Calendars in Antiquity. Empires, States, and Societies

After Artaxerxes’reign, a small change was made to the cycle with the intercalation of VI 2 (instead of XII 2 ) in year 17, thef ...

be grouped together, in 406/5–400/399, 343/2–335/4, and 322/1–308/7 (all inclusive), and particularly at the end of the Achaemen ...

Table 2.5. Intercalations in the later Achaemenid period (from Darius II) and the Seleucid period, arranged in 19-year cycles Ye ...

otherwise consistent practice, it seems likely that [385/4] is mistaken, although a plausible explanation of the error is hard t ...

this kind—thefixation of the Saros Canon cycle—to the advent of Seleucid rule, after Alexander the Great’s conquest in the late ...

is onlyfirmly attested, as we have seen, for about two centuries (fourth–third centuriesBCE), and even then, not without irregul ...

Table 2.6. Babylonian intercalations in the Parthian period (a ) Early Parthian period (142/1 88/7 BCE ), from cuneiform sourc ...

group of stars; on this basis, a 19-year lunisolar (or more precisely, lunistellar) cycle of intercalations could have been cons ...

between the equinox and the 19-year cycle; the equinox, therefore, does not provide an astronomical rationale to the Babylonian ...

process of trial and error in which mathematical astronomy played but a minor part.^127 To gain an understanding of this gradual ...

intercalation, and whose reigns, e.g. Artaxerxes I, often coincide with specific intercalation schemes—rather than by the astrol ...

used by Babylonians in Ecbatana (Media) in 537BCE(Stolper 1990), and by Greeks (probably Ionians) in Persepolis in the earlyfift ...

throughout the vast expanses of the newly formed Achaemenid Empire. A similar argument has been suggested above with regard to t ...

reserving the right to deviate, on occasion, from thefixed cycle. Thus the kings did not entirely relinquish control of the cale ...

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3 The Egyptian Calendar The Egyptian calendar was probably the simplest calendar of the ancient world. In contrast to the irregu ...

Gregorian calendar that is universal currency today. As distant inheritors of the Egyptian calendar, we naturally have more affi ...

Herodotus’passage). Many believed that the Egyptian calendar was regulated by the sun;^5 only the more astronomically inclined r ...

temples—of which the nature and relationship to the main (or‘civil’) Egyptian calendar have also generated considerable debate. ...

season comprises four months numbered I to IV. The season names are, with their common translations:^9 Akhet (Ah % t),‘inundatio ...