166 calendars and clocks: The Middle East research on ancient Egyptian timekeeping is characterized by a proliferation of postulated calendars Then again, there is no conclusive evidence for the existence of more than two calendars at any one time in Egyptian history Much discussion on calendars has revolved over the decades around the two problems of the month names Egypt had both a nonlunar calendar—that is, the civil one—and a lunar calendar It comes as no surprise that the two problems of the month names have everything to with the relationship between these two calendars The first problem is that the last month can be named as if it were the first, namely, opener of the year or birth of Re, which are also names for New Year’s Day, the quintessential beginning The second problem is that a feast could sometimes be celebrated on the civil day following the civil month with the same name, as if a feast called January were celebrated on February The two problems of the month names came about as the result of two actions by ancient calendar makers First, calendar makers transferred month names from the lunar calendar to the civil calendar As a result, the name of the first lunar month—the month inside which the civil new year fell—was rolled backward in time onto the 12th and last civil month, resulting in the awkward circumstance that the last civil month was named as if it were the first civil month Second, calendar makers transferred the names of feast days from the middle of lunar month X, that is, from the full moon, to day of the civil month, because that civil day fell inside lunar month X The name of the feast day at full moon was the same as the name of the entire lunar month X As a result of the first action, the name of lunar month X was rolled back onto the civil month preceding the civil day that had received the same name owing to the second action Consequently, it was indeed as if a feast called January was celebrated on February Clocks were not in any kind of regular use in ancient Egypt, even if a small number of water clocks, sundials, and related devices have been preserved The rise of mechanical clocks dates to the Middle Ages, in the 13th and 14th century c.e Before mechanical clocks, people’s lives were not normally guided by numbered subdivisions of the day The daily course of the sun, the yearly succession of the seasons, and the agricultural cycle sufficed as markers of time For most people most of the time, there was no need to count the days or to watch clocks Life was much simpler then the period between one spring equinox, when day and night are of equal length, and the next A stellar year marks one 360-degree rotation of the sun The two lengths are slightly different Nevertheless, around 150 b.c.e cuneiform scholars determined lengths of the year that are close to both The Greek astronomer Hipparchus at about the same time was seemingly the first to note and quantify that difference More generally, though, years were defined in terms of lunations, the intervals from new moon to new moon One year was defined as either 12 or 13 lunations The seasonal names given to the months of the calendars used during the course of the third millennium b.c.e indicate that from the earliest times the year was characterized by its seasons An attempt was made to insert an extra month into the calendar about every three years to ensure that the beginning of the first month of the year coincided roughly with the vernal equinox, the date in spring when day and night are of equal length A lunation lasts either 29 or 30 days, with slightly more than half lasting 30 Because 12 lunations fall some 11 days short of the length of a∫ year, without the addition (known as intercalation) of an extra month, the start of each month would fall ever earlier in the year, and the agricultural activities described by their names would soon occur within inappropriately named months A rule-of-thumb intercalation of one extra month every three years was employed in most areas of Mesopotamia and periods of history During the course of the second millennium b.c.e the names assigned to the months by the people of THE MIDDLE EAST BY DAVID BROWN Some mythological texts composed in ancient Mesopotamia describe great lengths of time in terms of a round number of years, but what was a year to a scribe? Years were counted from one seasonally or sidereally recurring event to another, and there is no evidence in cuneiform sources that the small difference between a seasonal (or equinoctial) and a sidereal (or stellar) year was remarked upon An equinoctial year is Fragment of a basalt water clock, from Tell el-Yahudiya, Egypt, Macedonian Dynasty, around 320 b.c.e (© The Trustees of the British Museum)