The Coptic Calendar is a calendar which is used by the Orthodox Coptic Church in what are now Egypt and some countries nearby such as in the Middle East and south into Sudan and Ethiopia. It was introduced in the third century BCE by Ptolemy III, the Pharaoh of Hellenistic Egypt at a time when Alexandria in the north of the country was the world center of scientific knowledge. It was introduced as a means of reforming the earlier Egyptian Calendar which designated the year as having 365 days exclusively. As it did not have leap years every four years, this meant that the seasons moved by a day every four years. The Coptic Calendar remedied this by introducing an extra day every four years. As such, the Coptic Calendar has a significance in terms of the introduction of the concept of leap years. It remained in usage in Egypt until the last quarter of the nineteenth century when it was replaced by the Gregorian Calendar, but it is still in use for religious purposes within the Orthodox Coptic Church today.[1]
Coptic Calendar historical context
The Coptic Calendar is effectively a reform of the older Egyptian Calendar. This earlier Egyptian Calendar was a major innovation as a solar calendar when it was developed in Egypt, perhaps as early as 3000 BCE. It calculated that a year consisted of 365 days, with the year divided into three seasons of 120 days and the remaining five days being designated as ‘epagomenal days’. This was a very accurate calendar for when it was devised, but it did not take account of the fact that the year is actually 365.242 days long. Accordingly, as the extra 0.242 days accumulated they gradually moved the seasons over time. The difference was not immense over the course of a lifetime, but over a period of centuries it effectively moved the seasons. As increasing amounts of astronomical knowledge and scientific data emerged in the centuries that followed, the reasons for this anomaly became clearer.[2]
The introduction of the Coptic Calendar came in the third century BCE. By that time Egypt was ruled by the Hellenistic Ptolemaic Dynasty, a royal family of Macedonian Greeks who had established control over Egypt as the empire of Alexander the Great fragmented in the late fourth century BCE. The Greeks were the most sophisticated astronomers and scientists of ancient times and the foremost thinkers of the day were soon gathering in Alexandria, the city at the mouth of the River Nile which under Ptolemaic patronage emerged as the greatest scientific center of the ancient world. The scientists studying here at the famed Library of Alexandria soon made it known to Ptolemy III that the Egyptian Calendar was inaccurate, but that through a minor change, the introduction of an extra epagomenal day every fourth year, it could remedied. Thus, in 238 BCE Ptolemy issued the Decree of Canopus to keep the calendar in synchronicity with the seasons.[3]
Unfortunately for Ptolemy and his government, the Coptic Calendar was not immediately embraced by the leaders of the Egyptian religious temples who viewed it as a foreign innovation introduced by the Greek dynasty which ruled their country. The priests and church authorities resisted it and this trickled down through the levels of society such that the Coptic Calendar effectively failed when it was first introduced. It was only two centuries later that it was finally imposed when Emperor Caesar Augustus introduced a number of new policies into Egypt after it was amalgamated into the Roman Empire. This was in line with Julius Caesar’s introduction of the 365¼ day year across Rome’s territories in the mid-40s BCE, but in Egypt it was agreed that the Coptic Calendar (named the Alexandrian Calendar at the time) would be imposed rather than the Julian Calendar.[4]
Coptic Calendar details
The Coptic Calendar was a very simply solar calendar, one which calculated the year as consisting of 365 and one quarter days exactly. As such, it divides the year into 365 days, with an extra day every four years. In this sense it is very close to the modern Gregorian Calendar which is used officially in most countries worldwide, but as the year is actually 365.242 days it is slightly inaccurate. As such, it too was inaccurate over a protracted enough period of time. Because the calendar is divided into three seasons of 120 days and has epagomenal days it could be interpreted as lying between a solar and a lunar calendar, thus making it what some Egyptologists refer to as a lunisolar calendar.[5]
Relevance of the Coptic Calendar in modern times
The Coptic Calendar was adopted in Egypt in the mid-20s BCE by order of the Roman state. It was still in use there in the second, third and fourth centuries as Egypt became one of the main centers of the emergent Christian church. As such, the Alexandrian Calendar, as it had been known since it was introduced in the first century BCE, became known as the Coptic Calendar after the Orthodox Coptic Church which developed here and which introduced its own traditions in the centuries that followed, independent of the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church. The Coptic Calendar was used in the lands of the Coptic Church through the centuries, even as Islam became the dominant religion in Egypt itself. Ironically, this use of it by the Christians of the region occurred even as the months of the Coptic Calendar were named after the old Pagan gods of Egypt. It remained in use in parts of Egypt and further south into Sudan and Ethiopia down the nineteenth century until the British introduced the Gregorian Calendar into Egypt in 1875, shortly after they had taken the country over in all-but name. However, while it was abandoned for civil purposes, the Coptic Calendar remains in use for religious purposes within the Coptic Orthodox Church.[6]
Explore more about the Coptic calendar
- Understanding Historical Dates and Calendars for Historical Research by James Tanner, article on the MyHeritage Knowledge Base
- Understanding Dates: Five Common Mistakes to Avoid on the MyHeritage Blog
References
- ↑ https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/coptic-calendar.html
- ↑ https://www.jstor.org/stable/985113
- ↑ https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/chronology/ptolemyiii.html
- ↑ https://www.jstor.org/stable/20191595
- ↑ https://www.copticchurch.net/calendar
- ↑ https://stmarymn.org/services/liturgical-services/coptic-calendar/