simple, pure form (as in 1 Enoch and Jubilees), but almost always brought in
relation with other calendrical elements and schemes, thus lending the calen-
dar considerable complexity. These additional elements include the priestly
courses (a 24-week cycle) and lunar calendar days; the 364-day calendar is
thus expanded into three-year lunar cycles and six-year priestly cycles, which
(happily) are mutually compatible and yield complex but highly rigorous and
coherent structures.^103 A further level of complexity is achieved in one re-
markable text, 4Q319 (Otot), which combines the six-year cycle with the
seven-year sabbatical cycles and the 49-year jubilees, a chronological tradition
going back to Leviticus and prominent in 1 Enoch and Jubilees. Because 49 is
not a multiple of 6, these cycles can only be reconciled through a multiplica-
tion of 6 and 49, thus yielding a grand cycle of 294 years, which is represented
in summary form in the text ofOtot.
Qumran calendars, which variously combine and synchronize the 364-day
year in its weekly and monthly subdivisions, the three-year lunar cycle, the six-
year cycle of priestly courses, and (inOtot) the grand jubilee cycle of 294 years,
far exceed in complexity the schematic calendars of Antiquity that we have
until now examined, including the Egyptian civil calendar, the Babylonian
ideal year, and the Greek astronomical calendars. These calendars, particularly
the latter, were sophisticated in conception but did not involve the synchroni-
zation of different calendar schemes in the same way.^104 It may be said that in
complexity and sophistication, Qumran calendars remained unrivalled in
Antiquity until the emergence, in the third centuryCE, of the Christian Easter
cycles that synchronized the Julian and lunar calendars (see Chapter 6. 2).
Within the Jewish tradition, likewise, the complexity and sophistication of
Qumran calendar texts remained unique and unrivalled until the redaction of
Jewish calendar monographs in the medieval period.
The importance of Qumran sources to the history of calendars in Antiquity
is unfortunately often ignored. In spite of their apparently sectarian and
marginal nature (to be discussed in Chapter 7), these sources represent a
significant development in the conceptualization offixed, schematic calendars
in the ancient world, whichfits in, at least from a macro-historical perspective,
with the general evolution of ancient calendars, in the context of the great
empires, towards ever-increasing schematization andfixation.
The complexity and sophistication of Qumran calendars must also be
considered in relation to Judaean society and culture. It is unknown to what
extent these calendar texts were produced by small‘sects’rather than by
(^103) See Ch. 7 for a more detailed description.
(^104) The only evidence of sustained calendar synchronization in the Hellenistic astronomical
tradition is perhaps the Antikythera mechanism (c.100 BCE), in which one front dial indicated
the days of the Egyptian calendar and anothermayhave indicated the days of a lunar month
(Freethet al. 2008: 2, 14).
196 Calendars in Antiquity