The Mandaeans use a solar calendar which consists of 12 months, each consisting of exactly 30 days, with an additional 5 days added at the end of the year which do not belong to any month. Apparently, this same calendar was used in ancient Egypt throughout most of its history. An additional day once every 4 years was added to the calendar before the first century C.E. The Jews down the ages have used a lunar calendar for the most part, and advocates of a solar calendar took an approach not entirely unlike that of the Egyptians, but aiming for a 364-day year, as in the case of the calendar advocated in the Book of Jubilees.
Does this evidence show a connection between the Mandaeans and Egypt which goes back earlier than the first century B.C.E.? Could the Mandaeans have adopted the calendar without ever having lived in Egypt, just through reading or hearing about it? The latter seems unlikely. Other minor details of Mandaean belief (e.g. the name Ptahil, which resembles that of the Egyptian deity Ptah) might also make a connection with Egypt plausible. This need not mean actually living in Egypt proper, since Egypt’s territorial holdings reached much further. Would living in the vicinity of the Jordan during the Ptolemaic era have been enough to account for this similarity? Could the Mandaeans simply have come up with the same solution to the problem of the calendar independently of the Egyptians?
The question I’m most interested in is whether the Mandaean calendar allows us to figure out anything at all about the origin and history of the Mandaeans.
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