The Amarna Mysteries

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  • Wandering year

Wandering year

< 1 min read

Egyptologists’ name, from the Latin annus vagus, for Egypt’s 365-day civil calendar: with no leap day, it slipped one day against the solar year every four years, carrying New Year’s Day through all the seasons. It came back to the morning of Sopdet’s rising in about 1,460 years, the span called the Sothic cycle, and back to the same point in the seasons in about 1,500. By modern reckoning it had last come back to Sopdet’s rising around 1320 BCE; in Tutankhamun’s reign the calendar was in approximate alignment with the actual seasons.

How the Egyptian calendar works
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The Amarna Mysteries

Mystery novels of ancient Egypt, built on the scholarship of the Amarna period. Published by The WordFish Group GmbH, Basel.

The Series

  • Series overview
  • Geography of the series
  • Naming Ancient Egypt
  • Healers & poisons
  • Scribes & bureaucracy

The Amarna Period

  • Overview
  • Akhenaten & the Aten
  • The royal women
  • Succession & aftermath
  • Horemheb

Behind the Books

  • Overview
  • Methodology
  • Research
  • Reader's Companion
  • From the Notebook

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