Birthdays: Beyond Cake and Ice Cream

Birthdays: Beyond Cake and Ice Cream — page 7 — nikki tate and dani tate-stratton 10 An example at the Kom Ombo Temple of an early Egyptian calendar carved in stone Zhaojiankang Dreamstime com

Birthdays: Beyond Cake and Ice Cream — page 8 — one The birth of birthdays It’s impossible to know exactly when people ﬁrst started to celebrate birthdays At some point in the Bronze Age between about 3300 bce and 1000 bce people started keeping track of time using calendars Before that it would have been hard to pinpoint what day of the year a baby was born Imagine not knowing exactly when to have your birthday party While people knew roughly what time of year water froze and thawed or when it was time to sow and harvest crops in ancient times the lack of a consistent calendar made it tough to keep track of important dates Party Like An Egyptian Though scholars are still debating the exact date calendars began to be used it’s thought that the Ancient Egyptians Someone who is born on February 29 during a leap year is called a leaper or a leapling In non leap years leaplings celebrate on either February 28 or March 1 11

Birthdays: Beyond Cake and Ice Cream — page 9 — nikki tate and dani tate-stratton This ceiling in the Abydos Temple in Egypt shows early Egyptian astrological symbols AmandaLewis iStock com B i r thday Treats Amon-Ra Egyptians used decans ten-day cycles to decide which star sign corresponded with a birthday Because there are thirty-six decans in a year each zodiac sign spans three decans Each decan is influenced by a different planet leading to variations from birth date to birth date I was born on January 9 which means that in Ancient Egypt I would have been Amon-Ra for birth dates between January 8 to 21 and February 1 to 11 People born under Amon-Ra are said to be optimistic intelligent and stubborn DTS were among the ﬁrst people to use one about 5,000 years ago The Ancient Egyptian calendar had twelve months each of which had 30 days It takes the Earth 365 days to travel once around the sun so the Ancient Egyptians didn’t have quite enough days to add up to a full year 12 x 30 360 They added an extra day known as epagomenae to ﬁve of the months Those spare days became feast days to commemorate the birthdays of Egyptian gods The ﬁrst day of each new year was said to be Ra-Horakhty’s birthday Ra-Horakhty was the god of the sun in Ancient Egypt Egyptian kings were called pharaohs and were believed to become godlike once they were elevated to the status of pharaoh Egyptians kept careful track of the positions and movements of stars and planets on their pharaohs birthdays taking note of where heavenly bodies are at a given point in time is an important aspect of the prac tice of astrology The Ancient Egyptians believed that the

Birthdays: Beyond Cake and Ice Cream — page 10 — the birth of birthdays astrological readings of these living gods could affect harvests and other important aspects of life When the pharaohs birthdays occurred the whole community contributed to the occasion often closing businesses for days at a time as they prepared huge feasts in honor of the important date The date of a pharaoh’s coronation was also thought of as a kind of birthday because crowning a pharaoh elevated him to a new status Thousands of years after the death of Pharoah Ramses II in 1213 bce the people of Egypt still celebrate both his birthday and the date of his coronation At Abu Simbel one of the many monu ments he ordered to have built in his name there is an inner sanctum that is normally shrouded in darkness However on two days of the year the dates traditionally A coronation such as the one shown here was considered to be like a pharaoh’s birthday Passion Images Shutterstock com The Great Temple at Abu Simbel contains an inner sanctum illuminated by the sun only on Ramses II’s two birthdays Emanuele Mazzoni Photo Shutterstock com 13

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