through the course of history (by which he seems to mean, though not very
clearly, the introduction of formalsystems of reconciliation betweenlunar
months and solar years) was the inevitable result of the development of
agriculture, trade, and the military and administrative activities of increasingly
centralized polities—which rings a chord with my own theories—but above
all, of the rise ofliteracy and of written calendars (Goody 1 968: 3 5 – 6). Goody
implies a somewhat deterministic, evolutionist historicaltrajectory which is
open to some criticism, but his suggestions remain valuable because he
refrains from identifying calendars as inherently‘primitive’or‘advanced’
and relates instead their development to changes that occurred in broader
society.His emphasis onliteracy is of much relevance to this present study,
especially in the context of early scribalsocieties such as Egypt and Babylonia
and in societies such as Rome where calendars were written out and publicly
displayed. Literacy on its own cannot account for the major calendar changes
that began in the middle of thefirst millenniumBCE,long after many of the
societies under study had become atleast partiallyliterate. But there can
belittle doubt that the design and adoption offixed calendar schemes would
have been greatly facilitated by the use of writing and written reckoning, and
were closelylinked to the development ofliteracy. My use in this study of
almost only written sources (epigraphic, documentary, andliterary) as histor-
icalevidence, although unavoidable—it is difficult to imagine how other surviv-
ing aspects of ancient cultures couldusefully inform us about the structure
of their calendars—may be regarded in itself as indicative of the importance of
literacy to the history of calendars in Antiquity.
Another theoreticalapproach that has been much criticized in recent
decades is functionalism.In the specific context of calendars, a functionalist
approach might seem atfirst sight appropriate, on the grounds that calendars
are primarily designed to fulfila practicalfunction in society, in economic,
political,religious, and other socialspheres. The practicalfunction of calen-
dars is often taken as their driving force and mainraison d’être, with the effect
that calendars come to be interpreted purely in terms of their socialfunction.
This assumption underlies Goody’s opening reference to time reckoning as a
socialnecessity (whichIhave cited at the beginning of this introduction), and
others have followed a similarline. For example,Hannah (200 5 ) 1 – 2 begins
his book on Greek and Roman calendars with the statement that he will
examine the calendar‘both as an astronomically based timepiece and as a
socialinstrument by which people organised their activities’. Even in func-
tionalist terms, this short description islimited: it misses, for example, the
fundamentallypoliticalfunction of calendars, i.e. the way in which the rulers
of city states and empires could use calendars to controlsociety (the implica-
tion, in thefirst clause, that ancient calendars were based purely on astronomy
is also somewhat misleading). But more importantly, the conception of the
calendar as an‘instrument’—a term that is shared by many other calendar
18 Calendars in Antiquity