Sphinxy

In 1989 film When Harry Met Sally, Harry Burns says: You know, I have a theory that hieroglyphics are just an ancient comic strip about a character named Sphinxy...

This is a drawing of the eastern wall relief from the mid 3rd mil BC tomb of Ptahhotep in Saqqara.

I talked about it in my post "Papyrus harvest time", in which I tried to determine when the Ancient Egyptians harvested papyrus, which apparently is not known. 

I based my argument on the plant calendar markers found on the relief from Ptahhotep's tumb.

But this relief is turning to be more interesting than I originally thought. As it seems that this "comic strip" contain quite a few additional animal and plant calendar markers...

Today I will like to talk about this part of the relief. I will again be using the drawings from this page from this great site "osirisnet.net"...

First register contains herdsmen and scenes with cattle, one of which is calving. The narrow sub-register above contains tethered calves...

Second and third registers contain various groups of cattle which are led or driven before Ptahhotep. The third register being the particularly interesting one...

Fourth register shows "the superintendent of the corn store leading a flock of cranes"? Followed by two rows, the upper division containing three sorts of geese then a group of swans...and lots of other birds numbering in total more than 600,000 based on the accompanying text...

Sooo...What's the big deal here? Well, I think that this part of the relief is depicting a (known? unknown?) ceremony, festival, which (I think) included bull sacrifice, which took place during Shemu (Mar/Apr/May), the grain harvest season in Ancient Egypt...

Why do I think this? Because of the animal calendar markers depicted together in this scene: wild cattle calving which takes place while "the superintendent of the corn store" "leads" huge number of wild birds towards Ptahhotep, most importantly common cranes and swans...

Let's start from the end: common cranes and swans. Both of these birds are winter visitors to Egypt, which arrive in Oct/Nov and leave in Mar/Apr...

You can find information about the autumn and spring migration of the common cranes in Egypt in these books:

"The Birds of the Egyptian Western Desert" by Steven M. Goodman

"A handbook to the birds of Egypt" by G.E. Shelley

So the only time when these birds could have been "led" by "the superintendent of the corn store" in Egypt is between Oct and Apr...

It is interesting that it is "the superintendent of the corn store" that leads these migratory birds "in huge numbers", considering that the spring northward migration of these birds out of Egypt, coincides with Shemu (Mar/Apr/May), the grain harvest season in Ancient Egypt...

Guess what else happens during this period, more precisely Apr/May? The calving season of the Wild Eurasian cattle. Which is why cow and calf is an ancient animal calendar marker for Apr/May. Today this period is marked by Taurus. I talked about this in my post "Cow and calf ivory"...

So all these animal calendar markers point at Apr/May, harvest time...Was there a festival that took place during that time, during which bulls were sacrificed? What are these things that look like some kind machete to me...

Not sure if Egyptians had anything like that...Anyone knows?

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...