Days at the Egyptian Museum of Cairo : The Canopus Decree Stela “Happy Egyptian New Year 6266, Happy Coptic New Year 1741”

Happy Egyptian New Year 6267, Happy Coptic New Year 1742

Today, 11 September, marks “1 Tut,” the first day of the Ancient Egyptian Year 6267, according to the ancient Egyptian calendar.

It is also the first day of the Coptic Year 1742 AM.

Tut refers to Thoth, in case you do not know "Thoth by Midjourney"

As I do every year, I’ll repeat the reminder that the Ancient Egyptian/Coptic New Year begins on 1 Tut, which usually falls on 11 or 12 September in the Gregorian calendar. This calendar continues to be used in Egypt today to determine the dates of religious feasts—particularly in the Coptic Church—and to mark the agricultural seasons.

On this occasion, I’d like to share a unique and monumental piece at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo: the great limestone stela of the Canopus Decree in honor of Ptolemy III.

The Canopus Decree in honor of Ptolemy III at the Egyptian Museum of Cairo

The Canopus Decree is a trilingual inscription—carved in hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Greek—and stands as the second-earliest example of such trilingual decrees.

The most famous of these, of course, is the Rosetta Stone (which, needless to say, should return to Rosetta, Egypt).

The decree commemorates a grand assembly of priests held at the city of Canopus, on the outskirts of modern Alexandria, to honor Ptolemy III Euergetes of the Ptolemaic dynasty, along with his wife Queen Berenice and Princess Berenice.

It reflects how the king secured priestly support — and through them, popular acceptance — by funding temples and linking his dynasty with Egypt’s ancient religious traditions. A tradition is still alive till now.

Despite his father and grandfather having already begun blending Hellenistic and Egyptian religious traditions, Ptolemy III took this policy much further and in a far more systematic manner. His reforms followed a strong uprising in Egypt that broke out while he was campaigning in the Levant.

Upon his return, and determined to consolidate Ptolemaic rule, Ptolemy III launched a large-scale program of temple restoration—particularly at Karnak, Edfu, and Dendera. These projects honored the traditional Egyptian gods while also reinforcing the cult of the Ptolemaic rulers as divine, merging pharaonic kingship with Hellenistic ruler-worship.

In recognition of these efforts, the great assembly of priests at Canopus issued the famous decree honoring him, his wife Queen Berenice, and their daughter, Princess Berenice.

The stela itself is a striking work of art. Its round-topped design is crowned with a frieze of stars running across the lunette. 

Zoom into the Canopus Decree

At the center is a winged sun-disk with pendant uraei, from which hang shen-rings—symbols of eternity—flanking the names of Horus Behedet and the royal cartouches of the king and queen.

Beneath this is a register of sixteen divinities and kings arranged symmetrically, eight on each side, facing the center. The innermost figure on the right is none other than Ptolemy III himself.

Below the imagery stretches 110 horizontal lines of inscription: The first 26 in hieroglyphs, the next 20 in Demotic and the final 64 in Greek

The text covers a wide range of topics—military campaigns, famine, government organization, and Egyptian religion under Ptolemaic rule. It highlights the king’s generous donations to temples and his support for the Apis and Mnevis (Mer-wer) cults. It also deifies the deceased Princess Berenice, establishing a cult in her honor. Finally, the decree orders that it be inscribed in both hieroglyphs and Greek, on stone or bronze, and displayed in temples across Egypt.

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs represented the classical, monumental script of temple and royal inscriptions, while Demotic was a later, simplified cursive script used for everyday documents, contracts, and religious texts.

So, why am I sharing this beautiful photo of such a unique stela?

 Because this monument marks the introduction of the most accurate solar calendar of the ancient world—a year of 365 days plus a quarter day.

The Canopus Decree introduced the concept of a leap year, adding one extra day every four years to the existing 365-day Egyptian calendar.

This innovation created a 365.25-day year, a major step toward precision in solar timekeeping.

The heiroglyphic part of the decree at the Egyptian Museum of Cairo

This is the translation of the part related to the calendar from Attalus.org

"And in order that the seasons may correspond regularly according to the establishment of the world, and in order that it may not occur that some of the national feasts kept in winter may come to be kept in the summer, the sun changing one day in every four years, and that other feasts now kept in summer may come to be kept in winter in future times, as has formerly happened, and now would happen if the arrangement of the year remained of 360 days, and the five additional days added; from now onwards one day, a feast of the Beneficent Gods, shall be added every four years to the five additional days  before the new year, in order that all may know that the former defect in the arrangement of the seasons and the year and the received opinions concerning the whole arrangement of the heavens has been corrected and made good by the Benefactor Gods."

This Ptolemaic calendar reform failed at first, but was finally implemented in Egypt by Augustus in 26/25 BC. It became known as the Alexandrian calendar, with a sixth epagomenal day added for the first time on 29 August 22 BC.

Meanwhile, Julius Caesar had already introduced a 365¼-day year in Rome in 45 BC as part of the Julian calendar. The Alexandrian calendar remains in use today in the Coptic Church but under the name of the Coptic Calendar.

Interestingly, hardly anyone mentions the Egyptian roots of the Julian calendar. When Julius Caesar reformed Rome’s messy lunar calendar in 45 BC, he turned to Sosigenes of Alexandria, an Egyptian-Greek astronomer, who drew directly on Egypt’s solar calendar. 

The result was the Julian calendar—a 365¼-day system that later evolved into the Gregorian calendar we use today. 

In other words, the world still keeps time by an invention of ancient Egypt.

This is considered the second copy of the declaration. It is currently on display on the ground floor of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, in Gallery 49. It was discovered in 1881 by Gaston Maspero at Kom el-Hisn in the western Nile Delta. The first copy of the declaration was found earlier, in 1866, by Karl Richard Lepsius at Tanis.

Although the first copy is said to be housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, I could not locate it. It may have been transferred to the Grand Egyptian Museum or the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization.

In March 2004, during excavations at Bubastis (Tell Basta), archaeologists from the German-Egyptian Tell Basta Project uncovered another well-preserved copy of the Canopus Decree.

On Tuesday, Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced that a mission from the Supreme Council of Antiquities unearthed a new and complete version of the decree at Tell El-Faraoun in the city of Husseiniya, Sharqiya Governorate. The stela, inscribed entirely in hieroglyphs, was found in excellent condition.

Unlike earlier copies, which were inscribed in three scripts—hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek—the newly discovered stela is written solely in hieroglyphs, providing fresh insights into the language of ancient Egypt and the formulation of royal decrees.

And that’s the story of the Canopus Decree.

Happy New Ancient Egyptian/Coptic Year—may it be better than all the years before.