5
Fragmentation: Babylonian and Julian
Calendars in the Near East,
Third CenturyBCE–Seventh CenturyCE
In the previous chapters we have seen how the rise of great empires in the Near
East and the Mediterranean during thefirst millenniumBCEled to the use of
official imperial calendars across extensive territories, and how this brought
about in turn a process of calendar standardization andfixation. But this
process was not irreversible or unidirectional.When, as sometimes happened,
great empires collapsed and fragmented into smaller geopolitical entities—for
instance, when the Seleucid Empire disintegrated in Asia Minor and in the
Near East—their calendars often went the same way. In the absence of any
unifying, imperial authority, the small kingdoms and city states that succeeded
were free to set their calendars as they wished; in some cases, in fact, control of
the calendar was a way of asserting their newly acquired autonomy (similarly,
for example, to their control of coinage). This led, unavoidably, to calendar
fragmentation and differentiation.
This process—in a way, the reverse of what has been studied earlier in this
book—will be the subject of this present chapter. Further causes of calendar
fragmentation and differentiation will be considered in the next two chapters.
In Chapter 6, I shall argue that calendrical difference could arise when sub-
groups within large empires maintained or developed their own, traditional
calendars as an expression of dissidence or subversion towards the ruling
imperial powers. In thefinal chapter, I shall consider how or whether calendar
difference could serve the needs (or even, perhaps, constitute the basis) of
religious sectarianism and heresy, thus challenging, again, the prevailing
tendency in great empires towards calendar unification andfixation.
Besides representing, in structural terms, the reverse of Part I above, Part II
also succeeds it loosely in chronological terms, running from the third century
BCEuntil the end of Antiquity in the seventh centuryCE. The chronological
progression from Part I to Part II of this book may be taken to reflect a real
historical process, whereby the integration and unification of calendars during