Primitive Time-reckoning / A study in the origins and first development of the art of counting time among the primitive and early culture peoples

by Martin P. Nilsson

But there are also periods of time of other durations. The Adeli of the hinterland of Togo divide the lunar month into five weeks of six days[1101]; unfortunately the brief account tells us nothing of the nature of this six-day week. The Tshi-speaking peoples usually reckon time in periods of 40 or 42 days, every fortieth or forty-second day being a festival termed the great adae, 18 or 20 days after which is the little adae. The great adae is always celebrated on a Sunday, and the little adae on a Wednesday[1102]. Once again the statements are not clear. If the last condition must be absolutely fulfilled, the period of the great adae must always embrace 42 days and the little adae must fall 18 days after it. The natives consider the number 40 particularly lucky and always endeavour to connect it with some important event[1103]. The probable explanation is that 40 is used as a round number instead of 42. But among the Edo-speaking peoples also, at one point in Northern Nigeria, a twenty-day month seems to be used[1104]. The former mode of reckoning is connected with the seven-day week adopted by the Tshi-speaking peoples, though this, in order that it may cover the lunar month, is reckoned in a curious fashion so that each week consists of 7 days 9 hours; each so-called day is therefore somewhat longer than the natural day and consequently also begins at a different hour of the natural day. Hence the two adae also begin at different hours of the day. The same curious reckoning is found among the Gã-tribes. This mode of computation is a far from primitive refinement, the real object of which is the fitting of the seven-day week into the lunar month, the natural day however being abandoned. There is connected with it a strong day-superstition. The first day of the ‘week’ is rest-day, and that on which the new moon falls is an absolute rest-day, the following being days of rest only for certain trades, e. g. the second for the fishermen, the third for the agriculturalists[1105]. It is clear that the only period which can pass as native is the four-day market-week, with its development the 16-day period, and perhaps also the too little known 6-day week.

In Java, Bali, and Sumatra there is a five-day market-week called pasar, in Bali also a four-day tjaturwara[1106]; alongside of these the seven-day week is in use. But wherever among heathen tribes a ‘week’ is spoken of, this is always the market-week[1107]. In Java and Bali the pasar-week is combined with the 7-day week in divisions of 35 days. Six of these periods form a wuku, a kind of year of 210 days. Besides these there are still other divisions, which are of importance for the sooth-sayers. The non-Islamite Lampong of Sumatra combine the pasar-week with the lunar month, which is counted as 30 days[1108]. We have here nothing to do with the highly developed time-reckoning of those peoples that drew up their systems under Indian and Islamite influence. This five-day week has a very extensive use in Further India: we meet it in Tonkin, in the Lao states of northern Siam, in Upper Burma among the Shan; further in Celebes and in certain parts of New Guinea. In the Malay Peninsula there is a five-day period for the determination of lucky and unlucky days. In other parts of New Guinea and in the Gazelle Peninsula of New Pommern the market takes place every third day. Of market-days in Polynesia there are unfortunately only uncertain accounts[1109].

In ancient Mexico a market was held every fifth day at every important place, just as in Africa on different days in neighbouring districts; the day was a rest-day, and with the market games and amusements were associated. This five-day market-week appears also in other parts of Central America. The Muysca of Bogota in Columbia, on the other hand, held markets every third, and the Inca peoples every tenth, day, when the country-folk ceased from labour, assembled in the towns, and engaged in traffic and games[1110]. These three- and ten-day periods are said to be brought into connexion with the month; if this statement be correct, they are not continuous periods, and the market-day must sometimes have been pushed out of place in order to secure the agreement with the moon; but the certainty cannot be ascertained.

The market-week exists therefore, as we should expect, only among peoples with a more fully developed commerce and trade. The rule attains greater importance for the time-reckoning only when, as in the East Indies, it is introduced into an already existing calendarial system. In Africa larger divisions of time have arisen on the basis of it, and in one case, that of the Yoruba, the agricultural year has been thus divided. The market-weeks, however, may also occur independently, alongside of the calendar, like the Roman nundinae, which were held every eighth day and took their name (from novem) from the inclusive reckoning.

The question of the Israelitish sabbath is complicated and has been much discussed as a point of connexion with the Babylonian civilisation. In Babylonia one day in the month was called shabattu, and the seventh day was specially distinguished. The statement that there the seven-day week existed, but as a fixed subdivision of the month, is often heard, but is an invention. I borrow the material from Landsberger’s section on the month in religious worship. A cylinder of Gudea already mentions a festival of the opening of the month in Lagash, festivals in honour of the goddesses Bau and Nina are celebrated in special new-moon houses. At all times, and later too, the day of the new moon is a great festival-day. At the time of the dynasty of Ur, under the empire of Khammurabi, and later, sacrifices were offered on the fifteenth day, the day of full moon. This is called shabattu, which word in the time of Assurbani-pal also denotes the full-moon day without any religious implication. We also find at the time of the dynasty of Ur occasional sacrifices on the day of the ‘going to sleep’, i. e. of the disappearance of the moon. These are the three days marked out by the great phases of the moon. According to them the month is divided into two halves. A Babylonian peculiarity is that the seventh day of the month, as at the time of the dynasty of Ur and under the empire of Khammurabi, becomes a day of special sacrifices. It is called sibutu, ‘the seventh’, cp. Assyrian sibittu, ‘seven’ (fem.). The 1st, the 7th, and the 28th are therefore of religious importance; for a similar emphasising of the 21st testimony is as yet lacking; instead of the 14th we have the 15th. Later, after ancient Babylonian times, the 7th becomes a day of taboo, the number 7 is made an unlucky number, and the schematic series 1, 7, 14, 21, 28, and 19 of the following month is formed (30 + 19 = 49 = 7 × 7). Hence the 14th is also sometimes designated as the day of full moon. Thus, for example, in the Creation epic, tablet 5, vv. 12 ff.:—“At the beginning of the month shine in the land. Beam with thy horns, to make known six days. On the seventh day halve thy disc. On the fourteenth day thou shalt reach the half of the monthly (growth);” in what follows the indications of the days are unfortunately missing. It is clear that the septenary division has not arisen from the phases of the moon, but on the contrary the phases of the moon have been arranged in accordance with the septenary scheme. They might also be arranged according to a quintuple scheme. Thus the tablet III R 55, no. 3[1111]:—“Sin at his appearance from the first to the fifth day, five days, is crescent,—Anu; from the sixth to the tenth day, five days, he is kidney,—Ea; from the eleventh to the fifteenth, five days, he covers himself with the shining royal cap.” It is significant of the phases of the moon that have arisen on genuinely primitive grounds that, since they are originally concrete, they do not divide themselves into symmetrical groups of days. Here the numerical scheme has been at work, and this cannot be referred to the phases, since these give no other naturally grounded divisions than the halves of the month.

The derivation of the Israelitish sabbath from Babylonia therefore offers two difficulties:—1, in regard to the word, Babylonian shabattu means the day of full moon, in fact the fifteenth day of the lunar month, and Hebrew shabbat, so far as we know, the seventh day of a period that is shifting in relation to the lunar month; 2, in regard to the period of time, in Babylonia the septenary scheme is a fixed division of the lunar month; among the Israelites it is, so far as we know, shifting, continuous, and independent of the lunar month.

I have emphasised the phrase ‘so far as we know’ since in reality our sole knowledge in this direction of the Israelitish times before the Exile is that a festival and rest-day called the sabbath existed: of its nature we know nothing. The earliest evidence we have of it is the story of one of the miracles of Elisha[1112], from which it appears that the adherents of the prophet were accustomed to gather round him on this day and at new moon, doubtless since both were rest-days. In the same way sabbath and new moon are mentioned together as festival days in Amos VIII, 5, Hosea II, 11, Isaiah I, 13. The writers during and after the Exile are the first to mention the sabbath as the seventh day of a continuous seven-day week. It has at that time the character of an ascetic rest-day, where the rest is not a joy but a duty.

Any further advance can only be made by way of hypothesis. Thus the sabbath of the times before the Exile was either, as later, the last day of a seven-day period that was shifting in relation to the lunar month, or else it was something different. Both statements are hypotheses. And if it was something different we are driven to a still further hypothesis in order to decide what it was. The suggestion most in favour is that it was the day of full moon. The sabbath is said to be the second principal day of the course of the moon simply because sabbath and new moon are always mentioned together in the days before the Exile. But this obviously proves nothing. It has further been stated that the sabbath must be a fixed day of the lunar month, since otherwise it would sometimes coincide with the day of new moon; but evidently the expression ‘new moon and sabbath’, however formally interpreted, does not in itself exclude such a coincidence. Further sabbath and shabattu are the same word, and consequently a second hypothesis is that ‘sabbath’ as well as shabattu means the day of full moon. The proof is only binding if the word in itself must mean ‘full moon’; the etymology however is disputed, so that it gives no help. It is not difficult to establish a general fundamental sense which will fit in both with the festival-day of full moon and of the seven-day period.

On the ground of the researches here carried out, however, we may put a question a satisfactory answer to which is demanded by the hypothesis just mentioned:—How is it possible for a period which forms a fixed subdivision of the lunar month to become detached from the moon and be made into an independent period shifting in relation to the lunar month? And there will still be a preliminary question to get rid of, viz. how has the septenary period arisen from the day of full moon, the 15th day of the month? The answer will be, I suppose, that the 14th, not the 15th, was taken as the day of full moon and that Babylonian influence introduced the septenary division, so that the name of one of the septenary days, the 14th, has been carried over to the rest. But since in the legislation of the Exile the great festivals were appointed for the 15th, it is clear that this day, and not the 14th, was at that time taken as the day of full moon. The question whether any late Babylonian speculation in numbers may have exercised a determinative influence upon the Jewish legislation must be decided by experts. From the unsatisfactory answer to the preliminary question I return to the main question. A shifting reckoning of this kind can only be understood chronologically as a breaking away from the concrete phenomena of Nature, an incomplete calculation being established instead of the empirical observation, as was the case, for instance, with the Egyptian shifting year, put in place of the solar year, and bringing with it months of thirty days in the place of lunar months. Now the Israelites have always had the lunar month. That a day determined by the moon should be detached from the living lunar month and made into a shifting seven-day week is quite incomprehensible and entirely without analogy. The Babylonian septenary days do not help us here, since they always remained days of the lunar month. In the light of the foregoing investigations into primitive chronology such a process would be a sheer miracle.

It remains therefore to regard the creation of the seven-day week as an act of pure volition on the part of the makers of the refined exilian legislation, who took the name of the ancient sabbath, a festival-day of uncertain position, and applied it to the seventh day of a shifting period. And this is equally difficult either to prove or disprove. It is seldom found that a new creation proceeds entirely from nothing, and no analogy to the shifting seven-day period is anywhere to be met with—except in one case to be mentioned presently, the market-week. Especially in matters chronological would it appear that the Jewish legislation did not radically break with antiquity, but systematised and cultivated already existing tendencies, if we may judge by the few points of departure handed down from the earlier period; hence the numbered months, hence the fixing of the great festivals on the day of full moon. We are speaking here not of the changed religious character of the sabbath, but of the chronological question. If therefore fundamental grounds are lacking for the creation of a shifting seven-day period by the legislation of the Exile, we must cling to the other hypothesis, viz. that in pre-exilian times also the sabbath was the seventh day of a shifting period, which the legislation has transformed in its own fashion.