Cairo Calendar (Papyrus Cairo 86637)

Definition

The Cairo Calendar is the fullest surviving Egyptian almanac of lucky and unlucky days — a day-by-day guide rating the quality of every day in the Egyptian year. It survives on a single hieratic papyrus, Papyrus Cairo 86637 (also catalogued as Cairo JE 86637), copied in the Ramesside period around the reign of Ramesses II. For each day it records whether the day is favourable or adverse, often splitting one day into parts, and ties that rating to events in the world of the gods. The standard edition is Bakir's, 1966.

In Tradition

Egyptologists treat Papyrus Cairo 86637 as the principal witness to Egyptian "hemerology" — the assessment of day quality. The same papyrus is studied from two angles: as the lucky-and-unlucky-days almanac, and, on its reverse, as one of the earliest tables giving the changing length of day and night across the months. Scholars place the copy in the Ramesside period, in or just before the reign of Ramesses II.

In Practice

When you read about Egyptian day-quality, this papyrus is almost always the source behind it. It rates each day of the 365-day civil year as good or bad — sometimes giving a different verdict for morning, midday, and evening — and pins that verdict to a mythic event, so that a day on which the gods quarrelled becomes a day to stay cautious. From those ratings flow practical instructions: things to do or to avoid on a given day. The opening of the document begins at "1 Akhet 1," the first day of the first season, which it marks as a New-Year feast-day of several gods. The reverse of the same papyrus carries an unrelated table of day-and-night hour-lengths month by month, which is why it also turns up in studies of Egyptian timekeeping.

Historical Origin

Papyrus Cairo 86637 is a Ramesside-period copy, dated to the reign of Ramesses II (19th Dynasty, c. 1279-1213 BCE) by 'Abd al-Mohsen Bakir, whose critical edition The Cairo Calendar No. 86637 appeared at Cairo in 1966; Leitz dates it to just before that reign. It is treated in Clagett, Ancient Egyptian Science Vol II (1995), and in Belmonte & Lull, Astronomy of Ancient Egypt (2018), §3.4, where the verso's month-by-month day-and-night hour table is analysed against the Neugebauer-Parker chronology.

Further Reading

• 'Abd al-Mohsen Bakir, The Cairo Calendar No. 86637
• Marshall Clagett, Ancient Egyptian Science, Volume II: Calendars, Clocks, and Astronomy
• Juan Antonio Belmonte & José Lull, Astronomy of Ancient Egypt