The History of Time: A Very Short Introduction by Leofranc Holford-Strevens

Author:Leofranc Holford-Strevens [Holford-Strevens, Leofranc]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: History, General, Science, Time
ISBN: 9780192804990
Google: qHoRDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2005-08-11T18:29:54.700496+00:00

16. Fragments of Fasti Sabini showing weekday letters beside nundinal letters

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An early stage in the victory of week over nundinum is presented by a graffito at Pompeii giving the market-days in various towns and cities: although eight place-names are listed, beginning with Pompeii and ending with Capua (Rome is seventh), the neighbouring column presents the days of the week from ‘Sat.’ to

‘Ven.’ Unfortunately the writer wrote column by column rather than line by line, so generously spacing the days and so tightly cramping the cities that we cannot even be sure whether he noticed the discrepancy (Figure 17).

Jews, meanwhile, had been observing a week of their own, in which six working days, numbered from 1 to 6, were followed by a rest day, or shabbat, in English ‘Sabbath’. Shabbat coincided with the astrological Saturday, which was a day of ill-omen because Saturn was a baleful planet; for this reason, pagan writers e

misrepresent it as a joyless fast-day. To be sure, Sabbath im

regulations, in some quarters at least, were sterner than they have y of T

since become; the Book of Jubilees, for instance, forbids married or

ist

couples to make love on that day, which the rabbinical tradition e H

positively encourages them to do, but even this text prohibits Th

fasting. Nevertheless, these pagan accounts seem more appropriate to the Babylonian day of ill-omen on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th of the month, in which some writers have seen the origin of the Sabbath, but which would seem rather to have been adapted to the astrological Saturday, subjected to the most malign of planets.

Shabbat was the last day of the Jewish week, but corresponded to the first day of the planetary week. However, since nobody likes an inauspicious beginning, by the 2nd century ad the astrologer Vettius Valens was reckoning the planetary week from Sunday. Although the Sun was not an auspicious planet like Jupiter or Venus, neither was it malign, like Saturn or Mars (see box, p. 70). The change also had the effect of aligning the planetary and Jewish weeks; in a society that used the Jewish divine name Iao in its magic, this may not have been accidental.

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