calendar as represented in the Florence MS would rather suggest that the year
began in Nisan, just as in the Babylonian calendar: for this gives a month
sequence of 31– 30 – 30 repeated four times, except for the last month (Adar),
which has 31 days (Tubach 1994: 183 n. 15). It is also possible that the
New Year was celebrated six months later in Ag (on 22 November), as
this name presumably means ‘festival’ (Aramaic h:ag), which suggests a
month with particular religious significance (ibid. 182, 188). But even if the
New Year was not in the month of Ab on 23 September, the calendar may still
have been designed in such a way that one of its months began on Augustus’
birthday.
Attention has been drawn to the similarity of this calendar (according to the
Florence MS, which I shallfirst consider) to that of the astronomical book of
Enoch. As we have seen in Chapter 4, ch. 72 of 1Enoch presents a solar year of
364 days, consisting of a month sequence of 30– 30 – 31 repeated four times; the
last day of the 31-day months corresponds to the‘(sun’s) sign’(72: 13, 19),
which appears to mean one of the four cardinal points, solstices and equi-
noxes, of the solar year. This sequence of months is similar to the calendar of
Heliopolis (except that it starts from a 30-day month, and ends with an
additional 31-day month); moreover, as in 1Enoch, each 31st day in the
Heliopolis calendar corresponds approximately to a solstice or an equinox,
as follows:
31 Nisan: 23 June
31 Thammuz: 22 September
31 Ag: 22 December
31 Chanun: 23 MarchOn this basis, Tubach (1994) argues that the calendars of Heliopolis and of
Enoch are directly related. In his view, the calendar of Heliopolis must have
preceded that of Enoch, because the Aramaic of the Heliopolitan month-
names has archaic features. He argues, therefore, that the calendar of
Enoch—conceived in Ptolemaic Judaea—was borrowed from that of the not
too distant city of Heliopolis, no later than the third centuryBCE.
Tubach’s theory has much been quoted, but his argument from parallelism
does little to convince (Ben-Dov 2008: 267–70). It shouldfirst be stressed that
the two calendars are not identical, since the year-length of Heliopolis is 365
days, and of Enoch only 364. The similarity of their month sequences is
insignificant, because the even distribution of 31-day months across the year
is a rational scheme that anyone could have independently devised. More
significant, perhaps, in the calendar of Heliopolis is the coincidence of the 31st
days with the equinoxes and solstices, but this could be the purely fortuitous
Fragmentation: Babylonian and Julian Calendars 287