The New Year Festival (Egypt)

Written by Alexandra V. Mironova.

In the Egyptian language the New Year was called wp rnpt (‘opening of the year’) and really opened the civil calendar. The New Year festivities were started on IV Smw 30, were hold durig the following five epagomenal (additional) days and finished on I Axt 5. Thus, the festival was celebrated in the last month of the year, called mesore, or ‘birthday of Ra’ (mswt Ra). Its ceremonies were connected with the myth of the deliverance of the Sun from the body of Nut, goddess of heaven, and about his victory over the evil forces. In the written form, the New Year day was signed in the shape of cow horns with a palm cane  (F 14), rather often united with the sun disc  (F 15), which stressed the connection of the festival to the cults of the Sun and Hathor. It is also said in the Papyrus of Anastasi: “Let you see the sun disc in the sky, when he opens the year” (Pap. Anastasi I. 3, 5). It is possible, that by the time of shaping the calendar system, the festival of mswt Ra took place on the say of the summer solstice (about June 22).

The term wp rnpt was not rarely connected to prt %pdt (‘rising of Sirius’). In fact, the coincidence of the New Year with the Sirius rising took place only once in 1460 years. Egyptians, however, kept celebrating the first day of the month of thoth annually, as a symbolical rising of that star. So, I Axt 1 should be interpreted only as a symbolical rising of Sirius. In the inscriptions of the Hathor Temple in Dendera, there are the following words: “Her rays (i.e. of Sirius) are melting with the rays of the sparkling god (i.e. Ra) on the wonderful day of the birth of the sun disc, in the early hours of the festival of the New Year... The right eye (i.e. Sirius) is united with the left one (i.e. Sun) in the beginning of the year, on the first day of the month of Thoth» (Mahler 1890, 117).

The interconnection of the New Year festival with the motif of uniting of Sirius and Sun could be traced back to the myth of returning the Eye of Ra (= Hathor, Sirius) from Nubia. According to the myth, known from the notes of the Greek-Roman time, goddess Hathor-Tefnut (= Eye of Ra) had a conflict with her father and escaped from Egypt to Nubia. But Ra missed the daughter and sent Shu and Thoth to look for her. Turning into apes, they tamed anger of the goddess with a dance and music and returned her to the native land. Thar motif was associated with the beginning of the Nile flood, brought from the south by Hathor. That is why, during the festivities, they made offerings of vessels of wine before images of the goddess; those gifts symbolized the river waters, from one hand, and pacifying the temper of Hathor, from another hand. The same aim was pursued in the ritual of ‘pacifying Sekhmet’ (sHtp %xmt), which was connected, among other aspects, to the myth on the Extermination of people.

The first mention of the New Year festival known to us is found in the calendar of the Nyuserre Temple (V dyn.). But the information about its character is found not earlier than for the Middle Kingdom. Descriptions of single ceremonies are in some temples and private tombs of the epoch of the New Kingdom, where one can see scenes of offering the New Year gifts to king and gods. The most developed programme of the New Year is presented in reliefs of some temples of the Ptolemaic period, in such centres as Edfu, Dendera, and Philae.

In temples, the New Year celebrations were started with a ceremony of igniting torches for the sake of expulsion darkness and evil forces. In the first day of the year there was, perhaps, a competition of boatmen on the temple lake that symbolized the battle of the Sun against his enemies. On the same day, there was a rite of purification, they made offerings of vases and caskets with pure tissue for statues of the main temple gods. In the period of the Middle Kingdom, on the New Year day, they celebrated the coronation of king which meant a renewal of the king authority and power. Dignitaries brought king various ‘New Year gifts’, including statues, vases, adornments, fans, weapons, and even chariots.

The New Year festivities were connected to the declaration of the life-giving inundation of the Nile that meant renovation of life and fertility of gods, Egypt, and its people — first of all, its king, who determined the well-fare of Egypt. That renovation was symbolized with uniting of sun rays with the statue of the god. In the Edfu Temple, they used special places for ceremonies: the ‘altar of offerings’, the ‘pure place’, the stairs to the roof where a kiosk was set. On the New Year Eve, priests with statues of gods (Hathor in Dendera, Horus in Edfu) went upstairs and brought those statues into the mentioned kiosk. Next day, sun rays permeated the sanctuary and enlightened the images of gods; it meant the renewal of their power. The ritual was called Xnm itn (literally: ‘uniting with the sun disc’). Perhaps, the festivities were completed with the coronation ritual confirming the king’s authority and power. That ceremony was associated with the myth on the coronation of god Horus, with whom king was identified.

Bibliography

• Mironova A.V. Prazdnik Khnuma i prazdnik Novogo goda v raione Elefantiny epokhi Hatshepsyt i Tutmosa III (The Khnum Festival and the New Year Festival in the region of Elephantine of the epoch of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III) // Voprosy epigrafiki: coll. art. / edit. A.G. Avdeev. Iss. VI. Moscow: Russky Fond Sodeistviya Obrazovaniiu i Nauke, 2012. P. 166–182.
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• Corthals A. The New Year Festival in the Ptolemaic Temples of Upper Egypt. Front Cover. Angélique Corthals. PhD Thesis. University of Oxford, 2004.
• Daumas F. Neujahr // LÄ. 1982. Bd. IV. Kol. 466–472.
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• Fukaya M. The Festivals of Opet, the Valley, and the New Year. Their Socio-Religious Functions. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2020. P. 79–123.
• Mahler E. Die Sothis- und die Phönixperiode bei den alten Ägyptern // ZÄS. 1890. Bd. 28. S. 115–124.
• Wells R. A. Re and the calendars // Revolutions in time: Studies in Ancient Egyptian Calendrics / Ed. A. Spalinger. San Antonio: Van Siclen Books, 1994. P. 5–23.

Sources

Tags: Ancient Egypt, Alexandra V. Mironova, Articles, Festivals

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