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(at Delphi)

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Our Glorious History, Part II

<grisom> Umu! Any idea how the Ancient Egyptians named the ten days of their week?

<umunmutamku> Holy shit, Griz, did you ever just crack open a can of blood-hungry hell worms.

Yeah. Egyptian dates are fucked up the bronze ass hole, though, Griz.

<grisom> My understanding was that the Egyptians invented the French Republican Calendar, to wit: that their year was 12 months of 30 days each, plus a five-day "little month" at the end, and that they had a ten-day week; furthermore that the start of the year was based on something Sirius was doing in the sky, which went slowly out of sync with what the Sun was doing.

<umunmutamku> Okay. The year divides into 12 months (3bd) and 3 seasons: 3ḫt "inundation," prt "winter," šmw "summer." Each season had four months of thirty days, and there were five "epagomenal" days to round it all out.

Dates begin with the "regnal year" sign ḥ3t-sp and a numeral. Next up: the month position in the season cycle, e.g. 3bd 2 3ḫt "second month of inundation." The last value is the date position in the month, sw, followed by a numeral.

The first month of the season is not usually written 3bd 1 XXX but rather tpy XXX "first of XXX." Similarly, the last day of the month is written ʕrqy without sw, meaning something like "end."

The date is always followed by the royal titulary, since the date is dependent on the current regime. The bare minimum is something like: "under the Majesty of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt (name in cartouche)—may he be given life!" (ḫr ḥm n(y) nsw-bity (name) ʕnḫw) The full titulary is excruciatingly long, consisting of five different names and a whole series of formulas.

So in conclusion: we must reckon only with Ancient Egyptian seasons, not month or day names (those are lost),

<grisom> I don't see why you say the month names are lost, though, since the Coptic Christians still call their months by names like "Thoth" and "Hathor". Is there any reason *not* to think that they're using the original Egyptian names?

<umunmutamku> *stares, blinks*

Jesus, you're right. No, they very obviously are.

<grisom> Success!

<umunmutamku> ...and must incorporate the royal titulary somehow.

<grisom> Oh, I'm not aiming to emulate the Ancient Egyptian year-numbering system, I just wanted better day-names than the French "oneday, twoday, threeday". But if those are lost to the sands then SCREW ANCIENT EGYPT.

<umunmutamku> Heh. But how about it? We could pick some symbolic ruler. :)

<grisom> Well, the main impetus for this calendar was to have the year-counting system centred around the end of the world on Dec 21, 2012. So as long as you can keep that property...

2 comments:

Tezcatlipoca said...

could we create an "introducing the Qadutu calender" pdf file? One that we could send to all our various initiates and neophytes to more easily introduce them to our method of time-keeping? I'm concerned that simply reading our conversations wont effectively impress our methods...

grisom said...

Mmm, oui. This series will end, anyway, with a lengthy description of the final calendar. Partly I'm just buying time to write the date-conversion script.

But yeah, a PDF would be really cool.

Maxims and minims for the wise and the foolish

  • I think that historians are talking nonsense, because they don't write their essays in Coq. — Umunmutamku
  • LANGUAGE IS A HIERARCHICAL AUTHORITY
    A GOVERNMENT OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS — Tezcatlipoca
  • Whoever fights against the empire, becomes the empire. [or something along those lines] — Philip K. Dick [as told to Tezcatlipoca]
    • We’re not fighting the empire! We are the empire! Go away, or we'll smack you with this stick! — Tezcatlipoca
  • You don't have to be straight to shoot straight. — Barry Goldwater
    • Indeed, we must prevent life, which is frequently fatal. — Umunmutamku
      • There are also a number of legitimate scientific reasons for it as well (though I don't know what they are) — Tezcatlipoca
  • Instead of thinking of Scripture as a manual, I try to think of the Bible as ‘a boyfriend’. — punkrainbow
    • Your feelings are lying to you. — Jer 17:9
  • READ A BOOK, I'M SURE IT'S IN ONE OF THEM. — Tezcatlipoca
    • Books are full of bullshit and lies! — Tezcatlipoca
      • We will lie to you but we will lie to ourselves as well. You will, however, see through our lies and grasp the shining truth within. — The KLF
  • A Gnostic is by definition a knower, and since knowledge supersedes belief, a knower cannot very well be a believer. — Stephan A. Hoeller
    • talking about the great unknown is ridiculous. it’s THE GREAT UN-FUCKING-KNOWN — Anonymous
      • The enemy knows the system. — Claude Shannon

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