in the various regions of the Empire.^24 In the Seleucid period, for the same
reason, discrepancies could have arisen between Macedonian and Babylonian
days of the month. The Seleucid kings or other imperial officials, when
travelling or campaigning away from Babylonia, are likely to have reckoned
and used the Macedonian calendar without much notice of the calendar
decisions that were being taken in Babylon, which in any case could not be
communicated to them in sufficient time.^25 As has been noted above, there is
no evidence that the Macedonian calendar ceased to exist in the Seleucid
Empire as an independent calendar. Even if Macedonian and Babylonian
calendars wereperceivedto be identical, in reality the months in both calen-
dars could often have been reckoned separately, leading in some cases to small
margins of discrepancy. It is difficult, however, tofind explicit evidence of
such occurrences.^26
Discrepancies between the Macedonian and Babylonian calendars are likely
to have become more frequent after the Parthian conquest of Babylonia in 141
BCE. Now that the Seleucid rulers were cut off from Babylonia (and confined
largely to Syria), they must have relied entirely on their own reckoning of the
lunar month, perhaps on the basis of their own sightings of the new moon. It is
possible, however, that they still followed the Babylonian 19-year scheme of
intercalations: for in 47BCE, some years after the fall of the Seleucid Empire
and the creation of the Roman province of Syria, the calendar of Antioch—
former Seleucid capital—seems to have been still in continuity with the
Babylonian calendar of the Seleucid period.^27
(^24) See Stern (2000a) on Elephantine, and above, Ch. 2 nn. 74–6 and near n. 133, with further
examples from the late Achaemenid period.
(^25) On communications in the Seleucid Empire, see Sherwin-White and Kuhrt (1993) 61–2.
Documents from the neo-Assyrian period suggest that Babylonian scholars, but also the Assyri-
an kings, attached considerable importance to the exact beginning of the months because of their
complex astrological implications (see Ch. 2); but whether Achaemenid and Seleucid kings took
the same view is difficult to ascertain.
(^26) The only discrepancy I am aware of is in the double date of Ptolemy’s third‘Chaldaean’
astronomical report, 5 Xandikos and 14 Tybi, which implies that Xandikos began on the evening
of 26 Feb. 229BCE(see Table 5.1). The new moon was actually visible already on the evening of 25
February, and a Babylonian astronomical diary for that year confirms that this is when the
Babylonian month of Addaru began (Sachs and Hunger 1988–2006: ii. 126–9, cited in Jones
2006: 269; although the text is very fragmentary, the lunar data of the middle of the month are
sufficient to confirm that it began on 25 February; Chris Bennett, pers. comm.). But rather than
evidence of a one-day discrepancy between the Macedonian and Babylonian months, this is
more likely to be the result of error in the conversion of 5 Xandikos (itself a Greek translation of
Babylonian Addaru) into its Egyptian equivalent, which should really have been 13 Tybi (as
argued by Jones ibid. esp. 284–5). A possibly better example (although slightly earlier, i.e. pre-
Seleucid) might be the death of Alexander in 323BCE, if we favour the tradition that Alexander
died on the Macedonian date of 28 Daisios, whereas in the Babylonian calendar it was the 29th
(see above, nn. 17–19),paceSamuel (1972) 141)
(^27) The evidence is from Julius Caesar’s entry into Antioch in 47BCE, which is dated by John
Malalas (Chonography9. 5: Thurn 2000: 163, Jeffreys, Jeffreys, and Scott 1986: 114) to 23
Artemisios and implicitly by Cicero (Ad Atticum11. 20. 1) to not long before (Roman) 18
Fragmentation: Babylonian and Julian Calendars 243