How & when are you celebrating Wep Ronpet 2023?

It is the KO date for Wep Ronpet today.

I hope those who follow this date are having a good one. :smiley:

1 Like

Happy Wep Ronpet again. For those of us celebrating it today, :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Happy Wep Ronpet! :partying_face:

I hope your celebrations have gone well.

3 Likes

I hope you had a wonderful celebration. Finally I consecrated my new shrine ( in my bedroom) for my Lady Serqet and several other Neteru :heart::scorpion:

3 Likes

Well I was going to go for the KO date but then due to relatives being here I went for Kemetic Reform date instead. Iā€™m so undecided about when is the ā€˜correctā€™ date. I even saw 27 August is being the heliacal rising of Sirius here in the UK - is that correct ??
I need some kind of summary of all the versions and why those days are chosen by different groups / people.
Then what is the consensus of opinion? Do you go for the original date in Egypt, the current date in Egypt, the current UK date or something else ?
Itā€™s so confusing!!

2 Likes

I can suggest this is possibly accurate, it depends on the latitude and the horizon. Having done the computations, automated them and verified them against as many sources as I could findā€¦ it is not an exact science whatsoever. Using the computation method from Ptolemy at our latitude and with modern models of the Earthā€™s orientation and an ā€˜arcus visionisā€™ of 10 degrees results in 29th August at Greenwich. The 19th August is the last date when they will rise with in the same hour, which sets a reasonable lower bound at least.

These values maybe more suitable for the hot and humid summer in Alexandria than todayā€™s conditions, and my work with this leads me to believe that practical observations are likely to have a wide variance - perhaps as much as 15 days.

All that being said, the ancients resisted calendar reform for good reasons, and employed a wandering year, much more suitable for astronomical reckoning than for maintaining the dates of equinoxes. The heliacal rising date would drift once every 4 years or so (occasionally 3 or 5) to the next calendar dateā€¦ and this was fine.

EDIT: ā€¦ if i was going to have a stretch, there is no modern consensus and the Kemetic Reform and Kemetic Orthodox dates seem to come from trying to recreate a practise the ancients themselves stopped using before the Middle Kingdom.

I also have the opinion that no date is really right or wrong. Have you seen how many creation myths we have? :stuck_out_tongue:

I have the same opinion. I think itā€™s about whatā€™s right for that person/group.

I wonder whether the festivals of Auset throughout the Roman empire were celebrated via a Roman calendar or local calendars depending on the position of the stars?

1 Like

From what Iā€™ve seen so far, only the first few years of Augustus used the traditional ā€˜wandering yearā€™ as-is, during this time the Roman calendar was altered to correct broken reforms. In Egypt once the Alexandrian calendar was introduced, the Roman Julian calendar slowly caught up with it until 4AD (iirc).

That being said, the cult of Auset became popular in Rome before that, so Iā€™d imagine there was certainly some ambiguity during the overlap.

There are also the celebrations and activities based off of the lunar calendar which are quite another thing and would constantly drift, whilst being held on the same day regardless of calendar.

EDIT: mentioning the Alexandrian calendar reminds me that the Coptic calendar is another fine descendant of the legacy that people may wish to follow. It certainly has a long history, and whilst it is not the original 360 day year with 5 extra days, it is the valid inheritor for a significant number of people.

2 Likes