posted 31 March 2004 12:00 PM            

Here are some sites and info: http://showcase.netins.net/web/ankh/calendar1.html
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/festival.htm

posted 31 March 2004 08:35 PM            

Other festivals like Shem el-Nessim celebrated Spring time,and is still celebrate yoday in Egypt with picnics with eggs and salted raw fish.

Herodotus and Strabo both in their visit to the Delta noticed that the people there celebrated a holiday that comemorated Bastet. This festival survives in the Sufi mouled dedicated to a sufi saint.

Another holiday still celebrated is Awru El-Nil which was a festival that marked the inudation of the Nile.

Here is some references also to survials:

Some ancient traditions still survive in modern Egypt. These
include the festival of Shem-el-Nessim which marks the start of
spring in the same way that the festival Khoiakh did in antiquity.
Families celebrate this out-of-doors,exchanging gifts of colored eggs
to reassert the renewal of the vegetation and the annual rebirth of
life. Another modern festival,Awru El-Nil,takes the form of a
national holiday;at this celebration of the inundation of the Nile
flowers are thrown into the river. In ancient times a festival was
held annually to mark the innudation,and prayers were offered to ask
for a good flood[neither too high no too low]which would ensure ample
crops and general prosperity .Other modern ceremonies reflect ancient
funerary customs . Forty days after death and burial the family of
the deceased will take food to the grave,and this is then distributed
among the poor who have gathered . This occasion,known as el-
Arbeiyin,retains elements of the ancient service preformed at the
time of burial when relatives gathered at the tomb and at the
conclusion of the burial rites shared funerary meal. The forty days
that still elapse between death and el-Arbeiyin probally reflect the
period that was set aside for mummification procedures in ancient
Egypt. Another early tradition is probally preserved in the modern
annual family visit to the grave when special food is brought which
is then given to the poor.

page 129

Rosalie David Handbook of Life in Ancinet Egypt

http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/ideology/festivaldates.html
http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/ideology/festivals.html#2