Peret (Growing)

PER-et

egyptian: Prt

Definition

Peret is the second season of the Egyptian civil calendar (Egyptian Prt, "Coming-Forth" or "Emergence"). It runs four months — I to IV Peret — and follows the Akhet season. The name marks the moment the farmed land emerges from the falling Nile flood waters, the planting and growing phase of the farming year. In the fixed 365-day civil year, Peret is days 121-240; Belmonte and Lull mark it as the central winter quarter, with the year's longest night around I Peret 1.

In Tradition

Egyptologists treat Peret as the second of the three civil-year seasons — Akhet, Peret, Shemu — the agricultural-administrative frame of the 365-day year. Clagett, Belmonte-Lull, and Parker agree on the season's name, place, and four-month length; its root, pr ("to come forth, emerge"), is securely established and recorded in the standard lexica. As with the other seasons, the leap-day-less civil-calendar Peret slips about one day every four years against the real growing season.

In Practice

For the reader, Peret anchors the central New Kingdom diagonal star-clock material. Tables 9-16 of the Ramesside Star Clock cover the Peret season, and Table 12 (II Peret 16) records the key Sothis (Sirius) meridian-culmination at the Beginning of Night, line 0 — the chronological anchor Neugebauer & Parker use to date the clock's content to c. 1470 BCE (Note 28; Clagett, Doc III.14). Table 15 (IIII Peret 1) takes in the spring equinox (Note 31). For Egyptian-revival astrology, Peret supplies the calendar frame for second-quarter solar-year chart work.

Historical Origin

Peret is attested through every period of Egyptian writing, from the Old Kingdom onward. Standard treatments: Clagett, *Ancient Egyptian Science* Vol II §III (1995) — the season-name runs throughout the Doc III.14 Ramesside Star Clock tables (pp. 432-460); Belmonte & Lull, *In Search of Cosmic Order* (2009-2010); Parker, *The Calendars of Ancient Egypt* (Chicago 1950).

Further Reading

  • Marshall Clagett, Ancient Egyptian Science, Volume II: Calendars, Clocks, and Astronomy
  • Juan Antonio Belmonte & José Lull, In Search of Cosmic Order: Selected Essays on Egyptian Archaeoastronomy
  • Otto Neugebauer & Richard A. Parker, Egyptian Astronomical Texts (EAT)