Well, now let me tell ya somethin’ ’bout them ancient Egyptians and their calendar. It’s like they had their own way of trackin’ time, ya know? They didn’t go by what we got today, no, not at all. They had a whole solar calendar that was 365 days long. They didn’t mess around with no 12 months like we do. Nah, they divided their whole year up into three seasons, each one was 120 days long. Sounds like a lot of days, right? But that’s how they did it.
Each of them seasons had four months, with 30 days in each month. But hold on, they wasn’t done yet! On top of all that, they had a special little extra month – just five days. They called it epagomenal days, and it was treated like it didn’t really belong to the year proper. I guess it was like a little bonus time. Can you imagine? They just threw in five days like, “Here you go, extra time!”

Now, I know what you’re thinkin’. “What ’bout that zodiac thing everyone talks about?” Well, that’s where things get interesting. The Egyptians had their own star signs too. They didn’t just borrow from the Greeks like we do today. They had their own twist on it. This was long before all them fancy Greek folks came up with their 12 zodiac signs, like Aries, Taurus, and all them others. The Egyptians used something called decans, which were groups of stars that each lasted ten days, and these helped them track the movement of the stars across the sky. They divided the whole sky up into sections, you see?
Let me tell ya, one of the best-known zodiacs from ancient Egypt is the Dendera zodiac. This one’s a big ol’ bas-relief carved into the ceiling of a temple at Dendera. They put it up there in a chapel dedicated to Osiris. You know, Osiris, the god of the underworld. That’s the one they all worshipped. And on this zodiac, you’ll see all kinds of things – like the bull for Taurus and the scales for Libra. These weren’t just random animals, no ma’am. They were important symbols that tied into Egyptian beliefs about life and the stars.
It gets even deeper than that. The Egyptians thought the stars had a whole lot of power. They used ’em for everything – farming, predicting the future, and even for their religious rituals. Some people say that the Dendera zodiac was a map of the sky, showing how the stars moved. They didn’t just look up and see constellations like we do today. They thought the constellations had meaning, like they could predict things. That’s how much they believed in the power of the stars.
Speaking of the stars, did you know that some of the Egyptians’ zodiacs came from the Ptolemaic period? This was way back, around 150 BCE or so, right before the Romans started running things. So, we’re talkin’ real ancient times, and they still had their own way of watchin’ the sky, trackin’ time, and predicting stuff. It wasn’t all about what we know now, nope. They had a system, and it worked for them.
Even though the ancient Egyptians weren’t sittin’ around readin’ star charts like we do today, they sure knew how to use the stars to their advantage. And that Dendera zodiac, with all its fancy carvings and images of the constellations, still holds a lot of secrets about how they saw the world. So, if you ever find yourself wonderin’ how the Egyptians knew what was comin’ or how they tracked time – look up at that sky. It might just tell ya more than you think.
And don’t forget, Egypt wasn’t just about pyramids and mummies. No, ma’am, they were all about the stars too. They made their own calendar, tracked the heavens, and lived by it. That’s some real old-school wisdom right there.

Tags:[Ancient Egyptian Calendar, Zodiac, Egyptian Astrology, Dendera Zodiac, Solar Calendar, Egyptian Decans, Osiris, Egyptian Religion, Astronomy]