Many of us will have just celebrated Easter, but how many have thought about the meaning of the holiday, besides getting together with family and eating (chocolate) eggs? For most people in the Netherlands nowadays, Easter mainly serves as a marker of spring and in that way, it is part of our festive rhythm, related to the changing of the seasons. We will see that Easter was also associated with seasonal changes in Late Antique Egypt, as a way to imbed the new feast in the festive calendar. Before the introduction of Easter in the fourth century CE, there were already other festivals in this period of the year. How did Easter relate to these older spring celebrations in an already established festival calendar? The Easter date was of course closely connected to the Jewish celebration of Pesach, but in this contribution my focus lies on the similarities between Easter and the traditional festivities in the same period of the year, in particular the way people referred to the feast.
The spring season more or less corresponds to the Egyptian months of Phamenoth, Pharmouthi and Pachon. The most important festival during the second and third centuries would have been the Serapeia, honoring the Graeco-Egyptian god Sarapis, a Hellenized version of Osiris with traits of Zeus and Dionysos. His festival was celebrated on the last day of Pharmouthi, the 30th, and the first day of Pachon, the 25th and 26th of April in our calendar.
Not incidentally, the 1st of Pachon was also the start of the Egyptian Harvest season. Egypt had three different seasons connected to the flood of the Nile, that was essential for the agricultural cycle. The first season, Inundation, started with the flood of the Nile in the month Thoth, at the end of August, and was seen as the beginning of the new year. In the month Tybi, at the end of December, the second season Emergence started, when it was time for sowing. Finally, the Harvest season started with the month of Pachon, which in the period of the New Kingdom was the occasion for a Harvest festival. The Serapeia functioned as a successor to this festival in Roman times. The latest attestation of the Serapeia is found in a private letter from the early fourth century, P. Ammon. 1 3, where a reference is made to a festival on the 30th of Pharmouthi. Although this reference is somewhat vague, it must be taken to indicate the Serapeia.
During Late Antiquity, Easter became the most important feast during this time of year, with a moveable date. This spring festival was tied to the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox on March 21st. The first mentions of Easter can be found in the papyrological sources during the third and fourth centuries, usually with the name Pascha (πάσχα). Other designations of the feast are Resurrection (ἀνάστασις) or ‘end of fast’ (λύσις τῆς νηστείας). A final name, occurring in the fifth and sixth centuries, that is usually connected to Easter is the Feast of Pharmouthi. It is true that Easter usually falls in the month of Pharmouthi (27 March – 25 April), 9 out of 10 times even, based on the table of Easter dates. However, an Easter date in the month of Phamenoth is also possible, making the Feast of Pharmouthi not an unambiguous name. Furthermore, there is no decisive evidence that proves the Feast of Pharmouthi is a reference to Easter.
The Feast of Pharmouthi is not the only festival named after a month. The Feast of Tybi is well represented in the source material and the Feast of Pachon also occurs among others, all during the fifth and sixth centuries. It is unfortunately unclear exactly when these were held during their respective months and what was celebrated at these events, but it is clear that these feasts were important markers of time on the calendar and an occasion for formal gifts, a continuation of an older custom.
Interestingly enough, naming festivals after months was an ancient Egyptian tradition. Or even, naming months after popular festivals, as Jauhianinen states in her thesis on Ancient Egyptian festivals (Jauhianinen 2009, 67). According to Jauhiainen, the original Feast of Pharmouthi was dedicated to Renenutet, a fertility goddess (Jauhiainen 2009, 141-6). It is therefore likely that the festival was celebrated towards the end of the month, close to the actual start of the Harvest on the first of Pachon. In that way the Feast of Pharmouthi signaled the new season as well.
If the Feast of Pharmouthi of the fifth and sixth centuries indeed refers to the Christian feast of Easter, it would mark a distinct throwback to traditional customs and a direct link to the importance of seasonality. Perpillou Thomas believes this continuity to be part of the transition from ‘pagan’ to Christian practices as well (Perpillou-Thomas 1993, 254-5).
Referring to Easter as the Feast of Pharmouthi also connects the feast to the Serapeia that were celebrated at the end of Pharmouthi and to the celebration of the start of the Harvest season in Egypt. In this sense, the echoes of these ‘pagan’ festivals reinforced the known festive rhythm in Christian times. Another aspect of continuity is to be found in the aforementioned formal gifts, the so-called heortika. In the papyrological sources we find these during spring for the Serapeia (P. Strasb. 6 559), several times for the Feast of Pharmouthi (e.g. PSI 7 791) and once even for the anastasis (P. Oxy. 27 2480). It appears that the custom of giving on the occasion of festivals continued and was assimilated by Christianity. On the other hand, the Christian authorities wanted to create a separate identity for the Christians and were looking for ways to differentiate themselves from other religious groups. In this light, the Christian alms given to those in need during festivals could be an inheritance of the practice of giving, providing a Christian alternative to gifts without the expectation of something in return. As another example hereof, we can see the prolonged fasting period preceding Easter as a counteraction against the lavish banquets that belonged to traditional feasts, reminiscent of Augustine and Chrysostom who preached to fast during the exuberant Kalends celebrations.
In the discussed Feast of Pharmouthi we find traditional echoes through the name and month important for the seasonality, but also newly introduced Christian meanings, through its possible association with Easter. Nevertheless, the question remains why this name was sometimes used and not the direct term Pascha. The Feasts named after Egyptian months not only anchor the innovation of new festivals in traditional Egyptian festive practices, they could also obscure what exactly was celebrated during these events, leaving room for a wider array of festivities, perhaps including traditional elements besides Christian rituals.
A modern parallel may be found in the Egyptian feast Sham Al Nassim, or Sham Ennesim, – meaning ‘smell the breeze’ – a public, not particularly religious, festival, that marks the beginning of spring and is celebrated by practically all Egyptians, whatever their religion. This official public holiday is always celebrated on the Monday after Easter and has therefore a clear connection to Christian liturgy. People tend to spend the day outdoors, sharing picnics and gifting each other colored boiled eggs. Some say that the origins of the festival go back to the ancient Harvest festival, that indeed was celebrated around this time as we have seen. This would mean that the seasonal or festive rhythm remained steadfast through all the changes the country has gone through since ancient times and that such a celebration can bring people from different groups together.
Elsa Lucassen
References:
Jauhiainen, Heidi 2009. “DO NOT CELEBRATE YOUR FEAST WITHOUT YOUR NEIGHBOURS”: A Study of References to Feasts and Festivals in Non-Literary Documents from Ramesside Period Deir el-Medina. Academic Dissertation (University of Helsinki, 2009).
Perpillou-Thomas, Francoise 1993. Fêtes d’égypte ptolémaïque et romaine d’après la documentation papyrologique grecque. Lovanii: Universitas Catholica Lovaniensis.