Sothis and the Reckoning of Hatshepsut

1/27/2025 Sothis and the Reckoning of Hatshepsut Marianne Luban© I will keep this paper simple. I must because I am not an expert, by any means, in astronomy and most of my readers won't be, either. Here you won't find an attempt to justify a chronology of the New Kingdom. We will just deal with a few established facts and ancient texts. One undisputed fact is that the heliacal rising of Sothis [spdt] or Sirius slowly wandered through the Egyptian Civil Calendar until, finally, it once again could correspond to I Axt Day 1. This process took 1, 460 years and would be the start of a new Sothic Cycle. If there was a sighting on one day, called "prt spdt" in Egyptian, it happened, then, after the lapse of four years, the heliacal rising was sighted one day later within the Civil Calendar. In the time of the early 18th Dynasty Sirius wasn't spotted in I Axt, as it would have been in a "perfect year" but in the third month of Smw, the eleventh month of the wandering calendar. Because the heliacal rising was expected near to the arrival of the annual flooding of the Nile, that meant the waters began to cover the land during III Smw in what was supposed to be a scorching, bone-dry, summer month according to the calendar, again in a "perfect year". However, when it came to the sighting of the star in question, III Smw was not so very far from I Axt in time. In fact, Dynasty 18, itself, took up most of III Smw and part of IV Smw―so that a new Sothic Cycle happened in the era of the 19th Dynasty. By the time the pharaoh Thutmose III was a young man and had regained his sole reign, Hatshepsut having disappeared from the scene, the Civil Calendar months were more or less in sync with the naturally-occurring seasons. One can know this from the king's annals at Karnak. During his first Levantine campaign in his Year 22-23, he 1 evidently knew he had to be at Megiddo in Canaan by I Smw if he intended for his army to harvest the winter wheat growing around the city. If he arrived too late, the inhabitants would harvest it, themselves, and the siege of Megiddo would have lasted even longer than it did. But, as it happened, the walled city could only hold out for seven months before the people began to starve. The Canaanite wheat harvest was slightly behind that of Egypt. This means that, by I Smw, it was spring in both Egypt and Canaan and that, by mid-III Smw, it was already July by the Julian calendar, the time of the inundation and "prt spdt". Probably, during the flood of Year 22, the Nilometers had predicted there was going to be a scanty harvest in Egypt and that had come true. So that was the resulting plan―to take the wheat of the Canaanites by force. Instead of admitting this for posterity, a tale was invented for the annals, claiming that several hundred Canaanite princes had rebelled against Thutmose III and he had no choice but to go east and battle them. To the victor went the spoils. Menkheperre had learned the art of propaganda from a master, his aunt and stepmother, Hatshepsut, once she made up her mind to become a pharaoh in her own right. We will get to that soon, but first let us take a look at III Smw and the heliacal risings. For that purpose, one must think of every day in the month representing four years: The two Sothic concordances, which means the sighting of Sirius was specified as having occurred on a certain calendric day, are in boldface. They are very rare throughout pharaonic history and including the Greek Period. The Papyrus Ebers, verso, tells of one in Year 9 of Amenhotep I. The veracity of this has been criticized but, as one can see, it appears to make overall sense, given that the next concordance, found at what remained of the temple of Khnum at Elephantine, has been assigned to the reign of Thutmose III. What becomes obvious is that, if it is already Year 49 of Thutmose [he being the 2 only one who sat on the throne that long in the entire dynasty insofar as we know] on Day 28, the reigns of the interim kings had to have endured for approximately the given lengths―as it would soon be the end of Menkheperre with his 54 years. We know that Amenhotep I ruled for 20 years and 7 months. According to the stelae of Ahmose called Tora, Viceroy of Kush, Thutmose I arose as king in that same 7th month of the Civil Calendar. Archaeology has found 9 years for the latter pharaoh but, in that part of the dynasty, somebody had 13 years according to Manetho the Egyptian historian. It looks very much like it was the first Thutmose who was pharaoh for 13 years. Perhaps his successor, Thutmose II, had 2 years―but we don't really know as his last attested is only Year 1. Next is the child pharaoh, little Thutmose III. Hatshepsut is not included on the graph of III Smw because her reign, no matter how she characterized it, was never separate from that of her step-son and nephew. As the rightful king, his years kept accruing until finally, around Year 9, he was shown as a co-ruler with Hatshepsut on her monuments. Hatshepsut was a builder. This text is on an obelisk that was expected to be ready in time for her first jubilee: "My Majesty commissioned it in Year 15, Day 1 of the second month of Winter, ending in Year 16, the last day of the fourth month of Summer, making seven months from the commissioning in the quarry." The planning for the obelisk seems good. As we now know that, in IV Smw, the river should have been very high as III Smw was already July, it was the optimum time for transporting such a heavy object on the Nile from Aswan to Thebes. Traditionally, however, one celebrated ones heb sed or first jubilee in Year 30―so what was the reasoning of the woman/king for making Year 16 her correct time? In my opinion, it all revolved around legitimizing propaganda. In order to show herself as the rightful ruler, there were texts at Hatshepsut's great mortuary temple indicating that her father, Thutmose I, had made her his coregent years before and that was when she had already received the prenomen Maatkare. Since an oracle had proclaimed this in a Year 2, one can believe that belonged to Thutmose I. The true heir of the latter, Thutmose II, was not included in this fantasy. At Deir el Bahari was the Temple of a Million Years of Hatshepsut, intended for posterity, the literate ones surely accepting her version of the history of the period written there. Returning to the image I made of the month of III Smw―by Year 16 of the joint reign of Thutmose III/Hatshepsut, one required an extra fourteen years to make that equal the expected Year 30. Therefore, if Hatshepsut wished to follow her own propaganda, she could annex those years since the time she had supposedly been created a coregent in Year 2 of her father―something which had not been "properly recognized previously". That would leave about twelve years to go for Thutmose I1 and about two for 1 If the anniversary of the kngship of Thutmose I turned to Year 2 in the 7th month and Hatshepsut was crowned on New Year's Day, according to her text, the coregency would still have commenced in his Year 2. 3 the "false king", Thutmose II―around fourteen in total. By this reasoning, of course, the entire reign of young Thutmose III thus far was really supposed to have belonged to Hatshepsut, as well, as she had been a pharaoh before he was even born. In this fairy tale the only coronation date Hatshepsut could come up with for herself was New Year's Day, very convenient as it did not imply taking over in the middle of the year from someone else. Hatshepsut was never actually crowned so no real date existed. She can't have been crowned around, say, Year 7 2, as her fictional account of her coronation made that a thing of the distant past and, besides, Thutmose III, a male of the dynasty, had been the pharaoh while Hatshepsut was still a king's widow and he still lived. So she simply took over, seized advantage of the fact that the true king was a child and the men around her were either too greedy or fearful to stop her. Of course, figuring out the lengths of the reigns of Thutmose I and II isn't quite that simple. Kings hardly ever die at the precise end of the calendar year so that a successor can actually begin on New Year's Day. If Hatshepsut required fourteen retrospective years in order to celebrate her first heb sed, she did not need to worry about any extra months that may have passed after the actual Year 13 of Thutmose I or what happened after the Year 2 of her half-brother―or if he even managed to complete two years. Close is good enough when one promotes oneself via propaganda. 2 The year of Thutmose III that many believe was the time when Hatshepsut switched from a regent for the lad to full kingship. 4