[staplung]

Ha, that's nothin'. The ancient Egyptians used a 365 day calendar (with no leap years) so it drifted by .25 days every year. So after 730 years it's essentially backwards (summer solstice is when winter solstice used to be etc.). After that, it starts coming back into alignment again but takes another 730 years to get there. They used their calendar for so long that it nearly had time to roll over like this twice!

[nine_k]

My favorite factoid about ancient Egypt is that Cleopatra, the last pharaon queen of Egypt, lived much closer to the time when humans landed on Moon than to the time when the great pyramids were built.

[bell-cot]

True...but "last pharaon queen of Egypt" may be misleading, for those unfamiliar with the history:

Cleopatra was a Macedonian Greek, descended from one of Alexander the Great's generals. Alexander had conquered Egypt about 3 centuries earlier...taking it from the Persians, who had previously conquered the final "native" XXX Dynasty...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_Kingdom

And giving Egypt's foreign conqueror the title "Pharaoh", if only for domestic consumption, persisted for centuries after Cleopatra:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_pharaoh

Though Rome's appointed provincial governors mostly didn't care if the locals called them "Pharaoh".

[ithkuil]

To her credit though she was one of the few Ptolemaic rules of Egypt who even bothered learning the Egyptian language

[bell-cot]

Yes-ish. Quoting a bit from Dr. Bret Devereaux, whose take on Cleopatra VII I linked a bit further down:

> Let’s start with languages, because I think this fact can be presented in a somewhat distorted way. The language of the Ptolemaic court was Greek, initially Macedonian Greek (the Macedonians had a pronounced accent), though Plutarch notes that some of the later Ptolemies had lost their Macedonian accent (Plut. Ant. 27.3-4). Cleopatra, by contrast, was the first of the Ptolemies to bother to learn Egyptian (which should tell you something about the character of Ptolemaic rule; imagine if King Charles was the first English king since George I and kings from the House of Hanover to bother to learn English). The problem with this fact is that it is incomplete, presenting Cleopatra as a Greek-speaker who learned the language of her people out of sincere devotion, but that’s not what Plutarch says. Plutarch says:

>> She could turn [her voice] easily to whichever language she wished and she conversed with few barbarians entirely through an interpreter, and she gave her decisions herself to most of them, including Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes and Parthians. She is said to have learned the languages of many others also, although the kings before her did not undertake to learn the Egyptian language, even though some of them had abandoned the Macedonian dialect.16

> So let’s unpack that. This isn’t a native speaker of Greek who learned just the language of her subjects, but a spectacularly skilled linguist who learned a lot of different languages, quite regardless of if she ruled the people in question. Running through the list, she evidently learned Ethiopian, the language of the people on her southern border, the speech of the Troglodytae, the people who lived on the coast of the Red Sea (a hinterland of her kingdom). The ‘language of the Hebrews’ here is probably Aramaic rather than Hebrew (which would also cover much of Syria), while the language of the Medes and Parthians might mean both Old Persian and the Parthian language. To which we must add Egyptian, implied by that last sentence; it also seems fairly clear Cleopatra knew at least some Latin.17 This is part of why I find arguments that use Cleopatra’s knowledge of Egyptian as strong proof either for her Egyptian ancestry or deep attachment to Egypt less than fully compelling; she was surely not Parthian and did not have a deep attachment to Parthia, but she learned their language too. Again, there’s not nothing here, but it’s not a slam dunk either.

SO - literally truth that she learned Egyptian. But extremely sketchy to extrapolate from that fact to any sort of "she cared more about her subjects" conclusion.

[ithkuil]

Yeah. I didn't want to imply that she particularly cared about the language of the people she ruled, as much as I wanted to imply that none of her predecessors did

[wolfi1]

Troglodytes? cave dwellers?

[dmd]

Yes! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troglodytae

[mr_toad]

> imagine if King Charles was the first English king since George I and kings from the House of Hanover to bother to learn English

After the invasion of England by William the court spoke French for hundreds of years. I don’t know if or when they learnt English.

[rags2riches]

Diocletian's Palace, presently the Old Town of Split, Croatia, was decorated with Egyptian sphinxes because the romans also liked ancient artefacts.

[cal85]

Another one: T-Rex lived much closer to the time when humans landed on the moon than to the time when the stegosaurus existed.

[rocqua]

Also, Cleopatra considered herself Greek (or rather hellinistic) and had the lineage to prove that. She is remembered fondly because she was decently respectful of her Egyptian subjects, but that was mostly in contrast to her predecessors.

[bell-cot]

> She is remembered fondly because...

From accounts by professional ancient historians, that "fact" may mostly be PR spin and "rule of cool" myth. For instance:

https://acoup.blog/2023/05/26/collections-on-the-reign-of-cl...

[pyuser583]

She’s remembered because of her alliance with Mark Anthony.

[selcuka]

Another fun fact is that mammoths weren't extinct yet when the pyramids were built.

[leononame]

Woah that's insane. I remember there was a reddit thread about these things and one nugget was that the Oxford University was built before the Aztec Empire existed.

[bregma]

Harvard University was founded shortly after Shakespeare's death and decades before calculus was invented.

[nathancahill]

When the Pilgrims landed in North America, universities were already printing books in Mexico City.

[imp0cat]

How else could they move those large boulders? Mammoths, of course! :)

[owlninja]

Somehow, for the first time ever, I recently heard the idea of the 13 month year and I sort of nodded my head in interest. Then I heard someone breakdown the history of calendars and it really blew my mind. Mainly the amount of thought that went into it and the incredible span of time it was revised and discussed!

[brandensilva]

The 13 month per calendar year (Mayan calendar) just makes so much sense as a web developer but somehow as a human it also seems hella mundane to have the same 28 day cycle repeated. Maybe that last day of the year party would make up for it though.

[mnw21cam]

I quite like the hobbit calendar. 12 months of 30 days each, plus 5 (or 6) extra days that don't belong to a month and are celebration days. Mid-year day and the leap day don't have a day of the week, so each date always is the same day of the week.

https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Shire_Calendar

[bombcar]

Days that aren't part of a month are such a elegant way to solve the problem.

Even now 29 Feb shouldn't exist, it should just be "leap day" and have no numerical significance.

Screw the computers, they can learn to adapt.

[andirk]

The Y29K Bug. That would fix the current "Don't Get Paid for A Day" trick that Leap Years do to salaried people.

[brandensilva]

More celebration days, no complaints here. I wish humanity cared more about such universal celebrations that brought us together.

Of course those days would be very hectic travel wise if the entire population of earth were to migrate around on those days.

[Ma8ee]

The only disadvantage I can see is that you’d have your birthday in the same day of the week every year. If you are born on a Monday, you’ll celebrate on a Monday every year in your life.

[eesmith]

In our current calendar system I don't always celebrate my birthday on my birthday.

[szundi]

This is so true and adds to the prev prev argument

[eesmith]

I'm so familiar with the Gregorian calendar that I would prefer the International Fixed Calendar (13 months of 28 days + Leap Day and Year Day) with its yearly synchronization over the Mayan calendar.

[eternauta3k]

This is an excellent podcast on the history of timekeeping: https://www.hi101.ca/?p=566

[pier25]

Woah. The change happened over multiple generations but they must have noticed, no?

[Ekaros]

The farmers did not care. Nile floods at sometime, then it goes back then you do all the normal things until you harvest. Repeat. So they really did not need calendar for that.

And on other hand the clerks had enough time to make writing system really hard to learn so such thing would make things even better for them...

[riku_iki]

its always hot there, so no wonder they didn't notice winter shift (joking).

[bombcar]

This is actually partially part of it - if you're tracking your activities based on natural phenomena, you don't need to worry about a calendar - just things like "days since full moon" or "weeks since the flood".