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Lionel Mandrake

(4,116 posts)
Tue Oct 11, 2022, 02:05 PM Oct 2022

Days of the Week

The seven-day week has two unrelated sources. On the one hand, there’s the Hebrew Book of Genesis, according to which God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh day. On the other hand, there’s the Babylonian and Greek tradition of associating gods with planets, of which seven were known in ancient times. There was also an association between planets and days, hence the seven-day week, which became customary, first in the Roman Empire, and later world-wide.

What the ancients called planets is different from what we call planets. For the ancients, the sun and moon were planets, but the earth was not.

The names of the days of the week reflect a polytheistic past with astrological overtones. For reasons to be explained later, I'll start with the day corresponding to the outermost planet known the the ancients.

1. Saturday < Saturn
2. Sunday < Sun
3. Monday < Moon
4. Tuesday < Tiu (Norse god of war)
5. Wednesday < Woden or Wotan
6. Thursday < Thor (Norse god of thunder)
7. Friday < Frigga (Norse goddess of love)

Most of us are less familiar with Norse mythology than with Greek and Roman mythology. The names of certain days in Romance languages can tell us which Roman god was identified with a particular Norse god. For example, in French some of the days are

4. mardi < Mars
5. mercredi < Mercury
6. jeudi < Jove (Jupiter)
7. vendredi < Venus

Now we have a complete list of planets corresponding to days:

1. Saturday → Saturn
2. Sunday → Sun
3. Monday → Moon
4. Tuesday → Mars
5. Wednesday → Mercury
6. Thursday → Jupiter
7. Friday → Venus

The order of the planets should seem strange at first glance. For example, why should the sun follow Saturn? To explain the peculiar order of planets, I will eventually cite the marvelous book by George Sarton:

A History of Science: Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B. C. (1959)

That book is a sequel to an earlier book:

A History of Science: Ancient science through the Golden Age of Greece (1952)

First let me introduce the author. George Sarton (1884-1956) invented History of Science as an academic discipline. He was equally at home in each of C. P. Snow's two cultures. Unlike most so-called historians of science nowadays, he believed it was necessary to know something about science before writing its history. Sarton's explanation (on page 322) is as follows:

"The astrologers ... divided the [day] into 24 equal hours. Each hour was dedicated to one of the seven planetary gods, and each day was called after the god of its first hour. Let us begin with the day of Saturn (Saturni dies), so called because its first hour was dedicated to Saturn; the second hour was the hour of Jupiter; the third, of Mars; the fourth, of the Sun; the fifth, of Venus; the sixth, of Mercury; the seventh, of the Moon. Not only the first hour, but also the 8th, the 15th, and the 22nd were dedicated to Saturn. The 23rd and 24th hours were dedicated to Jupiter and Mars, and therefore the first hour of the following day belonged to the Sun, and that day was called Solis dies. Therefore the astrological order of the planets:

Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon,

was replaced by a new order obtained by jumping two items after each item of the first series. One thus obtains

Saturn, Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus,

which is the order of our days.”

You can find out more about the author from his Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Sarton

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CaliforniaPeggy

(151,914 posts)
1. Thank you for this thorough telling, my dear Lionel Mandrake!
Tue Oct 11, 2022, 02:17 PM
Oct 2022

It's a little bit complicated, but you have made it easy to comprehend.

muriel_volestrangler

(102,396 posts)
3. The Hebrew 7 day week is not unrelated - they all derive from the Sumerian one
Thu Oct 13, 2022, 12:30 PM
Oct 2022

Which dates back to 2000 BC or earlier: https://www.livescience.com/45432-days-of-the-week.html

Whether they only adopted it during the Babylonian exile, or if they started using it some time in the preceding 1500 years (other features of their myths and religion, eg the "Flood", also originate there, and the myth of Abraham is that his family came from Mesopotamia; the content of the Bible is thought to have been orally transmitted for some time before the written form it took on around 500 BC), I don't think the origin is academically disputed. The 7th Sabbath day of rest is, as far as I know, a Hebrew innovation.

hunter

(38,842 posts)
4. I always figured it had something to do with the moon.
Thu Oct 13, 2022, 03:48 PM
Oct 2022

If you have a 28 day month then you have four seven day weeks in a month and 13 months in a year with just a day and a quarter left over.

7 X 4 X 13 = 364

I'd bet that simple calendar system was rejected for religious regions -- all the patriarchs telling everyone 12 months was the law and 13 months was unlucky for, um, reasons...

The period of the moon's orbit as measured with respect to the stars is about 27.3 days, and 29.5 days with respect to the sun.


Lionel Mandrake

(4,116 posts)
5. The relationship between "month" and "moon" is clear.
Thu Oct 13, 2022, 04:27 PM
Oct 2022

Wiktionary gives the following etymology of "month":

From Middle English month, moneth, from Old English mōnaþ (“month”), from Proto-Germanic *mēnōþs (“month”), from Proto-Indo-European *mḗh₁n̥s (“moon, month”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *meh₁- (“to measure”), referring to the moon's phases as the measure of time, equivalent to moon +‎ -th. Cognate with Scots moneth (“month”); North Frisian muunt (“month”); Saterland Frisian Mound (“month”), Dutch maand (“month”); German Low German Maand, Monat (“month”); German Monat (“month”); Danish and Norwegian Bokmål måned (“month”); Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish månad (“month”); Icelandic mánuði (“month”); Latin mēnsis (“month”); Ancient Greek μήν (mḗn); Armenian ամիս (amis); Old Irish mí; Old Church Slavonic мѣсѧць (měsęcĭ . See also moon.

And of course the plural of the Latin mēnsis (“month”) is mēnsēs (“months”), from which the English words "menses", "menstrual", etc. are derived (you alluded to this).

muriel_volestrangler

(102,396 posts)
7. That 29.5 days wrt the Sun makes it closer to 12 "months" than 13 in a solar year
Thu Oct 13, 2022, 04:50 PM
Oct 2022

365.25 / 29.53 = 12.37 (as much, or a bit more, accuracy as they had 2000 years ago). So the choice of 12 or 13 was not simple, nor necessarily religious or 'lucky'.

hunter

(38,842 posts)
8. A calendar of 12 months of 28,29,30,or 31 days makes more sense?
Thu Oct 13, 2022, 08:31 PM
Oct 2022

It seems more likely this calendar was an overt rejection of lunar cults.

Or so it was claimed by a college girlfriend of mine.

She was recreating an entire religion starting here whenever she wasn't writing Star Trek slash.

Clocks, calendars, and money were created by people who had their own political agendas. Unfortunately the systems we've settled on alienate us from the natural world. They've become realities unto themselves.

We live by a calendar cooked up by the Romans and polished by the Catholic Church. That doesn't mean it's the best possible calendar.

If I was designing my own calendar I'd take the Moon's 18.6 year cycle into account as well.

muriel_volestrangler

(102,396 posts)
9. I don't think you can call it an "overt rejection"
Fri Oct 14, 2022, 03:42 AM
Oct 2022

An overt rejection would not use months in any form. The lengths of months don't "make sense", but they're not derived using strict mathematics for what would be most logical; they developed bit by bit, with Roman authorities trying to correct things when the existing system proved to be incorrect (what we have now, from Julius Caesar's reforms, is far simpler that what they had before, which had entire months (thought not quite as long as other months) inserted every so often to keep the months and years roughly in line - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar and "intercalation" ).

I don't think our calendar does "alienate us from the natural world". The Julian, and then Gregorian, reforms were done to keep the day of the year for which a season starts as constant as possible - that's specifically keeping us in sync with the natural world. The length of the Moon's period (and thus the pattern of tides) just doesn't fit easily with either the length of the day or the length of the year, and that is, quite reasonably, the one that is not kept strictly to (days and years always have huge effects on everyone, the brightness of the moon or the height of the tides, less so). The natural world doesn't divide up neatly.

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