The Season of the Harvest (known in Egyptian as Shemu or Shomu - transliterated as Smw) is the third and final season of the Egyptian calendar. The word Shemu literally translates as "low-water", and falls roughly between early May and early September. During this season, the crops of the grain harvest are collected. Shemu is preceded by the Season of the Emergence (Proyet), and is followed by the Season of the Inundation (Akhet).
During Shemu, the Egyptian farmers would harvest their crops - in clear contrast to the practice of their contemporaries in the ancient world, who would be just beginning to plant their crops at this time of the year. Shemu is also known as the Summer Season or the Dry Season and is occasionally written as Shomu.
The ancient Egyptians used this name in both their lunar and their civil calendars. The months of the lunar calendar are roughly equivalent to the period from early May to the heliacal rising of Sirius around the beginning of September. Since the civil calendar moved through the seasons over time, losing about one day every four years, this season does not continuously match any part of the modern calendar.
Read more about Season Of The Harvest: Months
Famous quotes containing the words season of the, season and/or harvest:
“The instincts of merry England lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine.”
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few...”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 9:37.