "no reason to suppose that any
Egyptian scribe, in any period" had ever employed psd alone to represent
"day of the new moon".

Borchardt (48), in support of his own claim, had cited an example from
the Twelfth Dynasty of the use of psd. He also cited three unpublished
cases, all from the Twelfth Dynasty Illahun papyrii, in which psd
apparently was thus written. And Borchardt's final objection in regard
to the proponents of the Sothic theory was that if, as they claimed, the
"ninth day of the month" were meant (in lines 2-13 of the Ebers
calendar), then the interval between line 3 (or "9.12.W", which is the
9th of the 12th month in the civil year) and line 4 (or "9.1.W") should
be five days longer than a month.

Edgerton's Explanation

Regarding the first citation from the Twelfth Dynasty, Edgerton (49) was
critical of Borchardt for using an example of psd which he said, because
it was followed by a lacuna, did not prove that psd was all that the
scribe wrote; and he further criticised him for giving psd as the name
of the day of the new moon, as he said, "without qualification". So
"certainly inaccurate" did Edgerton consider this interpretation of
Borchardt's to be, because "the numeral 9 is not ordinarily used to
write psd in this word", that he thought it had to be "a mere slip of
the pen" on Borchardt's part; the word for "day of the new moon" in the
early Eighteenth Dynasty ordinarily being written as 'psdntyw', whereas
in the Old Kingdom the 'n' was lacking (50). Contrary to Borchardt,
Edgerton insisted that what is usually interpreted in the Ebers Papyrus
as the numeral 9, was "exactly what we should expect for 'ninth day of
the month' in any manuscript from the reign of Amenhotep I". Ironically,
Edgerton referred the reader to Moeller - "the one authority which
Borchardt cites", he said - in order that the reader might "assure
himself that the form of the figure 9 written here is the only form
known to have been used for 'ninth day of the month' between the Sixth
Dynasty and the reign of Amenhotep II".

Edgerton was prepared to concede as "true", at least, Borchardt's
objection against "the ninth day of the month" on the strength of an
inappropriate interval of days between lines 3 and 4 of the Ebers
Papyrus; admitting this to be "a surprising inaccuracy on the part of
the ancient scribe". Then, turning to Lepsius (51) for a possible key to
the correct meaning of the document, Edgerton came to the conclusion
that one might at least start from the purpose that caused the ancient
scribe to write out this calendar in "a prominent and readily accessible
place (the first page) on the back of a medical treatise". According to
what Lepsius had suggested, the purpose of this had been "to give the
physician an easy means of knowing at what seasons in the year certain
prescriptions were to be used"; no prescription in the entire document
being restricted to a period shorter than two months.

While Edgerton's next statement about the Ebers calendar, that (52): "In
calculating the calendric equivalent of a season of the year which was
two months long, an inaccuracy of five days would probably not seem very
serious to the Egyptian medical practitioner", may have been an attempt
to minimise the problem that Borchardt had raised, he does not appear to
have been fully at peace with this explanation of his. For again he
admitted that he still did not understand how the scribe could be "so
thoughtless as to write '9.1.W', etc., where '5.1.W' would have been
just as easy, and obviously more precise ...".
------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTES:

(1) Hayes, W., "Egypt - To End of Twentieth Dynasty", CAH I (1962), vi.
(2) Meyer, E., "Nachtraege zur aegyptischen Chronologie", Abhandlungen
der Koeniglich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin, 1907), 1.
(3) Ibid., 34-35.
(4) Long, R., "A Re-examination of the Sothic Chronology of Egypt",
Orientalia 43 (1974), 266.
(5) Data for Table V taken mainly from W. Edgerton's "On the Chronology
of the Early Eighteenth Dynasty", AJSLL LIII (1936-1937).
(6) See H. Hall's chapter, "Chronology", in CAH I (1928), 170.
(7) Albright, W., From the Stone Age to Christianity, 166.
(8) Breasted, J., A History of Egypt, 2nd ed. (London, 1924), 22.
(9) Save-Soderbergh, C-14 Dating and Egyptian Chronology (Stockholm,
1970), 38.
(10) Edgerton, op. cit., 190.
(11) Brugsch, H., "Ein neues Sothis-Datum", ZAS 8 (1870), 108-111.
Brugsch described the text as: "... fraglich Text ... der Regierung
eines Koenigs beginnt, dessen Namensschild ich leider zu verschweigen
genoethigt bin".
(12) See Long, op. cit., 14, regarding Eisenlohr.
(13) Long, ibid.
(14) Eisenlohr A., "Der doppelte Kalender des Herrn Smith", ZAS 8
(l870), 165-167.
(15) Ebers, G., "Papyrus Ebers", ZAS 11 (1873), 41 nn.3 & 4. Ebers
described the document as "einen medicinischen Papyrus".
(16) Long, op. cit., ibid.
(17) Ibid.
(18) Brugsch, op. cit., ibid.
(19) Long, op. cit., ibid.
(20) E.g. Brugsch, op. cit., ibid. Brugsch wrote "Jahre 3 der Regierung".
(21) Eisenlohr, op. cit., 166. Eisenlohr wrote: "... in dessen 3.
Regierungsjahr ...".
(22) Lepsius, R., "Einige Bemerkungen ueber denselben Papyrus Smith",
ZAS 8 (1870), 167. Lepsius's words were: "Dieser fuehrt vielmehr auf 6
...".
(23) Goodwin, C., "Notes on the calendar in Mr. Smith's papyrus", ZAS 11
(1873), 107.
(24) Long, op. cit., 267.
(25) Goodwin, op. cit., ibid.
(26) Ibid., with reference to Eisenlohr's Kalender, 166.
(27) Boulaq Papyrus, Nr.l7, page 5, line 2 (Tom.II, Pl.12).
(28) Goodwin C., "Notes on the calendar in Mr. Smith's papyrus", ZAS 11
(1873), 107.
(29) Ibid.
(30) Ibid; with reference to Brugsch's Worterbuch (List of
Hieroglyphical Signs), Nr 259.
(31) Ibid; with reference to Pleyte's Catalogue of Hieratic Signs, Nr
77. Pleyte described this hieroglyphic sign as "bras avec la main baissee".
(32) Ibid; with reference to Brugsch's Worterbuch, 780 & 858.
(33) Goodwin, op. cit., 109.
(34) Ibid.
(35) Ebers, "Papyrus", 41. Ebers wrote: "Koenigsschild mit dem Vornamen
Amenhotep I ... Ra so ka ...".
(36) Ebers, G., "Die Maerchen des Papyrus Westcar II", Mitteilungen aus
den Orientalischen Sammlungen 5 (1890), 56-57.
(37) See Long, op. cit., ibid., where he refers to F. Chabas' Memoires
presentes a l'Academie d'inscriptions par divers savants, 1st series
(1878), Vol.I, 111.
(38) Eisenlohr, A., "Letter from Dr A Eisenlohr of Heidelberg", PSBA 13
(1890), 597. Eisenlohr, as support for his criticism of Ebers'
interpretation, made further reference here to a Dr Joachim, whom he
described as "a medical man of Berlin".
(39) See Long, op. cit., ibid., where he refers to F. Chabas' Memoires
presentes a l'Academie d'inscriptions par divers savants, 1st series
(1878), Vol.I, 111.
(40) See e.g. E. Meyer's Nachtraege, 8; q.v., his Aegyptische, 46ff.
Meyer called it: "Im 9. Jahre Amenophis I ...u.s.w".
(41) Goodwin, op. cit., 109, 166.
(42) Ibid; with reference to Brugsch's Materiaux, Pl X, col 1a.
(43) Goodwin, op. cit., 109.
(44) Borchardt, L., Quellen und Forschungen zur Zeitbestimmung der
aegyptischen Geschichte, Band II (Cairo, 1935), 19ff. Translation
supplied by Edgerton, op. cit., 190.
(45) Edgerton, op. cit., ibid.
(46) Borchardt, Quellen, ibid.
(47) Edgerton, op. cit., ibid.
(48) Borchardt, Quellen, 20, n.1.
(49) Edgerton, op. cit., ibid., 190.
(50) Ibid., 191.
(51) Lepsius, R., in ZAS XIII (1875), 150; as cited by Edgerton, op.
cit., ibid.
(52) Edgerton op. cit., 191-192.
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CHAPTER SEVEN: THE ELEPHANTINE STELE

Introduction

The Elephantine Stele inscription was the second (after Ebers) of the
two New Kingdom texts recording a rising of Sirius that Meyer believed
he could use, in conjunction with the "Era of Menophres" data, to fix
the dating of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Historians today generally
interpret this Elephantine Stele - presumed to have been produced under
Thutmose III (though it does not actually state the name of the king,
nor provide the year of his reign) - as recording that a Sothic rising
took place on the 28th day of Epiphi. From this information, coupled
with new moon data from the reign of Thutmose III, Meyer thought himself
able to calculate the precise era of this long-reigning pharaoh.

As a result, Breasted was later able to pinpoint the 19th of April 1479
BC as being the very day that Thutmose III left Egypt for his first
campaign into Palestine. Olmstead, using the same premises, pin-pointed
the event with equal 'precision' at 19th of April, 1483 BC (1).

Considering the scant information provided by this document, however, it
seems that dogmatic assessments such as the above may be overly
optimistic. The Elephantine Stele, like the two other documents that we
have already discussed in this section, is - as we shall see - far from
unequivocal as to its interpretation. Once again we can legitimately ask
the question: To which pharaoh does this particular text really belong?

It is this question that we are going to consider in section 1 below,
followed by a brief discussion on that other familiar topic, the regnal
year of the document (section 2). Finally, we shall touch on certain
difficulties of an astronomical nature in regard to the correct
interpretation of the Elephantine Stele (section 3).

1. To Which Pharaoh Does the Stele Belong?

Mahler reproduced as follows the hieroglyphic record of what he named
the Elephantine calendrical inscription ('Kalenderstein von
Elephantine') - so called because it was discovered in stone on the
island of Elephantine (2):

Mahler subsequently translated this hieroglyphic text into German; after
which, Long rendered it in English as (3): "Epiphi, day 28, the day of
the festival of the rising of Sirius".

It is due to Mahler that the Elephantine Stele has, from the very
beginning, been considered as being an inscription of the Eighteenth
Dynasty king, Thutmose III. For Mahler had related the document
specifically to the time of that pharaoh when speaking about what he
considered to be its pre-eminence as a means for establishing a precise
chronology of that particular period of Egyptian history (4).

Mahler was supported in his general view of the document by Kurt Sethe,
who - several decades later - published the documents of the Eighteenth
Dynasty of Egypt (5). Sethe included amongst them this by now celebrated
hieroglyphic inscription from Elephantine under the heading, "Opfer-und
Feststiftungen von Elephantine" (6). He then went on to describe that
brief part of the inscription relevant to our present study as being an
offering for the day of the rising of Sirius; and he reproduced it in
linear form as follows (7):

Following Mahler in particular, it has become the custom amongst modern
commentators to attribute the Elephantine inscription to Thutmose III.

Some Objections to this Identification

Whereas, in the case of the Ebers Papyrus, a cartouche containing a
pharaoh's name was included, the Elephantine Stele resembles rather the
Illahun document inasmuch as it has preserved neither cartouche nor
pharaonic name. Not surprisingly, then, Mahler's assertion that the
Elephantine calendar belonged to Thutmose III met with some strong
opposition. Ginzel for one, in those early days when Mahler first
produced his translation - along with the publication - of the
inscription, had cast a doubt about Mahler's choice; regarding as
uncertain that this particular inscription belonged to the era of
Thutmose III (8).

Later Long considered it to be highly significant that Ginzel, whom he
regarded as having been "the foremost Egyptologist" in the first decade
of this century, did not even date Thutmose III then within the period
of the conventional Sothic date (9). A good deal of trial and error, he
said, went into making Thutmose III a part of the Sothic scheme of
things. In support of this claim, Long referred to adjustments being
made by later Egyptologists "to accommodate all the evidence" in order
to fit Thutmose III into the Sothic framework (10).

On what basis, then, was the identification of the pharaoh of the Stele
attributed to Thutmose III? According to Courville this document, which
"does not state the name of the king nor the year of his reign", came to
be assigned to Thutmose III (11): "... on the basis of the appearance of
this name [ie Thutmose III's] on another fragment presumed to be from
the same inscription, but found at some distance from it". The
astronomer, Torr, was quite unimpressed by this particular means of
identifying a historical document. He absolutely rejected this method in
relation to the Elephantine Stele, and even went so far as to speak of
what he called "the worthlessness of this inscription to prove anything,
since ... it may have been produced by any one of the successors of
Thutmose III" (12).

Long, too, expressed certain doubts about the traditional interpretation
of the Elephantine data. Whilst he was prepared to concede that the
Elephantine Sothic date, revised since Ginzel's time to c.1464 BC (13),
co-ordinated as he believed "with the era of Menophres and the Medinet
Habu calendar (of the Nineteenth or Twentieth Dynasty)", he nonetheless
was not fully convinced that the Stele itself belonged to the time of
Thutmose III. And so he added the cautionary note that (14): "... we
cannot be 100% positive that the inscription belongs to Thutmose III".

2. An Unknown Year

Whereas the Illahun fragments clearly indicated a 7th year - presumed to
be pharaonic - and the Ebers Papyrus too provided a date, albeit a much
controverted one, no date is given in the Elephantine inscription. Thus
Winlock (15), who had described the Stele as a "Festival Calendar of
Thutmose III", also noted that this calendar was "for an unrecorded
year" of its king (16). Long referred to the Sothic date of Elephantine
as likewise originating "in an unknown year" (17). The only data in the
inscription of any possible chronological value is that which provides
the month and the day (i.e. the 28th day of Epiphi) when the rising of
the Sothis star occurred.

Hall, in an attempt to get around the problem and to make the most of
the meagre information available, thought that by combining the date of
Sothic rising with information from Censorinus, as well as that of the
Decree of Canopus, he might be able to establish with great accuracy the
date of the Elephantine calendar's star-rising (which he presumed to be
heliacal). Hall's subsequent argument may be summarised in the following
approximate fashion (18):

Censorinus, he said, had supplied the information that the rising of
Sirius coincided with the 1st of Thoth in 139 AD, "so that a new Sothic
cycle of 1460 years began in that year". The Decree of Canopus (238 BC)
supplied the information that the rising of Sirius occurred on the 1st
of Epiphi (for Hall, "the tenth month"). This latter information would
lead to a date of 143 AD, rather than Censorinus's 139 AD, he noted,
adding "but in any case we see that this event must have taken place
about 140 AD".

Whilst conceding that the Egyptians may never even have used the Sothic
cycle "as an era", to assist them in their computations, Hall
nonetheless was of the opinion that the risings of Sirius in themselves
could "be of considerable use to us in reconstructing Egyptian
chronology"; and thus (19):

"... were it unknown that the Decree of Canopus was inscribed in 238 BC,
we should have been able, taking Censorinus's date for the end of the
[Sothic] cycle to have arrived very near the correct date by calculating
where the star rose heliacally on the last day of Epiphi".

(In making this calculation, Hall had chosen to disregard one major
Sothic datum used by Meyer, viz. the date of Menophres - "since, though
he is probably Men-peh-ra, we do not certainly know this").

Hall had based his own calculation on the date of 140 AD in relation to
his own interpretation of the Elephantine evidence. Thus he wrote:

"... that in a certain year of the reign of Thotmes [Thutmose] III the
New-Year feast fell upon the 28th day [of the month Epiphi. And he
concluded from this that the Sothic rising of Elephantine could] only
have been between the years 1474 and 1470, which must therefore have
fallen in his [Thutmose III's] reign".

3. Problems of an Astronomical Nature

Hall again, basing himself on the Sothic theory of Meyer, had arrived at
"a period of eighty years" for the interval between the 9th year of
Amenhotep I and the era of Thutmose III; a period that was, as he said,
"very much what we should have expected from our knowledge of the
history of the time". From Meyer (20) again he had discovered that the
approximate, conventional date for the era of Thutmose III was
"confirmed" astronomically by what Hall himself describes as: "... the
identification of two New-Moon festivals in [Thutmose III's]
twenty-third and twenty-fourth years (on 21st Pachon and 30th Mekheir)
with those of May 15, 1479 and Feb 23, 1477".

Now Edgerton has tabulated these two new moons, in relation to Thutmose
III's year of coronation, as follows (21):

Coronation [year 1] of Thutmose III, 4.9.W. New moon "exactly", year 23,
21.9.W. New moon, year 24, 30.6.W. Edgerton, who deduced from this
information that "the 4.9.W. in [Thutmose III's] first year must have
fallen on or near the date of a full moon", also advised of the need for
precision regarding the use of the term, "new moon", which - as he wrote
- "has two quite distinct astronomical meanings"; a distinction needing
to be made between the precise, astronomical phrase, "new moon", and the
more common notion of it which is called "neomenia" (22). But, in
addition to what he called "these two astronomical concepts", Edgerton
also advised that one would need to take into account "a purely
calendric" consideration, viz. that: "... the first day of the calendar
month in an arbitrarily adjusted lunar calendar may or may not be
identical with the date of neomenia".

Having clarified the astronomical terms, Edgerton next sought to shed
light on the significance of the two lunar dates of Thutmose III; dates
upon which, he said, scholars had been attempting for decades to build
the chronology of the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh. For the second and
seemingly less problematical of these lunar dates (i.e. year 24),
Edgerton appeared to be content with Sethe's explanation, that it
"refers to the calendric new moon" (23).

Somewhat more cautiously in regard to the first (i.e. year 23), Edgerton
(24) thought that there might be "a good chance" of this lunar date's
being an occasion where Thutmose III "may be trying to tell us that the
calendric new moon coincided with neomenia on that occasion ...". But
Edgerton added to this the note of caution that "it would be unwise to
place too much reliance on this view in the present state of knowledge".

Undoubtedly, the practice of combining independent, astronomical cycles
such as that of Sothis and that of the moon may be extremely useful for
the purpose of establishing an accurate chronological scheme. (See
Appendix C). For quite obviously, if an event can be pinned down in two,
independent cycles, then the chronological conclusions rest on a more
secure foundation than when a single cycle is used. It is such a
combination of astronomical data that the Egyptologists have tried to
achieve in regard to securing the era of Thutmose III. However, as
Courville has noted, such astronomical information needs to be extremely
well understood and properly used, for (25):

"... it must be apparent that the use of a very short cycle, such as
that of the moon, to confirm dates derived by use of a much longer
cycle, such as the Sothic cycle, has some very large inherent
weaknesses. The cycle of the moon will repeat itself so many times in
the course of one Sothic cycle that any given lunar data can be made to
fit satisfactorily into the Sothic period at a considerable number of
points. Hence, unless the date for the incident involved is known
approximately and with certainty from independent data, it is very
possible that any proposed confirmation may be only wishful thinking".

NOTES:

(1) Breasted, J., A History of Egypt, 2nd rev. ed. (London, 1941), 285,
288; and Olmstead, A., A History of Palestine and Syria (1931), 132.
(2) Mahler, E., "Koenig Thutmosis III", ZAS 27 (1899), 98.
(3) Long, R., "A Re-examination of the Sothic Chronology of Egypt",
Orientalia 43 (1974), 268.
Mahler has translated the hieroglyphs as: "Monat Epiphi, Tag 28, der Tag
der Feier des Aufganges der Sothis".
(4) Ibid. Mahler's words were: "Der erste Anhaltspunkt zur Ergruendung
der Regierungszeit des Koenigs Thutmosis III. befindet sich auf dem der
Regierung dieses Koenigs angehoerenden Kalenderstein von Elephantine".
(5) Sethe, K., Urkunden der 18. Dynastie, Akademie Verlag (Berlin,
1927-1930).
(6) See ibid., IV 827, 107.
(7) Ibid. Sethe referred to the day as: "Opfer fuer den Tag
Sirius-fruehaufgangs".
(8) Ginzel, F., Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie
(Leipzig, 1906), 194.
Ginzel's words were: "Es ist einigermassen zweifelhaft, ob der Stein zu
einer festliche mit Angabe aus der Zeit Thutmosis III gehoert".
(9) Long, op. cit., 269.
(10) Ibid.
(11) Courville, D., The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications, Vol.II
(Loma Linda, 1971), 65.
(12) Ibid; where he refers to C. Torr.
(13) Long, op. cit. See his Table I, 263.
(14) Ibid., 269.
(15) Winlock, H., "The Origin of the Ancient Egyptian Calendar", Proc.
of APS 83 (1940), 460.
(16) Ibid.
(17) Long, op. cit., 268.
(18) Hall, H., The Ancient History of the Near East (Methuen, 1913), 19-20.
(19) Ibid., 20.
(20) Ibid; where Hall makes reference to E. Meyer, but without providing
any bibliographical details.
(21) Edgerton, W., "On the Chronology of the Early Eighteenth Dynasty",
AJSLL, LIII (1936-37), 195.
(22) Ibid; where he makes reference to Borchardt and Neugebauer in
Orientalistische Literaturzeitung, XXX (1927), 80-82.
(23) Ibid; where Edgerton refers to K. Sethe's Urkunden, 835-836.
(24) Ibid; with reference to Urkunden, 657.
(25) Courville, op. cit., 67-68.
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PART THREE B: POST-MENOPHRES ERA CITATIONS (i.e Post-1320 BC)

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE 'ERA OF MENOPHRES'

Theon's Statement

Turning now to the classical authors who were of great importance for
Meyer in the development of his Sothic framework, we commence with
Theon, the Alexandrian astronomer of the late fourth century AD. Theon
has left a statement that refers to the Dog Star ('Kuvos' in Greek),
i.e. Sirius, and that provides information of a chronological nature
(1). For our purposes, the most relevant part of Theon's original
statement is the following extract provided by Lepsius (2): Theon here
informs us that there were 1605 years since the "Era of Menophres" until
the end of the Era of Augustus, or the beginning of the Era of
Diocletian. Now, since the termination of the Augustan era and the
beginning of the emperor Diocletian's are known to have converged at
284/5 AD, it is not difficult to determine when this supposed "Era of
Menophres" occurred. Thus Long has written (3): "From the quotation
[i.e. Theon's] we gather that the era of Menophres (apo Menophreos)
lasted from circa 1321-1316 BC to AD 285 or the duration of 1605 years,
i.e. from the Emperor Diocletian back to someone or something designated
"Menophreos".

Meyer belonged to the school of thought which identified Theon's
"Menophres" as "someone" rather than "something"; and he was also firmly
convinced that the new era inaugurated by Menophres was a new Sothic
era. Regarding the latter point, Meyer wrote (4):

"The era ... can only be the Sothic period. We do not have to occupy
ourselves here with the particular difficulties which arise, and which
so far have not all been resolved .... It suffices to know that Theon
counts 1605 years from Menophris [i.e. Menophres] to the end of the era
of Augustus. The era of Diocletian began on the 29th of August 284 [AD]:
the last year of the era of Augustus and the 1605th is consequently
283/284 [AD] .... The first year of Menophris thus runs from the 19th of
July 1321 to the 18th of July 1320 BC, which corresponds exactly to the
first year of a Sothic period".

And, regarding the identification of "Menophres" whom Meyer presumed to
be a person, a monarch, Meyer wrote (5):

"Why, then, did Theon call this period as he did? We do not know. The
name of Menophris, or Menophreus, could be Merenre in Egyptian, with the
article intercalated before the name of the god. It is common to see
Me(r)neptah, the son of Ramses II; but it is quite impossible to place
him in the year 1321 .... [Menophres] ... may well be Menpehtire, the
surname of Ramses I ...".

Today the majority of scholars, following Meyer, tend to regard Theon's
statement as being an extraordinary verification for a Sothic cycle of
1460 years, commencing in 1322/21 BC and ending in 139/140 AD (6). The
fact that Theon also referred in this text to the Dog Star seemed to be
an added confirmation of this. According to the usual view, Theon was
supposed to have known the initiation year of that cycle, whilst
Censorinus (see Chapter Ten) was thought to have provided the
termination date of 139 AD.

Long for example, distinguishing between Theon's 1605 years and the
"Great Year" of Censorinus, called it "uncanny and surely not mere
coincidence" that the data from Theon to Censorinus suggest a year
around 1322/21 BC, "not through Censorinus or 139 AD, but by Diocletian
[whose era began in 284/5 AD]" (7).

Long, however, aware of the controversial side of the Menophres debate,
tempered his enthusiasm with the comment that: "Even the specialists,
however, cannot be certain whether Menophreos was Memphis or a pharaoh
of Dynasty XIX".

In this chapter we are going to discuss two major problems in relation
to the "Era of Menophres". The first, of course, pertains to the
identification of Theon's "Menophres". Obviously a lot of history is
dependent on the right choice being made. But an equally major problem,
as pointed out by Rowton (8) on the subject, is that of co-ordinating
the standard Middle Assyrian Chronology - with that of the early New
Kingdom of Egypt, as based on the Menophres theory in particular and the
Sothic theory in general.

(A third apparent difficulty with Theon arises from an independent
statement of his, which is said to contradict Censorinus. However, we
shall reserve our discussion of this particular document for Chapter Ten).

1. Who, or What, Was 'Menophres'?

Since there are two main schools of thought regarding the identity of
Theon's "Menophres", viz. (a) that "Menophres" is the city of Memphis,
and (b) that Menophres is a particular Pharaoh (usually thought of as
having belonged to the Nineteenth Dynasty), this section will fall
naturally into two parts.

(a) Menophres = Memphis

Rowton - who, according to Long "has produced the finest investigation
in to the era of Menophreos" (9) - was actually rather brief on this
part of the subject, admitting that he was quite satisfied that Biot's
argument, "about 100 years ago", was "a perfectly plausible explanation
..." (10). Thus Rowton supported Biot's thesis that the term "Menophres"
represented the city of Memphis in its ancient pronunciation (11); but
added to it his own refinement, following Olympiodorus, that the Sothic
cycle was based upon observations made at Memphis. According to Rowton,
Olympiodorus had said that: "... the Alexandrians reckon the rise of
Sirius not from the moment it rises for them, but from the moment when
it rises for the inhabitants of Memphis".

For Rowton this statement by Olympiodorus, whether it "may or may not be
wrong", at least indicated to him "how strong the Memphis tradition was
in the time of Olympiodorus" (12).

Proponents of the Menophres = Memphis view are quick to point out as
well, with reference for example to Gauthier's Dictionnaire (13), that
the old name for Memphis was 'Men-nofir'. Hall, for one, found no
technical difficulty with regard to the transition from Men-nofir to
Menophreos, since it "was not hindered", he said, "by any linguistic
problems" (14). Montet (15) took the linguistic comparison a stage
further when he compared On-nophris (the Greek form of Un-nofir) with
the equation Menophres = Men-nofir.

So determined in fact was Rowton to hold to the equation Menophres =
Memphis - probably because, as we shall see in section 2, it suited his
interpretation of the Mesopotamian evidence - that he was actually
prepared blatantly to contradict what he considered as being Theon's own
view on the matter. Thus, for the sake of retaining what he called "this
obvious solution" to the interpretation of "Menophres", Rowton had no
qualms about putting aside the "objection", as he said, arising from
Theon's own clear statement (16): "The objection [being] ... that the
manner in which Theon expressed himself shows, beyond any possible
doubt, that he thought Menophres was a king".

Hoping further to augment his case, Rowton seized upon Hall's earlier
view that, by the time of Theon, the name for Memphis had changed from
"Men-nofir" to what Rowton described as being "something like 'Memfi'".
Men-nofir, the old name of Memphis - Rowton argued - has "passed out of
the common language over 1000 years before the time of Theon", and so he
said it was "most unlikely that Theon would have seen any connexion
between the term 'Menophres' and the ancient capital of Egypt". Rowton
continued on in this unconvincing fashion, 'excusing' Theon on the
grounds that he was a mathematician rather than a historian. For Theon,
therefore, it would be "only normal" to think in terms of a particular
era being named after a king.

It should be noted that Rowton's main problem with the traditional
interpretation of the "Era of Menophres" in regard to Mesopotamia
concerned only precise dates and particular pharaohs. He had no
difficulty with the theory, broadly interpreted, that the era indicated
by Theon fell approximately during the period of the early Nineteenth
Dynasty.

But Rowton denied the validity of the important identification, for
Sothic theorists, between Ramses I and "Menophres". In this he followed
Struve's opinion that Menophres could not be identified with Ramses I,
because it could be shown from the Greek transcription that Ramses'
throne name, Mn-phtj-R', was quite different from the name "Menophres"
(17), Indeed Rowton went so far as to suggest that "Menophres cannot be
identified with Seti I or with any other king of this period" (18).

For, in the mind of Rowton and others who had proposed that Menophres
was not a ruler, the "Era of Menophres" was related to the city of
Memphis because this was where each year the sighting for the appearance
of the Dog Star was presumed to have been made. When Sirius rose and was
observed in Memphis, then the cycle or festival was presumably recognised.

(b) Menophres = (A particular) Pharaoh

Lepsius and Struve had taken the contrary view that Menophreos could not
possibly be a reference to Memphis, but that it must refer to a pharaoh.
Lepsius for example, according to Long (19), was "so committed to the
logic of this theory" that he had no qualms, ethically, about emending
the Greek name, : a replaced Theon's , thus creating . Lepsius then
searched Manetho's list for a name that matched this emendation of his,
and thought that he had found it when he came across the variant, , or :
the latter being names usually attributed to pharaoh Merneptah of the
Nineteenth Dynasty. But since Lepsius regarded Merneptah as being firmly
set in the era c.1224-1214 BC, he was thus not prepared to accept an
equation with a king whom he believed to have ruled a century too late
(20). Meyer, in his Aegyptische Chronologie (21), repeated Lepsius's
pattern of reasoning with regard to this very same point.

Lepsius had reduced what he believed to be the possible choices for the
identification of Menophres to the following three candidates: Harmhab;
Ramses I; or Seti I (22). We shall now consider the merits of each of
these pharaohs in turn:

(a) Harmhab

Actually Harmhab is the least likely candidate for "Menophres" amongst
these three pharaohs. Indeed it soon became apparent that Harmhab's
throne name, Dsr-hprw-k3, could by no stretch of the imagination be
transliterated to Menophreos.

The Sothically-arranged dating of Harmhab's death is still very close to
the date of 1310 BC as set down by Meyer in 1928 (23). Now Rowton has
made a very interesting comment from the point of view of the Sothic
scheme on this estimate of Meyer's. Rowton suggested that since Meyer's
date necessitated moving well forward, in relation to the Sothic date of
the "Era of Menophres", the usual Nineteenth Dynasty candidates for that
era, "it was obvious that Meyer had by then completely discarded the
Menophres theory" (24).

(b) Ramses I

Hall followed Petrie in claiming a certain likeness between the name
"Menophres" and the throne-name, Men-peh-ra, of Ramses I; as well as the
latter's suitability from a chronological point of view, being placed
conventionally very near to the date of 1321 BC (25). On a later
occasion, Hall gave the following explanation of how he thought the date
for the beginning of Ramses I's reign could be calculated (26).

"His [i.e. Ramses I's] date is known because his predecessor [i.e.
Harmhab] dated the years of his reign from the death of Amenhotep III,
the father of Ikhnaton (whose reign is ignored on account of his
religious heresy), and 'reigned' at least 59 years, 1380-1321 BC. Thus
1321 BC was the first year of a Sothic cycle, and the evidence fits well".

Cerny also spoke in favour of this now generally accepted identification
of Menophres with Ramses I, whose prenomen - he said - was often written
simply as (27). If this prenomen were read Mn-ph-r', instead of the
correct Mn-phty-r', which includes the group - as Cerny explained - then
the correspondence of consonants, M-n-p-h-r and (h not being expressed
in Greek transcriptions), is complete.

For those who could not accept either Harmhab or Ramses I as their
choice for "Menophres", only one realistic choice remained: viz. Seti I.
But as we shall see from the next section, Seti I's candidature was
based on rather more than what Long had merely called "process of
elimination" (28). Inscriptional evidence seemed to indicate that a new
era had begun under Seti.

(c) Seti I

Sethe (29) for one, following the statement of Censorinus, sought
evidence for the renewal of a Sothic period not very far from the
beginning of the Nineteenth Dynasty; for he was of the opinion that Seti
I was the likeliest candidate for Menophres. He came across two cases of
dating from Seti I's reign in which the regnal years 1 and 2 were
separated from the name of the king by the expression, whm mswt, or
repeating of birth: (30).

Sethe believed this expression to be like the first part of the
nbty-name of Seti I, viz. whmw mswt or repeater of birth: (31);
recalling for Sethe what he considered to be an identical expression
that occurred in certain datings towards the end of the Twentieth Dynasty.

Kitchen also discussed this latter phrase, attributing to it the literal
meaning of "the repeating of birth" (32). However he preferred to use
the term "Renaissance Era", believing this to signify a new dating line
that had been inaugurated in Egypt during the reign of Ramses XI.

Sethe knew that this latter era could by no means realistically be
connected with a Sothic period. Nevertheless he was of the opinion that
under Seti I the expression "Repeating of birth", which marked an era of
a special kind, might well refer to the tetraeteris (or first four years
during which the heliacal rising of Sirius fell on the first day of the
Egyptian civil year, the 1st of Thoth) of a Sothic period (33).

As a corroboration of this view Sethe thought himself able to adduce two
more dates from the early years of Seti: viz. from the Speos Artemidos
decree and the Nauri inscription. He referred to these two documents as
being "equally unparalleled in form and very curious in meaning" (34).
Let us then briefly examine in turn these two inscriptions, whose
hieroglyphs in each case we reproduce from Sethe:

Speos Artemidos

Cerny later translated Sethe's German version of this inscription into
the following English (35):

"... (names of Sethos [i.e. Seti I] follow), 'Year 1, beginning of
perpetuity, receiving eternity, celebration of millions of jubilees and
of hundreds of thousands of year of peace, a lifetime of Re' [in heaven
(?)], the kingship [of Atum on earth (?) under the Majesty of] Horus', etc".

According to Sethe's interpretation of this inscription, the expression
that followed the date of Seti I, commencing with the 'beginning of
perpetuity', marked this as the start of a new era, and as a renewal of
the Sothic period (36). This presumed Sothic renewal was, in Sethe's
opinion, connected to another term, "Recurrence of the Rebirth", which
he said was known already from other inscriptions belonging to Seti I (37).

Nauri Inscription

Cerny's translation of this inscription followed that of Griffith, as he
said, but "with minor modifications" (38). For one, Cerny chose a date
different from that given by Griffith. Whereas Cerny gives "[Yea]r 1" -
incorrectly as it appears from the hieroglyphs - both Sethe ('Jahr 4')
and Griffith gave it as Year 4 (39). The following version is taken from
Griffith's translation of the inscription:

"[Yea]r 4, first month of winter, day 1, beginning of perpetuity in
receiving happiness, hundreds of thousands of years of peace, millions
of jubilees upon the throne of the Horizon-god, an eternity of the reign
of Atum, ...".

The above two inscriptions, combined with Censorinus's statement and
other documentary evidence from Seti I's rule, led Sethe to the
conclusion that some sort of era - probably Sothic - certainly did
commence with the accession of Seti I (40). A similar view was expressed
by Poole who, showing great confidence in the veracity of the Seti I =
Menophres equation, explained that (41):

"This [identification] is confirmed by our finding that the earliest
astronomical ceiling which has been discovered is that of the great
chamber of his [Seti's] tomb, in which Sothis occupies a conspicuous
position".

Poole, who even went so far as to suggest that Theon was not merely
referring to the renewal of some continuous astronomical cycle (e.g.
Sothic), but rather of a completely new start in calendrical dating,
veered right away from Sethe in his conclusion that (42):

"The evidence of ancient writers ... is also strongly against the
opinion that there were Sothic Cycles before the Era of Menophres. No
ancient writer of the least authority ... speak[s] of Sothic Cycles
before the year 1322 BC and the very name Era of Menophres seems to
point to a new institution, and not to the renewal of a cycle".

More Recent Evaluations of Seti I and His Era

Rowton, who was critical of Sethe's explanation of whm mswt, believing
it to be an era associated as he said with the "Recurrence of Rebirth"
and "of a religious and semi-political nature [having] nothing to do
with the Sothic cycle", thought nevertheless that the accession of Seti
I may well have marked the beginning of some particular era (43). His
reason for proposing this was that all of Akhnaton's successors prior to
Seti I were, to a greater or lesser degree, affected by Akhnaton's
"heresy"; whereas Seti he said - following Albright (44) - was probably
born after the death of Akhnaton, and "was the first king since the
accession of Akhenaten ... whose legitimacy could not be queried on the
grounds, either that he was connected with the Aten heresy, or that he
was not of royal descent".

Rowton, whilst stating his reason for believing that the conditions were
present at the accession of Seti for the proclamation of a new era of
prosperity and divine favour "similar to the era that was proclaimed at
the end of the Twentieth Dynasty", gave also the following interesting
reason as to why he thought that Seti I's accession should not be
connected with the inauguration of a Sothic era (45):

"If we are to assume that Seti's 'era' represents the new Sothic cycle,
we must explain the astonishing fact that Sirius is not mentioned in
either of the two inscriptions. Such an omission is not found in other
Sothic dates and, of all events in the Sothic calendar, this surely was
the most important one".

But by no means did Rowton's problems with the proposed Seti I =
Menophres equation end there. He found what he described as "even
greater difficulties" with attempts made, mainly by Sethe and Struve, to
identify the name of Seti "Merneptah" with "Menophres". To begin with,
he argued, "we have to assume that 'Menophres' is a corrupt form of
'Mernophtes'"; a corruption that he said was not improbable, "but the
necessity to assume it, in the absence of any supporting evidence, does
not strengthen this theory".

Rowton's next, and for him "far greater difficulty", was that only the
second part of the name of Seti Merneptah was supposedly rendered in
"Menophres". Rowton admitted that Struve had suggested that the first
part of the king's name had been dropped because of the opprobrium
attached in late times to the god Seth, the shrewd murderer of Osiris
(46); but he also ridiculed Struve's explanation because the latter - as
he said - "by emending the Greek and adding a little theoretical magic"
had made the problem vanish (47).

Struve's explanation was also rejected by Sethe, who substituted a
different one: viz. that later Egyptian scholars were no longer able to
read the names in the royal cartouche in the correct order (48). As
Sethe explained, in the cartouche of an inscription the throne-name - in
this case "Mr-n-pth" - would appear above the proper name, "Stjj", as in
the following fashion: . But in the hieratic documents, the proper
sequence, or right reading ("Die richtige Lesung"), viz. Stjj Mr-n-pth:
could be found.

Rowton was no more impressed by Sethe's reasoning, however, than he had
been by Struve's; for he claimed that there was "not a scrap of
evidence" to support what he called Sethe's "assumption" (49). In this
regard he cited the case of Manetho, whom he called "our principal
witness in Greek times" and who "certainly had no difficulty in reading
the names in the correct order (e.g. Ramesses Miammou)"; a fact that
only served to confirm Rowton in his choice of Menophres = Memphis.

Cerny (50), too, flatly denied the logic of Struve's argument; coming to
light in turn with what he called "further evidence" for rejecting
Sethe's interpretation of 'whm mswt'. According to Cerny, one example of
the use of this phrase which "must invalidate Sethe's interpretation"
was that on the statue known as the 'scribe in the Place of Truth,
Ra'mose', which bore the following hieroglyphic inscriptions:

In these Cerny noted, with reference to Bruyere (51), there were found
the expressions, "...the beginning of perpetuity, receiving eternity and
celebration of millions of jubilees"; (also from Speos Artemidos)
pertaining to year 9 of Ramses II, inserted between the date and the
king's name. Cerny's comment was that: "It is clear that they are a
cliche in this instance, no special significance should be attributed to
them in the dates of year 1 of Sethos [Seti I]".

Thus Cerny was confident about calling these examples an "invalidation
of Sethe's interpretation"; though he added that they in no way proved
that the beginning of the Sothic period did not fall in the reign of
Seti I. They only implied, he said, "that there is no inscriptional
evidence for such an assumption".

In line with Sethe, Cerny was of the opinion that the Sothic period had
"probably rightly", as he said, been identified with Theon's 'apo
Menophreos'; and he further regarded it as "natural to see in the name
of an Egyptian king ..." (52). But he was less happy about Struve's
identification of Menophres with the epithet Mr-n-pth (i.e. "beloved of
Ptah"): , which Seti I bore in his cartouche after his personal name,
"Sty (or Sthy?)": ; saying that it was (53): "... hard to believe that
posterity in this case replaced the real name of the king, then known as
, by a mere epithet".

But despite his conceding that Rowton "justly opposed this explanation"
of Struve's, Cerny could not go so far as to accept Rowton's view that
Menophres stood for Memphis. Thus Cerny concluded with the following
query regarding Rowton's view (54):

"For who could believe that in this case, and in this case only, the
Egyptians of the Graeco-Roman period reverted to the old pronunciation
of some 2000 years before their time, though the general practice was to
pronounce the old names in accordance with the changes which the
language had undergone?"

But, as we said earlier, Rowton may have had a special reason for
wanting to identify Menophres with the city of Memphis - even apparently
against ancient testimony. For, as will become more evident in the
following section, Rowton really had to reject the conventional Sothic
interpretation of the "Era of Menophres" inasmuch as it did not
harmonise with the results of his research into Mesopotamian chronology.

2. The 'Era of Menophres' and Mesopotamian Chronology

Rowton (55) set out to test whether the standard theory of "Menophres"
could be upheld in the light of the Mesopotamian evidence and the known
syncretisms between Mesopotamia and Egypt. Showing great faith in the
Mesopotamian chronology, at least that which corresponded with the
early-Nineteenth Dynasty era of Egypt, Rowton confidently suggested that
(56): "We may, I think, conclude that for the eponym years of Assyrian
kings the margin of error does not exceed 1 year".

In his challenging article Rowton drew mainly from the Assyrian
king-list (KKL), on the one hand, for his examination of the eponym
periods and for other facets of Mesopotamian history, and he used the
Mesa inscription as primary evidence for his Egyptian material, on the
other. He appeared to be just as confident about the latter as he was
with the Assyrian, saying that: "No quarrel is possible with the Mesa
inscription".

In brief, the Mesopotamian evidence indicated to Rowton that 1356 BC was
the accession date of a certain Assyrian king, viz. Ashur-uballit, who -
as we know from the el-Amarna correspondence - wrote to pharaoh Akhnaton
of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The problem for Rowton however was that,
according to his research, such a syncretism would be impossible; for
thus he explained:

"Mesopotamian chronology does not co-ordinate with the Eighteenth
Dynasty chronology .... Ashur-uballit I and Akhnaton were
contemporaries; yet if the era's dating is maintained, their
contemporaneity is non-existent ...".

Consequently Rowton (bearing in mind his own date of 1356 BC for
Ashur-uballit's accession) went on to claim in relation to the normal
opinion of the Egyptologists that 1358 BC was the lowest possible date
for the death of Akhnaton, that:

"We are dealing here with a comparatively remote period, and a
discrepancy of only 2 years may not seem very significant. But closer
examination reveals that the discrepancy is considerably greater.
Several years must be allowed for the overlap between the reigns of
Akhenaten and Ashur-uballit; moreover, if the Menophres theory is
accepted - that a Sothic cycle began in the first year of Seti I - the
date 1358 for the death of Akhenaten does not allow for a sufficient
interval between Akhenaten and Seti".

It was at this point that Rowton introduced into his argument what he
considered to be the indisputable Mesa evidence:

"The Mesa inscription proves that 59 years elapsed between the accession
of Akhenaten and an unknown year in the reign of Horemhab. It has
hitherto generally been assumed that the year in question was the last
of Horemhab's long reign, but in the absence of any evidence to this
effect such an assumption is absolutely inadmissible if we intend to
abide by probabilities. Consequently, the discrepancy we are confronted
with here must be increased by the number of years between this unknown
regnal year of Horemhab and his death".

And thus Rowton reached the emphatic conclusion that (57):

"... if this discrepancy is a matter of 10 years or more we are no
longer entitled to regard it as insignificant. We shall see that the
Mesopotamian material is of such high quality that an error of more than
1 or 2 years in the date for the accession of Ashur-uballit is extremely
improbable. No quarrel is possible with the Mesa inscription.
Consequently, if the Mesopotamian material has been correctly
interpreted in this article, the conclusion becomes unavoidable that the
Menophres theory is wrong".

The 'Arcus Visionis'

Though Rowton had arrived at a possible date of 1356 BC for the
accession of Ashur-uballit, he regarded it as "probable" - basing
himself on Weidner and Smith's view that, before Tiglath-pileser I
(c.1100 BC), the Assyrians used a lunar-year of 354 days (58) - that it
was even as late as 1349 BC. Whilst unable to deal with the Egyptian
material to the same degree of depth, Rowton nonetheless suspected that
it did not appear to favour a date as low as 1349 BC for Akhnaton's
death (59).

The next thing for Rowton to determine was whether or not the
astronomical data, in relation to Egypto-Mesopotamian chronology,
substantiated his claims. Examining calculations made by
Neugebauer/Borchardt, Sewell and Edgerton, Rowton learned that whilst
the former dated the beginning of the Sothic cycle - based on an 'arcus
visionis' of 9 degrees - at 1318 BC, Sewell - using the same 'arcus
visionis' - arrived at the date of 1314 BC for the new cycle (60).
Edgerton, however, suggested that an 'arcus visionis' of 9 degrees was
probably too high, and that its correct value would better be estimated
at 8.5 degrees (61). Thus, as the matter stood, Rowton considered that
the lowest possible date for the beginning of the Sothic cycle was 1312
BC; and for the death of Akhnaton, 1353 BC, "if the Menophres theory be
accepted" (62).

Now since, as will be seen in our Astronomical Appendix, the most recent
observations seem to have confirmed Edgerton's view, then a lowering of
the date for the Sothic cycle is required; for, to retain the lowest
possible date of 1358 BC, approximately, would - according to Rowton's
assessment of the situation - leave a noticeable discrepancy between the
estimate of the Egyptologists and the modern calculations for the "Era
of Menophres".

Rowton's Summary

Conveniently, Rowton has summarised as follows the position at which he
had arrived regarding the "Era of Menophres" in its presumed relation to
his Mesopotamian data (63):

(a) the Mesopotamian evidence is opposed to the Menophres theory;
(b) the latter theory requires a number of risky assumptions;
(c) there exists an alternative explanation of the term "Menophres" (=
Memphis) which requires only one plausible assumption;
(d) the basic premise upon which the theory rests - viz. Theon's opinion
that Menophres was a king - is seen to be an extremely uncertain quantity.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTES:

(1) Theon of Alexandria, Schol. ad Arati Phaenomena.
(2) Lepsius, R., Königsbuch der Alten Ägypter (Berlin, 1858), 123.
(3) Long, R., "A Re-examination of the Sothic Chronology of Egypt",
Orientalia 43 (1974), 269.
4) Meyer, E., Ägyptische Chronologie, 28-29. My translation taken from
the French version of it in F. Crombette's Chronologie, 225.
(5) Ibid., 29-30.
(6) It should be noted that between the first of Thoth of the first year
AD, and the first of Thoth of the first year BC, there are not two
years, but actually only one. Between a certain date (or day) in the
year 139 AD and the corresponding date of the year 1322 BC, there are
1460 and not 1461 years. Therefore the year 1322 BC is but -1321 in
astronomical computations. The difference between the "historical" and
the "astronomical" dates is that the latter assumes that there was not
any year 0.
(7) Long, op. cit., 274.
(8) See M. Rowton's "Mesopotamian Chronology and the 'Era of
Menophres'", IRAQ VIII (1946), 94-110.
(9) Long, op. cit., 108-109.
(10) Rowton, op. cit., 109.
(11) Biot, J., Sur la periode sothiaque, 21. Cf. J. Cerny's "Note on the
supposed beginning of a Sothic period under Sethos I", JEA 47 (1961), 152.
(12) Rowton, op. cit., n.1; with reference to Olympiodorus (Aristot.
Meteor, 25, 1).
(13) Gauthier, G., Dictionnaire des Noms Geographiques (1926), III, 38.
(14) Hall, H., "Chronology", CAH 3 (1923), 281, n.2.
(15) Montet, P., Comptes rendus de l'Acad. des Inscr. (1937), 419.
(16) Rowton, op. cit., 109.
(17) Struve, W., "Die Aera 'apo Menophreos' und die XIX. Dynastie
Manethos", ZAS 63, (1967), 46. Struve wrote: "... die Identifikation des
Thronnamens Ramses I ... 'Mn-phtj-R' ' ... mit ... {greek.} ... dass
Mn-phtj-R', in griechischer Transkription etwa {greek.}, in
verstaendlicher Weise wohl kaum palaeographisch zu {greek.} werden kann".
(18) Rowton, op. cit., 109.
(19) Long, op. cit., 269; with reference to Lepsius, op. cit., 127.
(20) Lepsius, op. cit., 127. He wrote: "Es begegnet uns aber in den
Manethonischen Listen der Name {greek.} oder {greek.} ...".
(21) Meyer, Ägyptische Chronologie, 29 & 30.
(22) Lepsius, op. cit., ibid.
(23) Meyer, E., Geschichte des Altertums, II (1) (1928), 341.
(24) Rowton, op. cit., 110, n.1.
(25) Hall, H., The Ancient History of the Near East (Methuen, 1913), 19.
(26) Hall, H., CAH I, 168.
(27) Cerny, op. cit., 152.
(28) Long, op. cit., 269-270.
(29) Sethe, K., "Sethos I. und die Erneuerung der Hundssternperiode",
ZAS 66, 1f.
(30) Ref. LD III, 128a, and Cairo ostracon Cat 25704; as noted by Sethe,
ibid., 4. Sethe's phrase is: "Wiederholung der Geburt". It should also
be noted that, according to Gardiner in Egypt of the Pharaohs (p.127),
Ammenemes I of the Twelfth Dynasty had the "epithet Weham-meswe
'Repeater of Births'" as his Horus name.
(31) Sethe, ibid. See also his footnote 2 on the same page. Sethe wrote:
"Dass dieses Datum Sethos I. gehoert und nicht dem letzten Ramessiden
der 20. Dyn. ...".
(32) Kitchen, K., The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (Warminster,
1986), 248.
(33) See K. Sethe. "Sethos", 4 & 6-7. He reads: "Beginn einer neuen
Sothisperiode". Sethe also used this phrase, "Regierungsbeginns".
(34) See Sethe, ibid., 2.
(35) See Cerny, "Note", 150.
(36) Sethe, op. cit., 2-3. He translated these parts of the hieroglyphs
as follows: "Anfang der Ewigkeit (nhh), Beginn ..."; and "... als Anfang
einer langen Zeitfolge oder geradezu gesagt als eine Epoche".
(37) Ibid., 4 & 6-7. Sethe used the phrase, "renascens oder renatus".
(38) Cerny, op. cit., 150.
(39) Griffith, F., "The Abydos Decree of Seti I at Nauri", JEA 13
(1927), 196.
(40) Sethe, op. cit., ibid.
(41) Poole, R., The Chronology of Ancient Egypt (1851), 33.
(42) Ibid., 36.
(43) Rowton, "Mesopotamian Chronology", 108.
(44) Ibid., with reference to Albright, JNES 21.
(45) Ibid.
(46) See Struve, "Aera", 47. Struve wrote: "Er hatte ja die grauenvolle
Tat des Osiris-mordes auf sich geladen ... das Bild des Seth und seinem
Namen auszumeisseln, wo man ihn fand".
(47) Rowton, op. cit., ibid.
(48) Sethe, "Sethos", 1-2.
(49) Rowton, op. cit., ibid.
(50) Cerny, "Note", 151.
(51) Ibid. The statue was found by Bruyere (see his Rapport sur les
fouilles de Deir el Medineh, 1935-1940, II, 56-57; pls. xii and xxxv.
Now in Cairo J 72000).
(52) Cerny, ibid; with reference to Sethe's "Die Zeitrechnung der alten
Ägypter", Nachrichten der K. Ges. d. Wiss. I (1919), 309.
(53) Ibid; with reference to Struve, op. cit., 45ff.
(54) Ibid., 152.
(55) Rowton, op. cit.
(56) Ibid., 103.
(57) Ibid. His emphasis.
(58) Ibid; with reference to Weidner's AFO, V, 184f; and also to S.
Smith's AJA XLIX, 19.
(59) Ibid., 104.
(60) Ibid., 107; with reference to Borchardt and Neugebauer (also Sewell).
(61) Edgerton, W., AJSL LIII, 192; and also JNES I, 309.
(62) Rowton, op. cit., ibid.
(63) Ibid., 109.
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CHAPTER NINE: DECREE OF CANOPUS

Introduction

More than sixty years after the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, a second
three-script text (i.e. Greek, hieroglyphic; and demotic Egyptian) was
found, in 1866, at Tanis. This was the Decree of Canopus. Engraved as it
was on a slab of stone, this decree had been promulgated by a synod of
Egyptian priests representing all Egypt and meeting at the temple of the
"gods Euergetai" at Canopus (on the western, or 'Canopic' mouth of the
Nile Delta). Hence its name.

Basically, according to Meyer's interpretation (1), the Decree of
Canopus had recorded that the festival day of the rising of the star of
Isis (which Meyer rendered in the Greek form of 'Icioc') had occurred on
Payni 1, in the ninth year of pharaoh Ptolemy III "Euergetes" I (247-221
BC). Meyer dated Ptolemy's ninth year to the era, 22nd October 239 BC to
21st October 238 BC, and he dated the specific event of the star's
rising - according to this decree - to the 19th July, 238 BC. As to the
identification of this star, represented hieroglyphically in the
tri-lingual decree as , Meyer believed it to be Sothis.

Description of the Canopus Text

The complete text is 75 lines long in the Greek version. Structurally,
it is not entirely straightforward. Van Oosterhout, with reference to
Spiegelberg's Greek version (2), has explained how one might break down
the text into its natural parts, to assist with the reading and
interpretation of it. Each integral section of the text, he suggests, is
connected by "and" (Greek: 'kai'). Firstly the author(s) provide the
raison d'etre of each section, introduced by one or other of the
following: "as", "because", "in order to", "if", and so on. Then follows
a description of what has to be done, beginning with "to".

From the text we learn how the priests had decreed that a festival
should be celebrated every year on Payni 1 - festival day of the star's
rising - in honour of Ptolemy and his wife, Berenice. Now, because of
the inherent deficiency of the Egyptian civil year, the synod had
ordained at Canopus that, every four years, a special day (we call it a
'Leap Year') should be added to the calendar and celebrated as a feast
in honour of the "Theoi Euergetai" (line 34).

If, as the text goes on to read (line 36), the rising of the star of
Isis moved to another day in the course of the four years, then the
festival in honour of the royal "Benefactor Gods" should nevertheless
still be celebrated on Payni 1, with a sixth epagomenal day (see also
lines 44-46) to be added to the year. The Canopus Decree further
recorded that the month Mesore of Ptolemy's ninth regnal year was after
the promulgation of the decree on Tybi 17 of the same year.

Finally it is noted that there had been a 'katastasis', or a change in
the state of things, not long before the decree was promulgated; this
alteration being one of the reasons for the decree's being issued.

Below are reproduced some fragments of the Greek version of the Canopus
document (3):

The second fragment is kept separate because it includes the
all-important lines 44-46, regarding the continuation of the festival on
Payni 1, and the insertion of a sixth epagomenal day (a method to be
known later as a "Julian reform"):

Consistent, however, with Meyer's theory of an unaltered calendar
throughout Egyptian history, the Egyptian people absolutely rejected the
proposed reform so that it failed to become established.

The Decree and the Question of Calendrical Reform

Probably the most significant aspect of the Decree of Canopus from the
point of view of Meyer's Sothic theory is its raising of the vital
question of calendrical reform in Egypt. We recall that, indispensable
to Meyer's hypothesis was the presumption that no alteration or
modification of the Egyptian calendar had been enacted during the course
of Egyptian history. Now commentators have been divided as to whether,
within the context of what happened at Canopus, Meyer was right or wrong
in clinging to such a view.

Below we are going to look at some of the representative arguments that
commentators have offered either in support of, or against, this
fundamental Sothic hypothesis.

Anti-Reform

Winlock (4) was one who supported Meyer in his view that the Egyptian
calendar was never reformed; even going so far as to say that the Decree
of Canopus constituted "definite proof that a fixed calendar was unknown
to the Egyptians in the IIIrd century BC". And, as Winlock further
observed, in this decree (5):

"... no reference is made to the idea being native to Egypt, and in fact
it appears to have been regarded by the Egyptian people as an abhorrent
foreign innovation with which they would have absolutely nothing to do,
in spite of the fact that it was said to have the sanction of their own
priesthood".

Whether it be for religious reasons or otherwise, the Egyptian people at
this point in time positively resisted an attempt to make their
wandering year equal to the astronomical year. Probably to a pragmatic
Greek like Ptolemy III, this insistence on their part of retaining so
technically inadequate a civil calendar must have been incomprehensible.
Ptolemy was also a dictator, and he would have had no qualms about
attempting to adjust the Egyptian calendar unalterably to the seasons as
they stood in 238 BC, inconvenient though that would seem to be.
According to the Decree of Canopus, Ptolemy had determined that an
intercalary day be added, in every fourth year, to the five epagomenal
festivals of the gods (6): "... in order that it may not occur that some
of the national feasts kept in winter may come in time to be kept in
summer ... as has formerly happened".

The resistance of the Egyptian people to Ptolemy's plan must have been a
tremendously unified one for it to end up as a 'dead letter'. On this
score, Long has wondered if perhaps the Egyptian people rejected the
Ptolemaic reform (7): "... because they had strong feelings about the
inclusion of a usurping, mortal, foreigner into a body of quite ancient
and special beings ... [or was it] a distaste for calendar reform itself?"

Winlock (8), seeking to strengthen further his argument anti-reform,
reminded the reader that the native Egyptians did not make use of the
Julian Year as their main calendar "until they had given up their own
religion and had adopted Christianity"; an argument that seems to favour
the contention that religious motives were behind the Egyptians'
tenacity in clinging to the traditional calendar. Winlock went on to
observe that the whole history of a year with intercalations, as we see
it in Classical times, "is a history of an innovation obnoxiously
foreign to the native Egyptian", and that: "There is no hint in the
whole four centuries and a half covered by the classical literature that
the Egyptians had any memory of ever having used a fixed year or ever
having recognized its desirability".

Basically Parker (9) concurred with these views, noting - with regard to
the Decree of Canopus - that "the one time an attempt [at reform] was
made ... it failed completely". (We have already discussed Parker's
complete rejection of the possibility that the Egyptians had ever
reformed their calendar).

Pro-Reform

Others however, considering the situation at Canopus, spoke of the
likelihood of calendrical reform in Egypt. Crombette (10), for instance,
believed that the significance of the Ptolemaic reform lay in the fact -
as he thought - that a Sothic cycle of 1460 years had been completed
since the presumed Hyksos reform. Crombette also held that the reason
why the Egyptians had doggedly resisted calendrical reform was because
their calendar was based on astrology or magic. He attributed the
Ptolemaic initiative of introducing a sixth epagomenal day every four
years to "Greek realism".

Similarly, Long (11) reasoned that the rejection of Ptolemy's plan for
reform was not sufficient proof alone that "the Egyptians never adjusted
their calendar to align it with the seasons and proper festive
occasions". And he added in regard to a distinction between two possible
types of calendar reform:

"Adjustment of a calendar and increasing the length of the year are two
completely separate forms in calendation. Correction of the seasons with
the proper months could be effected without the addition to or
subtraction from the total length of the year".

According to Long's estimation, Payni 1 fell near the rising of Sirius
(which event he placed at July 19-22) in 238 BC, and Thoth 1 (170 days
away) occurred on October 22 of the same year. This data, he claimed,
co-ordinated "perfectly with Censorinus, making the existence of a
continuous Sothic cycle in the first millennium BC a firm proposition".

Van Oosterhout (12), for his part, noted with regard to Canopus that the
customary denial of reform was generally accompanied by a reference to a
particular text of Nigidius Figulus, which text van Oosterhout
translated as follows (13):

"... before being invested with the regalia the king [of Egypt] was led
by the priest of Isis to the inner sanctuary of the Apis temple at
Memphis where he had to swear solemnly that he would not intercalate
months or days and that he would hold to the year of 365 days,
instituted of old ...".

According to van Oosterhout's interpretation, whilst this text gave
proof that a calendar reform was viewed by the Egyptians as a grave
offence, it did "not guarantee the absence of such reforms [but very
likely proved] the exact opposite .... Preventative actions generally
are taken after trespassing" (14). It was "understandable", he said,
that Egyptologists should deny the occurrence of any calendrical reform
in Egypt: "... because unexplained reforms would rob Egyptian absolute
chronology of its foundation [whereas a] well-defined reform will lead
to other results but does not harm the method".

Courville, in a discussion of the limitations of certain dating methods,
has devoted a section (15) to the issue of calendrical reform in ancient
Egypt. Even after the abandonment of Meyer's theory relative to the
introduction of a Sothic calendar in 4240 BC, he writes, the use of the
method must still presume:

"... that no alterations in the calendar occurred between the XIIth
Dynasty and the time of Censorinus which involved the length of the
calendar year or the position of the months in the single year. A single
such alteration in this interim would invalidate all calculations and
conclusions from this dating method for periods prior to such change".

Courville found what he called "a number of evidences" indicating to him
that there had been changes in the Egyptian calendar after the Twelfth
Dynasty era. Not surprisingly, the first two of these he mentions
pertain to the Hyksos. Courville begins by citing what he calls a "note
appended to the name of King Aseth, one of the late Hyksos kings, whose
name appears in the Sothis king list", in which it is stated that (16):
"This king added the 5 intercalary days to the year: in his reign, they
say, the Egyptian year became a year of 365 days, being previously
reckoned as 360 days only".

Another version of Manetho (17), Courville added, credits the same
calendar alteration to the Hyksos king, Saites, at an earlier date. Of
the two difficulties to which Courville points in regard to Manetho's
testimony here, - namely, the apparent contradiction between these two
notes and the "reliability" of the first, or appended note - it is the
latter about which he shows the more concern. For, as he suggests in
regard to the former possibility (18): "These two records are not
necessarily contradictory, since the two kings may have introduced the
change in different parts of Egypt in the two cases".

Against any suggestion that the first note has no significance because,
as he says, "it is otherwise known that the 365 day year was in use as
far back as the Vth Dynasty", Courville explains that it is possible for
the calendar to have been altered from 365 days to 360 days when the
Hyksos invaded Egypt, and then returned to the 365 day year at the time
of Aseth. He thought it "not illogical" to suggest that the Hyksos
brought their own calendar with them when they came to Egypt.

Courville's second line of argument pro-reform is what he refers to as
the "considerable evidence to indicate that the first month of the
Egyptian calendar did not remain unaltered during this period", from
2000 BC to 140 AD. By the year 721 BC, at least, he says with reference
to MacNaughton (19), the month Thoth was the first month of the Egyptian
calendar. From inscriptions dealing with New Year ceremonies of an
earlier era, Brugsch - he added - deduced that the month Hathor was then
the first month of the year (20). Again, the "Ebers papyrus definitely
gives the month Menkhet as the first month of the year" (21). Finally he
writes that in the Twentieth Dynasty, "Hathor is the 4th month and
Mesorii is the first" (22).

A Closer Examination of the Canopus Document

(a) Which is the correct version?

As we discovered at the beginning of this chapter, the Decree of Canopus
has survived in its three-script form. Now whilst, as Spiegelberg (23)
has said, it is generally accepted that the Greek text is the original
(the two Egyptian versions being translations), not all are agreed.
Perhaps the best known amongst those who disagree is Mahaffy (24), who
has presented his case for the demotic script's being the original.
Mahaffy's argument may be summarised along the following lines:

It was almost "certain", he suggested, that the Synod of Egyptian
priests, meeting at Canopus for the transaction of their own business,
"with no foreigner present discussed this business in the native tongue,
and had their resolutions taken down by their secretaries in demotic
script". Then, he said, they would have "had recourse to interpreters on
the one hand, with whom they concocted a Greek version for the Ptolemaic
court; on the other, to the department of their own body that understood
hieroglyphs ... to compose the version which would give a sacred and
dignified character to their proclamation".

(b) The Date of the Decree

It must also be said that there is further controversy regarding the
correct dating-method used in the decree. We do not intend to go into
the matter in any detail, however, but simply wish to make the point
that there is some disagreement here as to the right interpretation of
the Canopus text.

Basically the problem is this: Did Ptolemy III "Euergetes" reckon his
regnal years according to Macedonian, or to Egyptian, dating, or both?
Parker (25) and Wheeler (26) both believed that Ptolemy used Macedonian
and Egyptian reckoning. Parker's basic line of argument was that,
wherever double dates occurred in the text, the Macedonian date came
first. "This shows that the regnal years are Macedonian", he said.
Wheeler, for his part, pointed out what he called a "difficulty" with
the Canopus date of Payni 1, since - as he thought - the month Payni, in
the 9th Macedonian year, was not the same as the month Payni in the 9th
Egyptian year.

Van Oosterhout (27) however was not entirely satisfied with either of
these arguments. He referred to that of Parker as "weak"; rejecting the
latter's opinion because he himself believed that the only double date
had occurred at the beginning of the Decree of Canopus, "where it is
part of a very complete description of the date of this official document".

Regarding the view of Wheeler and Parker, that Ptolemy may have reckoned
according to both systems of dating, van Oosterhout (whilst conceding
that both systems may possibly have been used in the decree) considered
it as highly unlikely that the document would use "both types of regnal
year without distinguishing between them" (28). And he added that,
whereas the dates of the Macedonian pharaoh's accession to the throne
were given in the Macedonian calendar alone, all the rest of the dates
were given in the Egyptian calendar alone (29).

Alternative Identifications of the 'Spd-t' Star

We conclude this chapter with some brief remarks about a subject that
will be properly dealt with in Appendix B - viz. the identification of
the star, Sothis. Amongst those who have proposed identifications other
than Sirius for the star, some at least have asked, with the Decree of
Canopus in mind: Could 'spdt' possibly refer to the star Canopus? After
Sirius, which is the most brilliant amongst the fixed stars, comes
Canopus. Astronomers, in fact, generally tend to regard Canopus as being
much larger and more brilliant than Sirius, considering that it is
supposed to be much further from the earth than is the latter.

Given that the decree fixing the New Year on the annual rising of
'spd-t' was proclaimed by the conclave of priests assembled at the town
of Canopus (the Greek name of 'Per-gute' in Egyptian), the suggestion
was probably at least worth making.

Yet others have based their case for re-identifying the star upon the
fact that the Decree of Canopus refers, not to one, but to two stars.
According to these, the usual practice of assuming that the decree is
referring in both instances to the same star, needs serious
reconsideration. This interesting viewpoint also will be suitably
addressed in Appendix B.

Concluding Remark

Amongst the various points raised in this chapter, two major issues
stand out. These are: the all-important question of calendrical reform
and the identification of Sothis. Both are of crucial importance to the
Sothic theory inasmuch as, had Meyer erred in denying on the one hand
that the Egyptian calendar was ever reformed, and on the other in his
identifying Sothis with Sirius, his whole edifice collapses.

We shall continue to discuss the question of calendrical reform in the
following chapters. As said above, the matter of identifying Sothis will
be confined to Appendix B.

NOTES:

(1) Meyer, E., Aegyptische Chronologie, 23.
(2) Oosterhout, van G., "The Heliacal Rising of Sirius", Studs. in
Astronomical Chronology 1 (1989), cf. 16 & 34; with reference to W.
Spiegelberg's Die demotischen und hieroglyphischen Texte der Dekrete von
Kanopus 239/8 v. Chr. un Memphis (Rosettana) 197/6 v. Chr. (Heidelberg,
1922).
(3) Fragments of Greek text (pp. 170 & 171), taken from Spiegelberg, Die
demotischen und hieroglyphischen. See footnote 1.
(4) Winlock, H., "The Origin of the Ancient Egyptian Calendar", Proc. of
the APS 83 (1940), 451, n.16.
(5) Ibid., 451-452.
(6) Quotation from ibid., 451, n.16.
(7) Long, R., "A Re-examination of the Sothic Chronology of Egypt",
Orientalia 43 (1974), 272.
(8) Winlock, op. cit., 452.
(9) Parker, R., "Sothic Dates and Calendar 'Adjustment'", R dE 9 (1952),
211. Q.v. his "Calendars ...", #268.
(10) Crombette, F., Chronologie de l"Egypte (Tournai, Belgium), 243.
(11) Long, op. cit., ibid.
(12) Oosterhout, van G., Solar Eclipses and Sothic Dating (Delft, 1989), 4.
(13) Ibid; in which the author makes reference (with regard to Nigidius
Figulus) to F. Ginzel's Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen
Chronologie, Bd. I (Leipzig, 1909).
(14) Oosterhout, Solar.
(15) Courville, D., The Exodus Problem and Its Ramifications, Vol.II
(Loma Linda, 1971), Ch. IV, section V, 60-62.
(16) Ibid., 60; with reference to Manetho's Aegyptica, trans. by Waddel
(1956), 241. See note after name, Aseth, in the Sothis list.
(17) Manetho, op. cit., 99.
(18) Courville, op. cit., 60-61.
(19) MacNaughton, D., A Scheme of Egyptian Chronology (1932), 249.
(20) Ibid; with reference to Brugsch.
(21) The writer, however, has not been able to pick up this information
in the lengthy Ebers document.
(22) Courville, op. cit., ibid; with reference to MacNaughton, Scheme, ibid.
(23) Spiegelberg, W., Das Verhaeltnis der griechischen und aegyptischen
Texte in den zweisprachigen Dekreten von Rosette und Kanopus, Schrift 5
(Berlin, 1922).
(24) Mahaffy, J., The Empire of the Ptolemies (Macmillan, 1895), 226-228.
(25) Parker, R., "The Sothic dating of the twelfth and eighteenth
dynasties", Studs. in Ancient Oriental Civilization 39 (1977), 177.
(26) Wheeler, G., "The Chronology of the twelfth dynasty", JEA 9 (1923),
196.
(27) Oosterhout, "Heliacal", 18 & 19.
(28) Ibid., 20.
(29) Ibid., 16.
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