About this project
The Ancient Egyptian Daybook
$17,144
314
UPDATES:
- STRETCH GOAL #2 CLEAR! (free library books!) MORE LIBRARY BOOKS AT $20K! CALENDAR MOBILE APP AT $40K! Eight hours to go... SPREAD THE WORD.
This project will also be Kicking It Forward (www.kickingitforward.org)
This project will also be Kicking It Forward (www.kickingitforward.org)
(Video transcript follows due to lack of closed caption)
Do you know where our modern calendar comes from? Did you know that it’s older than Europe, Rome, or even Greece?
A long time ago, in a trireme far away....
Julius Caesar (the Ides of March guy) went to Egypt. He brought back more than Cleopatra and a huge diplomatic headache. He brought back the Julian calendar. Thanks to Pope Gregory the Thirteenth, we don’t use Caesar’s Egyptian calendar anymore. But the Gregorian calendar we do use, is based on it. So our modern calendar…comes from the ancient Egyptian calendar!
What do we know about that ancient calendar?
Lots, as it turns out. It was inscribed on the walls of temples and tombs, and written down in scrolls. And it was created with SCIENCE! Astronomer priests kept track of the movements of stars and planets, and marked out holidays according to those observations.
The ancient Egyptian calendar has all kinds of cool holidays. In addition to days we recognize, like New Year’s, there are things like:
- The feast of the Beautiful Reunion, Horus and Hathor’s wedding anniversary
- The Mysteries of Osiris
- The Day of the Executioners of Sekhmet
- The Transformations of the Phoenix
- Isis Luminous, and holidays that sound unusual to us, like
- Jubilation in the Entire Land, or
- The Day of Chewing Onions for Bast.
They aren’t that weird. Our calendar has plenty of strange days. How about
- Black Friday, or
- Pi Day, or
- The day another video game cleared five million dollars on Kickstarter, or
- Talk like a Pirate Day, or
- the day Skynet becomes aware?
And there are similarities! In fact, I can confidently state that both calendars have a Day of the Jackal.
Who am I, and why am I on Kickstarter?
My name is Tamara Siuda. I’m an Egyptologist. (Yes, I’ve even played one on TV.) I’ve been translating hieroglyphs, teaching, and writing about ancient Egyptians for two decades. A few years ago, I published The Ancient Egyptian Prayerbook. It includes translations of prayers, hymns, and magical incantations from Egypt’s pharaonic times. It also includes a very basic ancient calendar, because there wasn’t room for all my research.
I’d like to give that calendar some more attention. With your help, I can publish The Ancient Egyptian Daybook. This Daybook will include all my research into ancient Egypt’s calendar. It will also include an optional blank perpetual calendar in a journal or planner format, so you can keep track of these holidays today, if you want!
My Kickstarter project aims to raise necessary funds to design and publish the Daybook. One of the first things I’d like to do is hire an illustrator. (Believe me. You don’t want to see my silly Egyptian drawings.) With the help of people with actual artistic talent, the Daybook and its companion journal will be published in print and e-book formats.
30 Days to the Day of Reckoning
This is Kickstarter. Projects that don’t make their goals don’t get funded. So there’s no risk to you if my goal isn’t met. But if my goal is met, or exceeded, we can do great things.
My goal of $3,000 toward illustration and editing, design, printing, and distribution for the Ancient Egyptian Daybook and journal is fairly modest. Just think of it on a daily basis. (Sorry. Calendar joke.) All joking aside, that’s only $100 a day over the campaign’s 30-day window. I’m confident that with your help, I can meet my goal, and that by the end of this year (December 2013), or perhaps earlier, The Ancient Egyptian Daybook will be available. (UPDATE: Since we've made our original 3k goal AND our first stretch goal (10K) AND our second stretch goal (15K), check out Update #3 for information on the ultimate stretch goal (calendar app at 40K)! Note also that total funds raised will be deducted by 8-10% in charges we must set aside for Kickstarter and Amazon Payments fees.)
Please help me make today the day my dream becomes reality with a Kickstarter pledge of any amount. Thanks for your consideration, and thanks for watching my video. Now, I’ve checked the calendar, and it’s time to get this campaign going! And maybe I need to buy some more onions....when’s that holiday again?
Risks and challenges
Most of the research for this project is already done. I've been researching and working on ancient Egyptian calendar prototypes for 20 years now. What remains is to add some new dating material from books that weren't accessible to me before this year, and then to organize everything so it can be designed and produced in print format.
Potentially there could be issues if the illustrator(s) need more than 8 months to finish their work, or if we run into printing issues with the perpetual calendar (I'd like to do that one as a spiral-bound book, so it's portable and can be used like a daily planner. These have higher production values and, sometimes, more can go wrong). However, I think the deadline is doable considering that the actual work of writing the Daybook is between 70-80% complete, and the bulk of what remains is design and production.
Stretch goals (if we have any) will have their own challenges and requirements, and I'll update those as they happen.
I pledge to keep regular updates to Kickstarter backers on the progress of the book.
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Funding period
- (30 days)