I want to remind the reader of the problem defined by Gardner which was that the numbers of kings and years of reign given by the sources of Manetho result in “a stretch of 1590 years, over seven times the duration to which acceptance of the Sothic date in the El-Lahun papyrus has committed us.”
Gardner tells us why this just can’t be:
To abandon 1786 BC as the year when Dyn. 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 of the entire Middle East.326
Sothis: The Sharp Toothed
As it happens, all the archaeological dating in the Mediterranean has been suspended upon Egyptian chronology under the influence of foundations laid by believers in the Biblical chronology. What is more, all of their dates rely upon two major assumptions:
the Sothic Cycle and the identification of the Egyptian King Shoshenq I with the Biblical King Shishak, the Egyptian ruler who came against Rehoboam and took “all” the treasures of Solomon’s Temple and “Solomon’s house.”
It is understood that Manetho only included 30 dynasties, the 31st being added later for the sake of completeness. However, the fact is,
there are no original copies of The Egyptian History by Manetho. All we have of his work are excerpts cited by Josephus, the Jewish historian of the first century AD, and by two important Christian chronographers, Sextus Julius Africanus (3rd century AD), and Eusebius (4th century AD). George the Monk, Syncellus, used both Africanus and Eusebius extensively as his sources in his history of the world written in 800 AD. It is fairly easy to realize that all three of these men had agendas. We also note, once again, the period of time in which they were writing, and the fruits of their efforts in terms of the imposition of Christianity based on the platform of Judaism, the ultimate arbiter of the “you are doomed” linear view of Time.
It is regularly claimed that Egyptian chronology is based on “astronomical dating.” What does this mean? It actually means that Egyptian dating is based on a
theory that the Egyptians used astronomical dating. But many people do not realize this and believe that Egyptian chronology is actually based on astronomy. The fact is there are astronomically fixed Near Eastern dates, but they are not Egyptian dates. Two Babylonian cuneiform tablets have been found, each one filled with an entire year of data on the sun, planets, and eclipses. These dates fix two years: part of 568 / 567 B.C. and part of 523 / 522 B.C. Those are our oldest astronomically fixed dates. There is one other older Near Eastern eclipse, noted by the Assyrians, which has enough partial data to fix it at one of two years: it applies either to 763 BC or 791 BC. But experts do not agree on which date this eclipse occurred.
When we dig even deeper into these dating assumptions, we find that the main peg upon which the assumptions are hung is called the “Sothic cycle.”
What is the Sothic cycle?
The experts tell us that the Egyptian civil year had 365 days - 3 seasons (Akhet, Peret, Shemu), 4 months each with 30 days per month. To this, they added 5 additional epagomenal days. Since the actual orbit of the earth around the sun takes 365 and about a quarter days, this calendar falls behind by one day every four years. Nowadays, we correct this by adding an extra day every four years in a “leap year.” However, if no calendar corrections are made, such a year would soon create significant problems (the experts say.) How the Egyptians dealt with this was a matter of some conjecture, and it was finally decided that they corrected their calendar every 1460 years at the time of the heliacal rising of Sirius.
Where did this idea come from?
Our information on the alleged Sothic cycle depends largely on the late classical writers Censorinus (ca. 238 AD) and Theon (379-395 AD). Sir William Flinders Petrie writes, referring to a table of purported observations of Sirius:
Now in going backward the first great datum that we meet is that on the back of the medical Ebers papyrus, where it is stated that Sirius rose on the 9th of Epiphi in the 9th year of Amenhotep I. As the 9th of Epiphi is 56 days before the 1st of Thoth, Sirius rose on that day at 4 X 56 years (224) before the dates at the head of the first column. As only 1322 B.C. can be the epoch here, so 1322 + 224 = 1546 B.C. for the 9th year of Amenhotep I, or 1554 B.C. for his accession. And as Aahmes I reigned 25 years, we reach 1579 B.C. for the accession of Aahmes and the beginning of the XVIIIth dynasty. This is not defined within a few years owing to four years being the equivalent of only one day’s shift; owing to the rising being perhaps observed in a different part of Egypt at different times; owing to various minor astronomical details. But this gives us 1580 B.C. as the approximate date for the great epoch of the rise of the XVIIIth dynasty. 327
We will soon discover that there is significant reason to discard the above dates, but for now, we can just notice that even with such a great system, Petrie - as did Gardner - is still having some problems here.
Before that we next find another Sirius rising and two seasonal dates in the XIIth dynasty, and an indication of a season in the VIth dynasty. The most exact of these early dates is a rising of Sirius on the 17th of Pharmuthi in the 7th year of Senusert III, on a papyrus from Kahun. This is now in Berlin, and was published by BORCHARDT in Zeits. Aeg. Spr., xxxvii, 99-101. This shows that the 17th of Pharmuthi then fell on July 21st, which gives the 7th year of Senusert III at 1874 or 3334 B.C. As he reigned probably to his 38th year, he died 1843 or 3303 B.C. Amenemhat III reigned 44 years by his monuments, Amenemhat IV 9 years, and Sebekneferu 4 years by the Turin papyrus; these reigns bring the close of the XIIth dynasty to 1786 or 3246 B.C. We have, then, to decide by the internal evidence of the monuments of the kings which of these dates is probable, by seeing whether the interval of the XIIIth to XVIIth dynasties was 1,786 - 1,580 = 206 years, or else 1,666 years. This question has been merely ignored hitherto, and it has been assumed by all the Berlin school that the later date is the only one possible, and that the interval was only 206 years.328
Please notice that this only other “Sirius rising” is dated to either 1874 or 3334 BC. That’s quite a jump. You would think that in all those
thousands of years, if they observed this every year, they would write it down more often. But Petrie struggles on mightily to fit the square peg in the round hole:
Setting aside altogether for the present the details of the list of Manetho, let us look only to the monuments, and the Turin papyrus of kings, which was written with full materials concerning this age, with a long list of kings, and only two or three centuries later than the period in question. On the monuments we have the names of 17 kings of the XIIIth dynasty. In the Turin papyrus there are the lengths of reigns of 9 kings, amounting to 67 years, or 7 years each on an average. If we apply this average length of reign to only the 17 kings whose reigns are proved by monuments, we must allow them 120 years; leaving out of account entirely about 40 kings in the Turin papyrus, as being not yet known on monuments. Of the Hyksos kings we know of the monuments of three certainly; and without here adopting the long reigns stated by Manetho, we must yet allow at least 30 years for these kings. And in the XVIIth dynasty there are at least the reigns of Kames and Sekhent.neb.ra, which cover probably 10 years. […]This leaves us but 46 years, out of the 206 years, to contain 120 kings named by the Turin papyrus, and all the Hyksos conquest and domination, excepting 30 years named above.
This is apparently an impossible state of affairs; and those who advocate this shorter interval are even compelled to throw over the Turin papyrus altogether, and to say that within two or three centuries of the events an entirely false account of the period was adopted as the state history of the Egyptians.
This difficulty has been so great that many scholars in Germany, and every one in the rest of Europe, have declined to accept this view. If, however, the Sirius datum is to be respected, we should be obliged to allow either 206 or else 1,666 years between the XIIth and XVIIIth dynasties. As neither of these seemed probable courses, it has been thought that the Sirius datum itself was possibly in error, and here the matter has rested awaiting fresh evidence. 329
At this point, Petrie has almost fallen on his face on the very clue that would lead him out of the dilemma. To see him state it so clearly, and then just stumble on in the dark is almost painful.
What do I mean? I mean that perhaps Sothis is not Sirius. And perhaps the “Sothic Cycle” was something altogether different.
To be clear, let’s look at these assumptions. First, it is assumed that a Sothic calendar was used in Egypt. We do not know that for a fact. We only know it because Censorinus said so. Censorinus wrote his idea rather late to be considered so great an authority. He was a Roman living in the third century AD who wrote de Die Natali, a work on ancient methods of computing time. What is more, Censorinus was highly praised by Cassiodorus, a converted Christian of about two centuries later, so we discover here that Censorinus’ work was very likely preserved because it was “approved,” while other works that may have contradicted his ideas may be lost to us.
The next big problem is the assumption of the beginning date of the Sothic cycle of 1,460-years. Again, Censorinus’ word was accepted despite the endless problems this assumption has created. As it happens, when one begins to investigate the issue more thoroughly, it is found that the dates based on this theoretical Sothic calendar do not agree with one another.330
In the end, we find that the most fundamental problem of all is that it is an assumption of modern Egyptologists that the word they have translated in the observations listed above - spd.t - is even Sirius at all!
A lot of people are sure that this is exactly what the Egyptians meant, but the fact is, no one really knows this for sure! The word that is translated as Sothis could have been something else! Another point is that, in the context above, it is not even certain what “rising” means. It could mean a star, or it could mean the rising of the river. It could also mean a ceremony that was to be conducted called the “Raising of Sothis.”
As we discussed in a previous chapter regarding observational astronomy, Sirius rises in the sky from any given vantage point once every 24 hours, but it cannot be seen during those times when the sun is in the sky. The so-called heliacal rising of Sirius would have to occur at least 36 minutes before the sun comes up in order to be seen, which presupposes a rather accurate time keeping method, which obviates the entire argument about a Sothic cycle to begin with.
Although it has been made the keystone of the absolute dating of ancient history, the chronology of ancient Egypt rests on a host of unproven assumptions. The whole structure is rendered even more shaky by the lateness and the fragmentary nature of most of the literary sources which are crucial for providing a skeleton for Egyptian chronology.
As noted, the basic organization of Egyptian history around 31 dynasties begins from the work of Manetho compiled in the 3rd century BC. Manetho’s records are supplemented and corrected by records recovered from the ancient monuments and archeological excavations of Egypt. Manetho’s work survives only in quotation. John Brug writes in The Astronomical Dating of Ancient History before 700 AD:
The use of astronomical calculations to decipher references to this Sothic cycle in ancient Egyptian records forms the foundation of all ancient chronology. Censorinus says:
‘The moon is not relevant to the “great year” of the Egyptians which we call the “Year of the Dog” in Greek and the “Year of the Little-Dog” in Latin, because it begins when the constellation or star “Little-Dog” [allegedly the modern Canis Major or Sirius] rises on the first day of the month which the Egyptians call “Thouth”. For their civil year has only 365 days without any intercalation. Thus a quadrennium among them is about one day shorter than the natural quadrennium, thus it is 1461 years before this “year” returns to the same beginning point. This “year” is called “heliacal” by some and “the divine year” by others.’ (Censorinus, De Die Natali, ch. 18, my translation).
Censorinus’ statement certainly is not exhaustive. It gives us little information about how this “great year” was used or when it came into use. It is certainly open to debate how applicable this description of the Egyptian calendar and astronomy is to the 2nd and 3rd millennia BC. It does not address the issue of changes in the nature of the Egyptian calendar which may have occurred over the millennia. We have no definite proof that the Egyptians were aware of dating long eras by the Sothic cycle in the 2nd millennium BC. Even if we grant that they did, we have no certain knowledge of the date when any Sothic cycle began.
Most historians presently accept the claim that Censorinus places the beginning of a Sothic cycle in about 140 AD and by extension in 1320 BC, 2780 BC and perhaps 4240 B.C. Censorinus says:
‘As among us so also among the Egyptians a number of “eras” are referred to in their literature, such as that which they call “of Nabonnasar” which began from the first year of his reign, which was 986 years ago. Another is called “of Philip” which is counted from the death of Alexander the Great which was 562 years ago. But the beginning of these is always from the first day of the month which the Egyptians call Thoth, which this year fell on the 7th day before the Calends of July [June 25], 100 years ago when Emperor Antoninus Pius was consul for the second time, and Bruttius Praesens was the other consul, the same day fell on the 12th [corrected to the 13th ] day before the Calends of August [July 21, corrected to July 20] at which time the “Little-Dog” usually rises in Egypt. Therefore it is possible to know that of that great year, which as I wrote above is called “solar” or “of the Little-Dog” or the “divine year,” now the hundredth year has passed. I have noted the beginnings of these years lest anyone think that they begin from January 1 or some other time, since the starting points chosen by the originators of these years are no less diverse than the opinions of philosophers. For that reason the natural year is said to begin by some at the new sun, that is the winter solstice, by others at the summer solstice, by others at the vernal equinox and by others at the autumnal equinox, by some at the rising of the Pleiades and by some at their setting, by many at the rising of “the Dog.”‘ (Censorinus, Ch. 21, my translation).
Again it is noteworthy how little Censorinus actually says and how much is deduced from his statement.
Censorinus is writing not to establish a system of chronology, but to discuss various dates for New Years Day in different cultures. He gives no specific date as the starting point for a Sothic Cycle as he does for the other eras which he mentions. All he does is give the date of the Julian calendar on which the first of Thoth fell in the year of his writing, which is well established as 238 or 239 AD and one hundred years earlier in 139 AD. In 238 AD the first of Thoth fell on about June 25 Julian. One hundred years earlier it fell on about July 20, which is the date The Little-Dog (supposedly Sothis) usually rises in Egypt. He seems to be referring to a conventional method of dating more than to an actual observation of the rising of Sothis on that date. […]
Besides lack of agreement of the time when a Sothic cycle began, this theory also faces other uncertainties. It is not certain how long a Sothic cycle lasts since there are other astronomic variables involved besides the precise length of the solar year. Calculations of the Sothic cycle have ranged from 1423 to 1506 years.
We do not know for sure with which star or constellation Sothis should be identified for all periods of Egyptian history. It is generally accepted that Sothis is the star which we call Sirius, although none of the sources gave any evidence for this from before classical times. Porphry in De Antro Nym harum says, “Near Cancer is Sothis which the Greeks call the Dog.” Solinus Polyhistor says that this star rises between July 19-21.
In Chapter 21 of his work, concerning Isis and Osiris, Plutarch says, “The soul of Isis is called ‘Dog’ by the Greeks and the soul of Horus is called Orion.” Since Sothis is identified with Isis in other Egyptian texts, and Sirius is called the Dog in Greek, we conclude that Sothis is the star which we-call Sirius. However there are a number of difficulties. At least the second half of Plutarch’s statement appears to be in error, because Orion is usually associated with Osiris not Horus. According to some Egyptologists Egyptian astronomical names did not always remain attached to the same celestial object. Osiris was first associated with Venus; later Osiris was associated with Jupiter. The planet Venus, which was first identified with Osiris, was later identified with Isis. Sometimes “right eye” is a title of Isis-Hathor, sometimes it is a title of the sun.
Plutarch also identifies Osiris with the constellation which the Greeks call Argo. The hieroglyphic triangle which represents Sothis also appears to represent the zodiacal light, and the Egyptians apparently knew both an Isis-Sothis and a Horus-Sothis. The term wp rnpt which refers to the rising of Sothis, also refers to the beginning of the civil year and the birthday of the king. Even the Greek word “Sirius” is not always attached to the same celestial object. Similar shifts and uncertainties apply to the identification of ancient astronomical names in general, for example, the constellations in Job.
According to the English astronomer Poole, Sirius was not on the horizon coincident with the rising of the sun on the Egyptian New Year’s Day in 140 BC, the date specified by Censorinus and those who follow him. Macnaughton set up a chronology based on the supposition that Sothis was Spica, not Sirius, as a way around this difficulty. Canopus and Venus are other candidates that have been suggested, perhaps less plausibly. Kenneth Brecher has revived the doubts about identifying the bright star referred to in records as Sothis/the Dog/Sirius with the star we call Sirius today. Babylonian and Roman sources as late as Ptolemy all call “Sirius” a red star. Seneca says it is redder than Mars. In his star catalog Ptolemy refers to the bright red star in the face of the Dog. He links Sirius with red stars like Aldebaran and Arcturus.
The star which we presently call Sirius is not a red star. No theory of stellar evolution offers any explanation for how a red star could become white in 2000 years, although much speculation has centered around possible changes in the companion star which is part of Sirius. There is a flaw either in our identification of Sothis as our Sirius, in the ancients’ observations, in our translation of their texts, or in present theories of stellar evolution, which must be based more on computer analysis than on observation.
One explanation which has been offered is that the red color refers to the star only as observed in heliacal rising near the horizon. Perhaps “red” simply means “bright” or “beautiful” as it does in Akkadian or Russian. At any rate, we can say that there is at least some question about the identification of Sothis as our star Sirius, and a thorough re-study of the pertinent Egyptian and Greek astronomical terms would be valuable.331
Despite all of the problems and reasons to discard the entire chronology based on the Sothic dating in conjunction with the Biblical chronology, all of Egyptian chronology is based on this Sothic cycle inferred from Censorinus, even if there has been much argument about when said cycle is supposed to have begun. In the absence of any real evidence, the experts decided on one set of dates (1320 B.C. to A.D.141) as the cycle, and proclaimed it as the standard for the setting of ancient dates.
Quite a number of Egyptologists have rejected the theory of the Sothic cycle entirely. What is more, the theoretical sothic cycle does not agree with radiocarbon dating, even if we already have an idea that radiometric dating methods have their own problems. For dates within certain ranges, these problems have been adjusted with tree-ring calibration.
Another controversial item of Sothic dating is the so-called “era of Menophres.” This discussion is based on a statement in the late classical writer, Theon who says:
On the 100th year of the era of Diocletian, concerning the rising of the Dog, because of the pattern we received from the era of Menophres to the end of the age of Augustus the total of the elapsed years was 1605.
Many attempts have been made to identify Theon’s Menophres. Menophres has been identified as the city Memphis or one of a number of pharaohs. Merneptah, Seti I, Harmhab, and Ramses I are among the candidates that have been suggested. There is simply not enough evidence to draw any firm conclusions about the meaning of this text.
Otto Neugebauer began the ten-page section on Egypt in his later History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy with the provocative sentence, “Egypt has no place in a work on the history of mathematical astronomy.”332
Did you catch that? Neugebauer is telling us that the Egyptians were scientifically illiterate. He read and examined everything. All the Egyptologists who were inculcated into the belief of the superiority of Egyptian science were sending him their papyri and inscriptions from tombs and monuments. All the things that are so difficult to get hold of nowadays were sent to Neugebauer. And what did Neugebauer say?
Mathematics and astronomy played a uniformly insignificant role in all periods of Egyptian history. […]
The fact that Egyptian mathematics has preserved a relatively primitive level makes it possible to investigate a stage of development which is no longer available in so simple a form, except in the Egyptian documents.
To some extent Egyptian mathematics has had some, though rather negative, influence on later periods. Its arithmetic was widely based on the use of unit fractions, a practice which probably influenced the Hellenistic and Roman administrative offices and thus spread further into other regions of the Roman empire. […]
The influence of this practice is visible even in works of the stature of the Almagest, where final results are often expressed with unit fractions in spite of the fact that the computations themselves were carried out with sexagesimal fractions. […]
And this old tradition doubtless contributed much to restricting the sexagesimal place value notation to a purely scientific use.
It would be quite out of proportion to describe Egyptian geometry here at length. It suffices to say that we find in Egypt about the same elementary level we observed in contemporary Mesopotamia.
The role of Egyptian mathematics is probably best described as a retarding force upon numerical procedures. Egyptian astronomy had much less influence on the outside world for the very simple reason that it remained through all its history on an exceedingly crude level which had practically no relations to the rapidly growing mathematical astronomy of the Hellenistic age. Only in one point does the Egyptian tradition show a very beneficial influence, that is, in the use of the Egyptian calendar by the Hellenistic astronomers. This calendar is, indeed, the only intelligent calendar which ever existed in human history. A year consists of 12 months of 30 days each and five additional days at the end of each year.
A second Egyptian contribution to astronomy is the division of the day into 24 hours, through these hours were originally not of even length, but were dependent on the seasons. […]
Lunar calendars played a role since early times side by side with the schematic civil calendar of the 365-day year. An inscription of the Middle Kingdom mentions “great” and “small” years, and we know now that the “great” years were civil years which contained 13 new moon festivals in contrast to the ordinary “small” years with only 12 new moons. The way these intercalations were regulated, at least in the latest period, is shown by the Demotic text.
This Demotic text contains a simple periodic scheme which is based on the fact that 25 Egyptian civil years (which contain 9125 days) are very nearly equal to 309 mean lunar months. These 309 months are grouped by our text into 16 ordinary years of 12 lunar months, and 9 “great” years of 13 months. Ordinarily two consecutive lunar months are given 59 days by our scheme, obviously because of the fact that one lunar month is close to 29 ½ days long. But every 5th year the two last months are made 60 days long. This gives for the whole 25 year cycle the correct total of 9125 days.
Since at this period all astronomical computations were carried out in the sexagesimal system, at least as far as fractions are concerned, the equinoctial hours were divided sexagesimally. Thus our present division of the day into 24 hours of 60 minutes each is the result of a Hellenistic modification of an Egyptian practice combined with Babylonian numerical procedures.
Finally, we have to mention the decans. […] The decans are the actual reason for the 12 division of the night and hence, in the last analysis, of the 24 hour system. Again, in Hellenistic times the Egyptian decans were brought into a fixed relation to the Babylonian zodiac which is attested in Egypt only since the reign of Alexander’s successors. In this final version the 36 decans are simply the thirds of the zodiacal signs, each decan representing 10 degrees of the ecliptic. Since the same period witnesses the rapid development of astrology, the decans assumed an important position in astrological lore and in kindred fields such as alchemy, the magic of stones and plants and their use in medicine. In this disguise the decans reached India, only to be returned in still more fantastic form to the Muslims and the West. […]
[In the decans] we have not a calendar but a star clock. The user of this list would know the hour of night by the rising of the decan which is listed in the proper decade of the month. […]
We call this phenomenon the “heliacal rising” of S, using a term of Greek astronomy. [...]
It is this sequence of phenomena which led the Egyptians to measure the time of night by means of stars, which we now call decans. This was intended to devise some method of indicating the times of office for the nightly service in the temples, (and other practical reasons.) Just as the months were divided into decades, so were the services of the hour-stars. For 10 days, S indicated the last hour of night, then the next star for the next ten days, and so on. […]
All this was, in fact, taken into account by the inventors of the decanal hours, as can be demonstrated by the terminal section of the “diagonal calendars” on the coffin lids. […]
By the time of the New Kingdom, the usefulness of the decans as indicators of hours had ceased. […] The decans held a secure position as representatives of the decades of the year in the decoration of astronomical ceilings, as in the tomb of Senmut or in the cenotaph of Seti I. In this form, they continued to exist until their association with the zodiac of the Hellenistic period revived them and made them powerful elements of astrological doctrine.
The coffins with the “diagonal calendars” belong roughly to the period from 2100 BC to 1800 BC. […]
Astronomical accuracy was nowhere seriously attempted in these documents. […]
In summary, from the almost three millennia of Egyptian writing, the only texts which have come down to us and deal with a numerical prediction of astronomical phenomena belong to the Hellenistic or Roman period. None of the earlier astronomical documents contains mathematical elements; they are crude observational schemes, partly religious, partly practical in purpose.
Ancient science was the product of a very few men; and these few happened not to be Egyptians.333
It seems that we have learned several things from Neugebauer’s examination of the texts of the various papyri, tomb inscriptions, monuments, calendars, and so forth. One of the most important things we have learned is that the Egyptians did, indeed,
correct their calendar every five years, similar to what we do every four years with our leap year. This naturally makes the idea of the Sothic cycle irrelevant in terms of calendrical reconciliation. We also begin to understand some of the totally incomprehensible sayings of the Pyramid Texts. They were recitations of prayers and magical spells that had to be performed at a certain “moment” in the night, and the only way to determine time at night was by the stars. According to Neugebauer, there are sufficient numbers of these star clocks in tombs to confirm this idea.
Next we note that Neugebauer tells us that the only texts which have come down to us and deal with a numerical prediction of astronomical phenomena belong to the Hellenistic or Roman period and in Hellenistic times the Egyptian decans were brought into a fixed relation to the Babylonian zodiac which is attested in Egypt only since the reign of Alexander’s successors.
In other words, the “occult secrets” generally attributed to the Egyptians, must actually belong to the Greeks.
However, there is something just a little bit deeper here that I would like to point out. As Neugebauer says, the Egyptians of historical times were really scientifically illiterate. So much so that their influence was inhibiting upon mathematics and science. But we still have that most astonishing fact that they came up with what Neugebauer declares to be the most sensible calendar ever devised. Even the Babylonians, whose mathematics sends Neugebauer into raptures, did not have so clever a calendar. We find ourselves asking: where did the Egyptians get this calendar?
