The Coptic Calendar

Ethiopia, Land of Mystery, Rooftop of the World and ... Home to the Fountain of Youth?

One of Ethiopia's catch phrases promoting tourism promises that visitors will be younger when they come to Ethiopia. Yes, that's true. It's just a matter of counting time.

It all started in Egypt. Historians believe the Egyptians invented a calendar based on the two coinciding events of the annual flooding of the Nile and the heliacal rising of the star Sirius. This could have occurred as recently as 1322 BCE or as early as 4242 BCE, during the time of the Egyptian kingdoms.

In 238 BCE King Ptolemy III added one day every four years to the calendar to correct the seasonal shift of days, but it was not until Augustus Caesar in 25 BCE introduced the Alexandrian calendar that the reform took effect. This calendar, now called the Coptic calendar, is still used by the Egyptian Coptic Church and many rural Egyptians.

The Coptic calendar was eventually given to its descendent church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Like the Coptic calendar, the Ethiopian calendar has twelve months of 30 days each plus a thirteenth month of five or six days depending on leap year. In Ethiopia, the New Year begins on Meskerem 1 which corresponds to September 1 on the Gregorian calendar (used by most western countries, including the U.S.). By adopting different calculations for the year of the birth of Christ, the Ethiopian calendar is eight years earlier than the Gregorian calendar from January 1 to September 10 or 11 and seven years earlier for the remainder of the Gregorian year.

So not only will you be younger when visiting Ethiopia, if you are there on September 11 of this year (Meskerem 1, 2000) you will get to celebrate a new millennium!

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