Ancient Egyptian Science, vol. 2: Calendars, Clocks, and Astronomy.

• Author: Depuydt, Leo

By MARSHALL CLAGETT. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 214. Philadelphia: AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, 1995. Pp. xv + 575; many illustrations. $50.

This hefty tome is volume two of a three-volume sourcebook on ancient Egyptian scientific thought. The author, who is Emeritus at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, explains in the preface to volume one that he thought of this work when involved in the publication of sourcebooks in the history of science. The preface and the table of contents (pp. vii-xiv) are followed by a general survey on calendars, clocks, and astronomy (pp. 1-129), with endnotes (pp. 131-65). In part two (pp. 167-506), eighteen documents are presented in English translation, each carefully annotated: (1) Old and Middle Kingdom feast lists; (2) the Ebers Calendar; (3) the astronomical ceiling of Senmut's tomb; (4) the ceiling of Hall K in Seti I's tomb; (5) extracts from the calendar at Medinet Habu; (6) lists of the names of the thirty lunar days; [documents (7), the lengths of day and night in Cairo Papyrus no. 86637, and (8), a similar table from Tanis, are discussed in the general survey;] (9) Papyrus Carlsberg 9; (10) Sothic dates, i.e., Egyptian dates of the heliacal rising of Sirius (Greek Sothis); (11) the decanal clock on Meshet's coffin; (12) the Book of Nut; (13) the dramatic text in Seti I's cenotaph; (14) the Ramesside star clock; (15) Amenemhet's water clock; (16) the shadow clock in Seti I's cenotaph; (17) the zodiacs in the temples at Esna and Dendera; and (18) the statue of the astronomer Harkhebi. A postscript (pp. 497506) contains a communication by James O. Mills on a petroglyph from Hierakonpolis with possible astronomical purport. Part three (pp. 507-66) encompasses an extensive bibliography (through 1990) and indexes. Part four includes over one hundred illustrations of various sources.

The author gives an account of past discussions that is sensitive to the periods in which they were first formulated. Thus, he recounts the scholarship on the Ebers Calendar, which first came to light in 1862, with unmatched attention to detail. Clagett's work may be recommended as a very reliable and useful companion. My work on a monograph entitled Civil Calendar and Lunar Calendar in Ancient Egypt has allowed me to judge it first-hand.

Two notes pertaining to documents (9) and (10) are appended here. As regards (9), the structure of the twenty-five-year cycle in Carlsberg 9 needs to be...