Khasekhemwy Chasechemui
Early Pharaonic Egyptian Calendar Reform

April 18,

2638 BC
i.e. the year
- 2637

Running
Year 480

 Julian Date 758000
planetary conjunction of the
Sun, Moon, and Jupiter
at the crossing of the ecliptic
and the celestial equator.
 

  

Sir Isaac Newton himself,
the greatest of all astronomers
 noted that the ancient Pharaohs
were the first to introduce
a solar 365-day year.

Duncan Steel, in Marking Time,
John Wiley & Sons, N.Y., 2000,
writes at p. 39
that the Egyptians
"abandoned the lunar months
in their 365-day calendar.
This calendar had twelve months,
each of 30 days precisely,
and at the end of every year
five supplementary,
or epagomenal, days
were included.
In Latin this design was called
the annus vagus,
or "wandering year,"
because the solar year
wandered relative to the Moon."

The Pharaohs were in 3117 BC, however,
not yet aware of the true 365.2422-day
length of the true tropical year,
which even today we generally round to 365.25 days
for leap year intercalation every 4 years.

Using their 365-day calender,
the Pharaohs would soon have noticed
that the Seasons did not keep time
with this 365-day figure
and that a calendric correction
had to be made as the centuries passed.
This correction was first made
in the 480th year of the reign of Khasekhemwy.

Significant here is that it was the Pharaoh Khasekhemwy
during whose reign the astronomical ceremony
of pedj shes (stretching the cord)
is first attested on a granite block in Egypt.

Erring mainstream Egyptology
thinks their confused reading of 47209
for the above number
allegedly is the number of dead
in wars waged by Khasekhemwy
due to "fallen" warriors
inscribed around the foot of the stone statue.

That interpretation is preposterous.

Even in the modern age,
a Napoleon came to Africa
with only 50,000 men as his entire army.
As many a military historian
has pointed out,
there were far fewer people
and smaller armies in ancient times.
The fallen men shown on the statue
are the dead years of the past,
479 of them, plus 120 days.

The Egyptologists
misread the numbers.

The Egyptologists erroneously read
the four notches as ten-thousands,
and the number "Seven"
as grouped in "3 and 4" as thousands,
which may be correct for much later dynasties
but not here in the Old Kingdom.

At this early stage of writing,
the ordinal decimal positions of the numbers
were not fixed as later,
but only dependent
upon the RELATIVE POSITION of the symbol
with respect to the other symbols.
We find a similar phenomenon
in the Egyptologists' erroneous reading
of  the Narmer Heb-Sed feasts.

The hieroglyphs (enlarged graph below)
preceding the number 479
read GADU SAINI
"year bunches, i.e. year sums, years".




To commemorate his calendric discoveries
Khasekhemwy then created a shrine
incorporating the four cardinal points
at the South End of the shrine
and the lunar cycles
of alternating 29 and 30 days
(20 rooms per side
plus 9 + 1 rooms in the middle)
at the North End of the shrine.

Included also were apparently
the 33-year cycle,
which was also applicable
to seasonal cycles of the Sun and Moon
- as in Muslim calendration -
where "the months regress through
all the seasons every 32 1/2 years".

See here also the
Malia Calendric stone of the 33 year cycle

The British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt
writes as follows under Khasekhemwy, p. 150:

"His tomb, nearly 70 m in length,
is not only the last royal tomb
in cemetery B at Umm el-Qa'ab
but also the largest and most unusual.
The substructure consists of a central corridor,
flanked by thirty-three storerooms
 for funerary offerings,
leading to a stone-lined burial chamber
which is then followed by a continuation
of the corridor flanked by ten further magazines."





Khasekhemwy`s gigantic temple
is like tombs of the Ancient Britain
at about the same comparable historical period.
We also find this trapezoid form
in Wayland's Smithy
in the Vale of the White Horse,
as also at Nazca,
in all cases involving the measurement of
stars, Moon and/or Sun in some manner.

If one takes the length of rule - 253 -
assigned by Manetho
as the "sum" of the first dynasty,
then the 479th year and April 18, 2638, BC
marks the end of the reign of the Pharaoh Neferkeris.

And only here does the Turin Canon of Kings
first BEGIN to give a length of rule to its kings,
lengths of rule which greatly depart
from Manetho's "star" reigns
but which follow the Egyptologists' dating
of the rest of the Old Kingdom pharaohs,
placing the end of the Old Kingdom ca. 2156 BC.

Manetho's list clearly lists star realms
after that juncture.

When we follow Manetho's
lengths of "stellar" rule further,
they place the end of the Old Kingdom at 1657 BC,
i.e. 1460 years (a Sothic Year)
later than 3116 BC.
(With Nitokris this will be 1645 BC)

So why is the Turin Canon (Papyrus) different?
The so-called "lengths of rule"
on the Turin Canon
add up to the next 480-year period.

Khasekhemwy is given a "lifetime"
of 70 years on the Turin Papyrus
and a rule of 25 years up to the 480th year.

If we take that difference of 45 years
and  add those 45 years
to remaining "lengths of rule"
of the remaining Pharaohs
of the Old Kingdom,
their sum is then 481.

The figures are
45 + 8 + 11 + 27 + 19 + 19 + 6
+ 6 + 24 + 24 +23 + 8 +18 + 4
+ 2 +7 + 12 + 7 + 30 + 8 + 28
+ 30 + 20 + 4 + 90 + 1 = 481
and thereafter
a break in the dynasty at Nitokris.

Hence, according to this analysis,
it could be argued that the Old Kingdom
began on December 25, 3117 BC
and ended "480 + 480 years"
(i.e. 960 years)  later,
i.e. on ca. December 25, 2156 BC
(the graphic below shows December 21, 2156 BC,
i.e. -2155 by Astronomy, Julian Date 934298.

But that would mean
- after Khasekhemwy -
that only the kings
with a "length of rule"
on the Turin Papyrus
served as pharaohs,

with the remainder of kings
on Manetho's list
representing "calendric star kings",
who were given a stellar realm
but who did not serve as pharaoh,
thus perhaps being persons
of the royal family.

Of course,
as far as the true
Pharaonic
"Kingdoms"
were concerned,
a Kingdom was
684 years,
not 960 years.
See for that Narmer.





Go to
Kings after Khasekhemwy