The ‘Lychnapsia Philocaliana’ and the Birthday of Isis

So far as I am aware, no classical scholar has devoted much attention to the interpretation of a lamp-festival assigned to the 12th August in the calendar of Philocalus. Mommsen, Wissowa, Wilcken, Nilsson and Cumont have made some reference to it, but none of them has attempted to identify it with any of the numerous lamp-festivals of Egypt. And so this feast, though suspected by almost all scholars to be an Isiac ceremony, has remained a mystery. The only Egyptologist who tried to solve the riddle, and who all but succeeded, is Brugsch Bey. The fundamental theory of Brugsch is sound, namely that the ‘Lychnapsia Philocaliana’ should be linked with the most important festival of lamps in Egypt, which began with the five epagomenal days added at the end of Mesore, the twelfth and last month of the Egyptian calendar, in order to harmonise with the solar year a calendar of 360 days divided into twelve equal parts. But the question is with what particular rite in this festive period the ‘Lychnapsia Philocaliana’ should be linked.