Seventy Days (Sirius Invisibility)

Definition

The Seventy Days is the Egyptian name for the time a decanal star — one of the 36 hour-marking stars — or Sirius itself stays out of sight, between its last setting and its dawn rising. The Egyptians called this being "enclosed by the Duat" (Sn dwAt), the underworld. The Carlsberg I papyrus and the Sethy-I Dramatic Text describe it with funerary parallels, likening the dead person's passage from death to rebirth to the star's time hidden. The 70-day figure rests on observing Sirius from Memphis around the end of the 4th millennium BCE.

In Tradition

Egyptologists — Belmonte-Lull, Neugebauer and Parker in EAT, and the Carlsberg-papyrus tradition — read the Seventy Days as doctrine tying a precise sky event (Sirius invisible between its setting and dawn rising) to the standard 70-day mummification. Ingham's 1969 figures, using a visibility arc of 9° for rising and 7.5° for setting, gave 73.6 days invisible around 4000 BCE and 69.5 days around 3000 BCE — pinning the canonical figure to Memphis observation at the close of the 4th millennium BCE.

In Practice

The Seventy Days shows how tightly Egyptian sky-watching and funerary belief were woven together. The standard 70 days from death to burial was not arbitrary: it tracks the cycle of a decan or of Sirius. The dead person's journey through the Duat mirrors the star's time hidden, and their emergence as an akh — a blessed spirit — among the imperishable stars mirrors its return at dawn. The Carlsberg I papyrus quotes the Dramatic Text: "There is no speaking the name of the one loosening for 70 days. The name of 'living' is not said to the one loosened." Belmonte and Lull state it plainly: "These 70 days of conjunction of the star suppose, from the religious point of view, a process of death and renewal perfectly assimilable to the course of the 70 days that, after the death of a person, embalming, etc., lead to his or her rebirth." The Memphis observation anchor explains why the exact figure held steady into far later periods.

Historical Origin

The Pyramid Texts already carry the star-and-afterlife framework behind the 70-day link (Old Kingdom, c. 2400-2300 BCE). The Carlsberg I papyrus (Roman period; Lange-Neugebauer 1940; EAT I 1960) preserves the Dramatic Text formulae, and the Sethy I cenotaph at Abydos (19th Dynasty) preserves the parallel inscription. Modern coverage: Neugebauer and Parker, EAT I-III (1960-1969); Belmonte and Lull, In Search of Cosmic Order (2018); Ingham's 1969 visibility-arc chronology; Leitz, Altägyptische Sternuhren (1995).

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading