possible to suggest even further that the Coligny inscription was not used at all
as afixed calendar, but only served as an abstract representation of the Gallic
calendar, or at most as a guide or regulating scheme for a lunar calendar that
had remained fundamentallyflexible and dependent, as most likely in earlier
Antiquity, on empirical observations of the moon.^26
In this light, Olmsted’s interpretation of the three-letter notations as solstice
dates in a 25-year cycle remains entirely possible, but this cycle could not have
been more than theoretical. The three-letter scheme could not have served as a
tool for predicting solstices (as Olmsted claims), because the dates provided in
this scheme were not those of a calendar that would have been used in
practice; these dates, indeed, would have been meaningless to lunar calendar
users. The three-letter scheme was therefore not a predictive tool, but a purely
theoretical model showing, at most, how solstices could somehow be brought
in relation to a schematic lunar calendar.
Origin and datingThe Coligny calendar has often been presented as very ancient; but although
some of its features are clearly ancient—in particular, the Celtic archaisms in
the names of months and days (Duval and Pinault 1986: pp. xi, 421)—there
are strong grounds for viewing it as a product of the Roman period. On
palaeographic grounds, to begin with, the inscription is dated to the late
second centuryCE.^27 The Gallo-Roman context of the inscription is evident
from the mere fact that it is a written text (although its language is Celtic),
and from its use of Latin characters. Also of Roman origin may be the
peg-holes that are aligned along each day of the calendar, just as in Greek
and Romanparapegmata.^28 But above all, the Coligny inscription clearly
(^26) McCluskey loc. cit. himself remarks that the Gallic lunar calendar must have been
originally empirical. The question that I am raising is to what extent the Coligny calendar was
meant to supersede this empirical method with the use of afixed calendar scheme.
(^27) Duval and Pinault (1986) 23, 35–7, implying, however, that it may be even later. This
dating, to my knowledge, remains undisputed (e.g. Olmsted 1992: 12, 71).
(^28) McCluskey (1998) 54. On the peg-holes in the Coligny inscription, see Duval and Pinault
(1986) 19–21. On Greekparapegmata, see Ch. 1. 3; on Roman ones, see below. Roman calendars
with peg-holes include e.g. theFastiGuidizzolenses(Degrassi 1963: 234–5 no. 40, Rüpke 1995:
160 – 4, Lehoux 2007: 191–2, and below, n. 84), but much closer to Coligny, the recently
discoveredparapegmafrom the territory of Nîmes (Gallia Narbonensis) which comprises both
the Julian calendar in full and a list of lunar days (AE2003: 1150).Woolf (1998) 96, 230 n. 107
also suggests that the designation of individual days as‘good’and‘not good’in the Coligny
calendar is reminiscent of thefastiandnefastidays in Roman calendars (although the latter were
not properly lucky and unlucky days); however, it would be difficult to prove that the origin of
this calendrical practice was specifically Roman, as similar practices are attested in many other
cultures (e.g. Mesopotamian: see Introduction, n. 9).
308 Calendars in Antiquity