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The Egyptian calendar
Overview
 The earliest Egyptian calendar was based on the moon's cycles, but the lunar calendar failed to predict a critical event in their lives: the annual flooding of the Nile river. The Egyptians soon noticed that the first day the "Dog Star," which we call Sirius, in Canis Major was visible right before sunrise was special. The Egyptians were probably the first to adopt a mainly solar calendar. This so-called 'heliacal rising' always preceded the flood by a few days. Based on this knowledge, they devised a 365-day calendar that seems to have begun in 4236 B.C.E., the earliest recorded year in history.
They eventually had a system of 36 stars to mark out the year and in the end had three different calendars working concurrently for over 2000 years: a stellar calendar for agriculture, a solar year of 365 days (12 months x 30 + 5 extra) and a quasi-lunar calendar for festivals. The later Egyptian calendars developed sophisticated Zodiac systems, as in the stone calendar at right. According to the famed Egyptologist J. H. Breasted, the earliest date known in the Egyptian calendar corresponds to 4236 B.C.E. in terms of the Gregorian calendar.
Details
The ancient Egyptians originally employed a calendar based upon the Moon, and, like many peoples throughout the world, they regulated their lunar calendar by means of the guidance of a sidereal calendar. They used the seasonal appearance of the star Sirius (Sothis); this corresponded closely to the true solar year, being only 12 minutes shorter. Certain difficulties arose, however, because of the inherent incompatibility of lunar and solar years. To solve this problem the Egyptians invented a schematized civil year of 365 days divided into three seasons, each of which consisted of four months of 30 days each. To complete the year, five intercalary days were added at its end, so that the 12 months were equal to 360 days plus five extra days. This civil calendar was derived from the lunar calendar (using months) and the agricultural, or Nile, fluctuations (using seasons); it was, however, no longer directly connected to either and thus was not controlled by them. The civil calendar served government and administration, while the lunar calendar continued to regulate religious affairs and everyday life.
In time, the discrepancy between the civil calendar and the older lunar structure became obvious. Because the lunar calendar was controlled by the rising of Sirius, its months would correspond to the same season each year, while the civil calendar would move through the seasons because the civil year was about one-fourth day shorter than the solar year. Hence, every four years it would fall behind the solar year by one day, and after 1,460 years it would again agree with the lunisolar calendar. Such a period of time is called a Sothic cycle.
Because of the discrepancy between these two calendars, the Egyptians established a second lunar calendar based upon the civil year and not, as the older one had been, upon the sighting of Sirius. It was schematic and artificial, and its purpose was to determine religious celebrations and duties. In order to keep it in general agreement with the civil year, a month was intercalated every time the first day of the lunar year came before the first day of the civil year; later, a 25-year cycle of intercalation was introduced. The original lunar calendar, however, was not abandoned but was retained primarily for agriculture because of its agreement with the seasons. Thus, the ancient Egyptians operated with three calendars, each for a different purpose.
The only unit of time that was larger than a year was the reign of a king. The usual custom of dating by reign was: "year 1, 2, 3 . . . , etc., of King So-and-So," and with each new king the counting reverted back to year One. King lists recorded consecutive rulers and the total years of their respective reigns.
The civil year was divided into three seasons, commonly translated: Inundation, when the Nile overflowed the agricultural land; Going Forth, the time of planting when the Nile returned to its bed; and Deficiency, the time of low water and harvest.
The months of the civil calendar were numbered according to their respective seasons and were not listed by any particular name--e.g., third month of Inundation--but for religious purposes the months had names. How early these names were employed in the later lunar calendar is obscure.
The days in the civil calendar were also indicated by number and listed according to their respective months. Thus a full civil date would be: "Regnal year 1, fourth month of Inundation, day 5, under the majesty of King So-and-So." In the lunar calendar, however, each day had a specific name, and from some of these names it can be seen that the four quarters or chief phases of the Moon were recognized, although the Egyptians did not use these quarters to divide the month into smaller segments, such as weeks. Unlike most people who used a lunar calendar, the Egyptians began their day with sunrise instead of sunset because they began their month, and consequently their day, by the disappearance of the old Moon just before dawn.
As was customary in early civilizations, the hours were unequal, daylight being divided into 12 parts, and the night likewise; the duration of these parts varied with the seasons. Both water clocks and sundials were constructed with notations to indicate the hours for the different months and seasons of the year. The standard hour of constant length was never employed in ancient Egypt.
Sirius: the 'Dog Star'
Early Egyptians depended on the Nile's annual rising and flooding. Each year as that great river flooded it brought down mountain soil to the Egyptian plain. This enriched the fields and enabled creation of an agricultural system that supported a large civilization.
In the eighth century B.C.E., the Egyptian Pharoh's primary advisor, the Vizier, was charged with reporting the first appearance of the bright star we call Sirius after it had been missing from the sky for (depending upon the observer's latitude) approximately two weeks. This first appearance of Sirius in the pre-dawn sky was used to start the so-called Egyptian "lunar" calendar year, which was used for purposes of regulating religious affairs and everyday life.
Shortly after Sirius first reappeared in the east, the Nile would have its annual life-giving flood. Because of the Nile's flooding at this time, the fixing of the new year could well be said to have been based on a geophysical as well as an astronomical event. Although many other stars may be used to fix the beginning of a sidereal year, the Egyptians made an excellent choice for this purpose. Sirius -- Egyptians called it Sothis -- not only signaled the approaching Nile flood, but is the brightest "fixed" star in the heavens.
In Egypt at the present time, Sirius rises just before the sun late in July, but usually can't be seen until early August. This is because as sunrise approaches, stars fade from view and the light of dawn obliterates starlight. At the time Sirius is about to reappear, the constellation Orion is fully visible in the lower eastern sky. With the bright star Betelguese on his shoulder, anyone familiar with constellations would find Orion hard to miss. Sirius can be seen in the next constellation to rise (Canis Major). Because of this close relationship, Sirius was sometimes referred to as the "dog star" by early Greeks who thought of Canis Major as one of Orion's hunting hounds.
Other calendars used in the ancient Near East
Of the calendars of other peoples of the ancient Near East, very little is known. Thus, though the names of all or of some months are known, their order is not. The months were probably everywhere lunar, but evidence for intercalation is often lacking; for instance, in Assyria.
The Assyrians
Assyria was a kingdom of northern Mesopotamia that became the center of one of the great empires of the ancient Middle East. It was located in what is now northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey. For accounting, the Assyrians also used a kind of week, of five days, as it seems, identified by the name of an eponymous official. Thus, a loan could be made and interest calculated for a number of weeks in advance and independently of the vagaries of the civil year. In the city of Ashur, the years bore the name of the official elected for the year; his eponym was known as the limmu. As late as about 1070 B.C.E., his installation date was not fixed in the calendar. From about 1100 B.C.E., however, Babylonian month names began to supplant Assyrian names, and, when Assyria became a world power, it used the Babylonian lunisolar calendar.
Assyria was a dependency of Babylonia and later of the Mitanni kingdom during most of the 2nd millennium B.C.E. It emerged as an independent state in the 14th century B.C.E., and in the subsequent period it became a major power in Mesopotamia, Armenia, and sometimes in northern Syria. Assyrian power declined after the death of Tukulti-Ninurta I (c. 1208 B.C.E.). It was restored briefly in the 11th century B.C.E. by Tiglath-pileser I, but during the following period both Assyria and its rivals were preoccupied with the incursions of the seminomadic Aramaeans. The Assyrian kings began a new period of expansion in the 9th century B.C.E., and from the mid-8th to the late 7th century B.C.E., a series of strong Assyrian kings--among them Tiglath-pileser III, Sargon II, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon--united most of the Middle East, from Egypt to the Persian Gulf, under Assyrian rule. The last great Assyrian ruler was Ashurbanipal, but his last years and the period following his death, in 627 B.C.E., are obscure. The state was finally destroyed by a Chaldean-Median coalition in 612-609 B.C.E. Famous for their cruelty and fighting prowess, the Assyrians were also monumental builders, as shown by archaeological sites at Nineveh, Ashur, and Nimrud.
The Hittites
The calendar of the Hittite Empire is known even less well. As in Babylonia, the first Hittite month was that of first fruits, and, on its beginning, the gods determined the fates. Hittites were a member of an ancient Indo-European people who appeared in Anatolia (modern day Turkey) at the beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C.E.; by 1340 B.C.E. they had become one of the dominant powers of the Middle East. Probably originating from the area beyond the Black Sea, the Hittites first occupied central Anatolia, making their capital at Hattusa (modern Bogazköy). Early kings of the Hittite Old Kingdom, such as Hattusilis I (reigned c. 1650-c. 1620 B.C.E.), consolidated and extended Hittite control over much of Anatolia and northern Syria. Hattusilis' grandson Mursilis I raided down the Euphrates River to Babylon, putting an end (c. 1590 B.C.E.) to the Amorite dynasty there. After the death of Mursilis, a dynastic power struggle ensued, with Telipinus finally gaining control about 1530 B.C.E. In the noted Edict of Telipinus, long upheld by succeeding generations, he attempted to end lawlessness and to regulate the royal succession. The fall of the Hittite empire (c. 1193 B.C.E.) was sudden and may be attributed to large-scale migrations that included the Sea Peoples.
Hittite cuneiform tablets discovered at Bogazköy (in modern Turkey) have yielded important information about their political organization, social structure, economy, and religion. The Hittite king was not only the chief ruler, military leader, and supreme judge but also the earthly deputy of the storm god; upon dying, he himself became a god. Hittite society was essentially feudal and agrarian, the common people being either freemen, "artisans," or slaves. Anatolia was rich in metals, especially silver and iron. In the empire period the Hittites developed iron-working technology, helping to initiate the Iron Age. The religion of the Hittites is only incompletely known, though it can be characterized as a tolerant polytheism that included not only indigenous Anatolian deities but also Syrian and Hurrian divinities.
Iran
At about the time of the conquest of Babylonia in 539 B.C.E., Persian kings made the Babylonian cyclic calendar standard throughout the Persian Empire, from the Indus to the Nile. Aramaic documents from Persian Egypt, for instance, bear Babylonian dates besides the Egyptian. Similarly, the royal years were reckoned in Babylonian style, from Nisanu 1. It is probable, however, that at the court itself the counting of regnal years began with the accession day. The Seleucids and, afterward, the Parthian rulers of Iran maintained the Babylonian calendar. The fiscal administration in northern Iran, from the 1st century B.C.E., at least, used Zoroastrian month and day names in documents in Pahlavi (the Iranian language of Sasanian Persia). The origin and history of the Zoroastrian calendar year of 12 months of 30 days, plus five days (that is, 365 days), remain unknown. It became official under the Sasanian dynasty, from about C.E. 226 until the Arab conquest in 621. The Arabs introduced the Muslim lunar year, but the Persians continued to use the Sasanian solar year, which in 1079 was made equal to the Julian year by the introduction of the leap year.
Read more about the current use of this calculator (the Persian calculator) in Iran.
 The rainy season
The Himba people in Ekambu, Namibia, are some of the last peoples in the world living in relative isolation from modernity. "When the thunderstorms start and the leaves grow from the ground, that's how we know it's the new year," said Maverihepisa Koruhama, one of the villagers in Ekambu. They measure time by the shifting sun and mark the coming of the new year with the arrival of seasonal rains that transform the parched red soil into a carpet of green. In their Herero language, the word for "day" is the same as the word for "sun," and the word for "year" means "rain." (Above right, children watch as a Himba woman, senior wife of Waitavira Tjambiru, anoints her arm with butter fat mixed with red ochre outside her hut in Etengwa, Namibia.)
Synergy with the earth
James Lynch, an American scientist who has spent the past two decades helping Costa Rican farmers, said he has learned from them the importance of timing. A tree cut down during a new moon, he said, will quickly be ravaged by the insects, while one felled several days before a full moon will stay free of termites for years. Lynch now follows the practice. "But I've never seen any scientific study to back it up," he said.
Indigenous knowledge can be faulty. "Traditional people sometimes get things right, and sometimes get them wrong," said Alan Fiske, a psychological anthropologist at the University of California at Los Angeles. "Some things people do are bad for them." The problem, Fiske noted, is that verifying traditional knowledge is not easy. The scientific method can be expensive, and data can be difficult to obtain.
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