Our modern calendar had its beginnings in ancient Egypt. Julius Caesar’s interaction with Cleopatra VII offered Rome a number of cultural innovations, including a more efficient way to measure time. Renamed the Julian Calendar in his honor, it travelled with Rome’s legions to the corners of the globe. Eventually, most of the world came to operate on some form of the Julian Calendar. Pope Gregory XIII put an end to Caesar’s calendar, but the Gregorian calendar we use is still based on it. 

The Ancient Egyptian Daybook

The Ancient Egyptian Daybook, written by Egyptologist and religious scholar Tamara L. Siuda, illustrated by Megan Zane, and made possible through a successful 2013 Kickstarter campaign, provides more than 350 pages of detail on ancient Egyptian calendars and how they were used over the millennia. It also includes in-depth data on ancient Egyptian holidays, and a full listing of the gods over each day of the year that has never before been published in English. This book expands on a calendar that appeared in Tamara L. Siuda’s 2005 The Ancient Egyptian Prayerbook, and represents the culmination of more than 25 years of research into and translations of ancient hieroglyphic sources.