Do you already have a new calendar? Well, it has been running for four days in 2023, since we were with relatives, happy watching or attending the countdown to the 2022 to 2023 transition, with spectacular fireworks shows from many cities around the world, and we still have to wait 361 days to celebrate the next new year.
What happened last year and whatever your resolution for this new year, make sure you get a new calendar, right? 😀 Even though you don’t buy it every day or every month, this calendar has an important benefit for all of us.
The Origins of The Calendar
Historical essays on this occasion will find the origin of the calendar system that is widely used in the world, as today will be the 4th day in 2023. Let us decide to look at the inventions of Ancient Egypt and we are going to look into ancient inventions that we probably use in modern times or a version that we use in modern times.
This post based on a video in the History with Kayleigh channel, Which tells the following explanation:
The calendar we use in modern times is based on the cycles of the Earth revolution to the Sun and Moon to the Earth. Our calendar is divided by 12 months with either 30 or 31 days and February with 28 days, which makes up a total of 365 days, unless, of course, it’s a leap year (i.e., every 4 years) with 29 days in February, making a leap year 366 days.
This all sounds very straight forward, probably many of you who celebrate New Years Day, but didn’t know that the origins of the calender system are all the way back from Ancient Egypt.
Original Lunar Calendar
The ancient Egyptians really invented a lot. Many people think that the calendar we use today comes from ancient Rome, which is the version we use today, known as the Gregorian calendar, but in fact the basics have been discovered and used in ancient Egypt for several thousand years.
The first calendar used by the Ancient Egyptians was a lunar-based calendar in combination with the seasonal appearance of the Star Sirius. This corresponded closely to the true solar year, although it was 12 minutes shorter.
Eventually, over the centuries, difficulties arose because the solar and lunar years are quite incompatible, so they invented a schematic civil year to fix the issue.
Civil Calendar
The calendar that eventually was used in ancient Egypt is known as the civil calendar, which is seen as a Lunar Solar Calendar, meaning it was based on the observation of the lunar cycle in relation to the solar year.
— Historical Eve
This Calendar is known to have been in use as early as the Reign of Pharaoh Djer during the 1st Dynasty around 3000 BCE. Yearly records were being kept about the annual Nile river flood’s high-water mark, in combination with the astrological knowledge that was in use as early as 5000 BCE at the Nabta Playa Stone Circles.
— The Human Origin Project
The ancient Egyptian civil calendar was divided by 12 months of 30 days and 5 extra days at the end, making the year 365 days long. Their year did not have 4 seasons with a duration of 3 months like we have in modern times, but their year was divided into 3 seasons that had a duration of 4 months.
— Reference
The names of the seasons are based on the water in the river Nile. The 3 seasons are known as:
Inundation – this is when the Nile River overflows onto agricultural land.
Going Forth – this is the growing season when the water of the Nile returns to its normal bottom.
Shortage – this is the harvest season and when the waters of the Nile are at their lowest.
The months are simply numbered according to the season. For example, February will be known as Second Flood Month. Because the first day of the Puddle is the first day of the first Moon of the new year.
Another fascinating thing the Egyptians did that no other civilization did at that time was to start their day at sunrise after the moon disappeared just before dawn. Other civilizations at the time started their day at sunset as the sun disappeared below the horizon.
— Festival Travel Egypt
The civil calendar is no longer connected to the lunar calendar, although the inhabitants of ancient Egypt and their religious activities still adhered to the lunar calendar.
Second Lunar Calendar
Over time, this becomes a problem because the difference between the two becomes clear and starts to become a problem.
For example, every 4 years the lunar calendar will lag behind the civil calendar by 1 day, and then it will take 1460 years before the 2 calendars are aligned again. This time period of 1460 years is known as the Sothic Cycle.
This is quite a problem. So, the ancient Egyptians created another calendar to deal with this. This newly invented calendar is known as the Second Lunar Calendar, works much the same as the original lunar calendar, other than the fact that if the first day of the lunar year comes before the first day of the civil year, they agree to add a month to the second lunar calendar. Later they also added a 25-year cycle to this calendar.
This means that the ancient Egyptians lived on 3 calendars that were used for different purposes.
Original Lunar Calendar used for Agriculture,
The Civil Calendar is used for administrative and government related tasks and,
The Second Lunar Calendar, which was established based on the civil calendar, doesn’t have Sirius sightings on the original lunar calendar.
And of course, the ancient Egyptians didn’t have the modern knowledge of leap days needed every 4 years to keep the date in relation to the sun absolutely precise as we do in modern times.
Not until the Gregory XIII Pope added a small modification to the Julian calendar discovered by the Romans to adjust deviations in the tropical or known sun.
Therefore, the calendar space in the years of jumps makes the average year 365,2425 days, but the tropical year will be 365,2422 the right days.
— Dreamstime
There are rules for the years of jumps applied by the Pope in force as follows;
Every year that can be divided into four years is a leap year, except for many years, it can be divided by 100, but this second year is The jump year if they can really be divided by 400. For example, in 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not the year of jumps, but in 1600 and 2000 they were.
To think that thousands of years ago, it became the basis of our modern calendar was discovered by ancient Egyptians. They are very knowledgeable people.
I am still amazed about their civilization and, for me, they are truly the biggest civilization ever roaming on this planet. The origin of the clock, which, besides the sun, was used in Sumer in ancient times, is also a discovery by ancient Egyptians because they had created water clocks.
If you are interested in watching, here I embed the video for you. Also, you can visit and follow her channel.
