User:Immanuelle/New Year's Festival (Ancient Egypt)
| Neujahrsfest in hieroglyphs | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
wenut-net-heru wnwt-nt-hrw Book of the Day | |||||||||
Heb mesiu Re Ḥb msjw Rˁ Fest der Geburt von Re | |||||||||
Tpj-rnp.t wpt-rnp.t Erster Tag des Jahres, Öffner des Jahres | |||||||||
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The ancient Egyptian New Year ( Heb mesiu Re ) was celebrated on the first day of the month Wepet-renpet under the nickname Heb-tepi-renpet wepet-renpet, which in the Old and Middle Kingdoms was also the first month of the Season of the Inundation and the birthday of the deity Re-Harachte or Re .
background[change | change source]
The New Year was fixed in the Egyptian administrative calendar and had its origins in the Sothis Lunar Calendar . The celebrations were held on the fixed calendar date regardless of the Nile flood . The ancient Egyptian New Year festival began “on the night of the fifth day of the season Heriu-renpet ”. With the first rays of the sun on the first day of Achet I, the new year began shortly thereafter. The "birth of Re" initiated in the old year and was completed in the new year at the time of "the appearance of Re." In this context, Achet I marks the start of the inundation season in the ancient Egyptian calendar, an event crucial for the agricultural rebirth brought by the annual flooding of the Nile.
The Egyptians called the second New Year celebration the Sothis-Festival, which was tied to the Heliacal rising of Sirius . The Egyptians therefore usually celebrated the New Year twice a year. An exception were the four years in the Sothic cycle, when the heliacal rising fell on the first day of the first month of the year. This rare event was not repeated until about 1,452 years later.
Old and Middle Kingdom[change | change source]
In the Old and Middle Kingdoms, the first days of the month were called “openers.” In the festival calendar of Niuserre, which was part of the decorations in the Solar Temple of Niuserre, the New Year celebration is linked to the first month of the season of Akhet. Another synonym attested is the month name “Month of the Re-Festival”. From the 12th The festival calendar of the acrobat troupe dates back to the 1st dynasty, in which the New Year's festival also fell on the first month of Akhet.
New Kingdom and Late Period[change | change source]
With the beginning of the New Kingdom, the term “Opener” changed to “First Day”. The only term that remained was the naming of New Year’s Day as “Opener of the Year”.
Alan Gardiner as well as Richard-Anthony Parker suspect that the “month of the Re-Festival” changed its annual form in the course of calendar history, which is why from the New Kingdom onwards the New Year festival was shifted to the twelfth month under the new name Mesori .
See also[change | change source]
literature[change | change source]
- Richard-Anthony Parker : The calendars of ancient Egypt (= Studies in ancient Oriental Civilization. Volume 26, ISSN 0081-7554 ). University of Chicago Press, Chicago IL 1950.
- Paule Posener-Kriéger: Msjw-Ra. In: Revue d'Egyptologie. (RdE). Volume 22, 1970, ISSN 0035-1849, p. 137.
- Siegfried Schott : Ancient Egyptian festival dates (= Academy of Sciences and Literature. Proceedings of the Humanities and Social Sciences Class. (AM-GS). 1950, Volume 10, ISSN 0002-2977 ). Publisher of the Academy of Sciences and Literature et al., Mainz et al. 1950.
[[Category:New Year]]