Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

Like the Nabta Playa prehistoric stargazers before them who experienced monsoon rains, the ancient Egyptian
astronomers could not help but notice that the annual arrival of the flood occurred when the sun rose at its most
northerly position on the eastern horizon—that is, at summer solstice. The common view among scholars is that this
prompted the ancient stargazers of the Nile to count the number of days between each cycle, reaching the conclusion that
it took 365 days *53 —a year—which furthermore made the summer solstice their New Year’s Day.
If we observe sunrise from the same place each day, we can notice that the sun changes position along the eastern
horizon between two extreme points: the summer solstice to the far left (north) of due east, and the winter solstice to the
far right (south) of due east. At these two extreme points, the sun appears to be stationary for a week or so, hence the
term solstice, from the Latin, which means “stationary sun.” In our modern Gregorian calendar, the summer solstice falls
on June 21 and the winter solstice falls on December 21. The sun’s journey from one solstice to the other and back takes
365 days, which we call one year. Most historians agree that this discovery was made first in Egypt in the fourth
millennium BCE. As we have seen, however, the evidence now strongly suggests that the discovery was made much
earlier, in the Egyptian Sahara, and was then imported into the Nile Valley by the Black people that traveled there from
Nabta Playa. Admittedly, this discovery was probably refined a few centuries later—most likely, sometime around 2800
BCE—by the ancient Egyptians (by the sun priests of the Great Sun Temple at Heliopolis, near modern Cairo) to produce
a sophisticated calendar with weeks and months.
Egyptian calendar divisions
The civil (Egyptian) calendar was divided in the following manner: twelve months of thirty days, with each month having
three weeks, or decades, of ten days. The twelve months amounted to 360 days to which were added five days known
as the Epagomenal Days, or Five Days upon the Year, thus making up the full 365-day year. The Egyptian year had only
three seasons of four months each: the first season, called Akhet, meaning “inundation,” from months 1 to 4; the
second season, called Peret or Proyet, meaning “emergence” or “coming forth,” from months 5 to 8; and the third
season, called Shemu, meaning “harvest,” from months 9 to 12. Originally, the months were not given names but were
assigned only numbers from one to twelve. The first day of the first month of the first season was known as I Akhet—
that is, month I, season Akhet, day 1. Later in the New Kingdom, the months received official names: (1) Thoth, (2)
Phaopi, (3) Athyr, (4) Choiak, (5) Tybi, (6) Mechir, (7) Phamenoth, (8) Pharmuti, (9) Pachons, (10) Payni, (11) Epiphi, and
(12) Mesore. Egyptologists and historians can never agree on the age of the Egyptian calendar. There is, however,
much evidence to support the conclusion that the calendar was already in place during the Old Kingdom.
The solar (tropical) year is, in fact, longer than 365 days by a very small fraction, almost a quarter of a day. The exact
value of the year is 365.2422 days. Today, to keep our modern Gregorian calendar synchronized with the seasons, we add
one day every four years to the year, making the lengthened year what is known as a leap year. Evidence suggests that
even though the ancient Egyptians were aware of this shift, they did not have a leap year but simply let their calendar drift
relative to the seasons. This, by necessity, created a long-range cycle of 1,460 years—(365 × 4 = 1,460)—and can be
seen as a Great Solar Cycle. It so happens that the ancients also observed the rising of stars, and they chose the heliacal
rising of Sirius as a marker of the New Year. This means that their civil calendar New Year also drifted relative to the
astronomical Sirius New Year at the rate of one day every four years, creating the same cycle of 1,460 years, which
scholars call the Sothic cycle (because Sothis is the ancient name for Sirius). 53 The peculiarity of the annual cycle of
Sirius (or indeed any star that rises and sets) is that it will seem to disappear for a period of time—that is, it is hidden
from view (because the star is up only in daylight). This period was about seventy days in the case of Sirius in ancient
Egypt, after which it reappeared at dawn in the east. This first reappearance at dawn is known as the heliacal rising. The
heliacal rising of Sirius was significant to the ancient Egyptians for two reasons: it took place near the summer solstice
and also appeared at the start of the flood season. 54
The Heliacal Rising of Sirius