“Crown this year O Lord with the blessings of your goodness, and may the fields yield abundant riches,” Coptic congregation sing every New Coptic Year. The refrain is a strong reminder of the fact that
Date from long past
The date 11 September, or 12th in a leap year, corresponds to the first day of Tut, the first month of the Coptic calendar. The calendar itself is as old as its Pharaonic creators, who were the first to establish a solar, then a stellar calendar. It is principally an agricultural calendar, with the year divided into three seasons of four 30-day months each, according to the
The inundation season akhet runs from 12 Ba’ouna (June) to 9 Baba (October), and is followed by peret, the sowing and planting season from 10 Baba to 10 Touba (January). Shemu, the harvest season, extends from 11 Touba to 11 Ba’ouna.
When St Mark entered
Gift of the
The greatest reality of the Egyptian entity is that it is a riparian country that depends for its survival on the river rather than on rainfall. It is based on artificial irrigation not on rainfall cultivation. It is precisely from here that all the differences stem in the life and nature of the fluvial society.
Controlling the Nile was—and still is, despite the Aswan High Dam—the top priority in
In ancient
Famine or deluge
The
The danger of a high or low flood has been mentioned in the records of pharaonic
In the early Arab period, sixteen cubits were considered just the margin of safety. Less than sixteen cubits would be a sign of distress that might lead to famine. Eighteen marked plenty; it was “a sultan”; flood and prosperity would prevail. When the height of the flood waters exceeded the twenty cubit mark, it was a deluge that might turn into a sweeping flood, meaning that, with homes and fields inundated and the valley transformed into a huge swamp, a ‘plague’ or ‘epidemic’ would likely spread.
Since the time of the Pharaohs Egyptians used a basin irrigation system. In the 19th century, Mohamed Ali, the founder of modern
The erection of the Aswan High Dam in the late 1960s abolished the danger of famine or deluge. Sadly, however, this came at the cost of losing the rich silt which used to be carried annually by the flood, and which used to endow
In prayer
To this day, the Holy Mass of the Coptic Church includes special requests or awashi to the Good Lord, which rotate with the seasons. During the inundation season, the Church prays: “Bless the waters of the River, raise them as is proper, according to Your goodness.”—neither too high nor too low a flood. In the sowing season, prayers are said for the plants and trees, in order that they “grow and be fruitful”, and in the harvest season, for “the winds of the skies and the fruits of the earth”. Interestingly, the prayers for the winds, which during that season include the hot, hated khamasin sandstorms, are worded as: “Bestow a good mood upon the winds”.
Along the same line, the Bible reading during Holy Mass in the first two Sundays of the month of Hatour (December) are those of the “sower [who] went forth to sow.” This time coincides with the sowing season following the recession of the flood waters.
And during the last two Sundays of every Coptic year, the Bible readings during Holy Mass are those of the end of the world—a reminder, as the year ends, that our own lives or for that matter the whole world will ultimately come to an end. But then again, the New Year hails, heralding in a new dawn and new beginnings.