thumb|300px|Calendar of [[Nippur, Third Dynasty of Ur]]

The Babylonian calendar was a lunisolar calendar used in Mesopotamia from around the 2nd millennium BC until the Seleucid Era (294 BC), and it was specifically used in Babylon from the Old Babylonian Period (1780s BC) until the Seleucid Era.

In the Seleucid Era it was reformed as "Greek time", Anno Graecorum was introduced and used in the Middle East and Egypt until the middle of the first millennium when the First Council of Nicaea AD 325 defined the Church year based on the Roman early Julian calendar. As Anno Graecorum formed the basis for time references in the Bible and spread westward, it rather increased the importance of the Babylonian calendar. The Babylonian calendar is also partly reflected in calendars in South and East Asia and the Islamic calendar as well as Iranian calendars. The Julian calendar inherited the definitions of the 12 month system, week, hour etc. from the Babylonian calendar and the current Jewish calendar can be seen as a slightly modified Babylonian calendar that still exists today and is practised, but with Anno Mundi Livryat haOlam year calculation since the creation of the world. Today's global time system UTC (Gregorian calendar) therefore has its main structure inherited from the Babylonian calendar.

The Julian calendars have their month definitions in tabular form while the Babylonian calendar, the Jewish calendar, and the Muslim calendar have their months defined by the appearance of the new moon and Iranian calendars by solstice.

The civil lunisolar calendar was used contemporaneously with an administrative calendar of 360 days, with the latter used only in fiscal or astronomical contexts. The lunisolar calendar descends from an older Sumerian calendar used in the 4th and 3rd millennium BC.

The civil lunisolar calendar had years consisting of 12 lunar months, each beginning when a new crescent moon was first sighted low on the western horizon at sunset, plus an intercalary month inserted as needed, at first by decree and then later systematically according to what is now known as the Metonic cycle.

Month names from the Babylonian calendar appear in the Hebrew calendar, Assyrian calendar, Syriac calendar, Old Persian calendar, and Turkish calendar.

Civil calendar

The Babylonian civil calendar, also called the cultic calendar, was a lunisolar calendar descended from the Nippur calendar, which has evidence of use as early as 2600 BCE and descended from the even older Third Dynasty of Ur (Ur III) calendar. The original Sumerian names of the months are seen in the orthography for the next couple millennia, albeit in more and more shortened forms. When the calendar came into use in Babylon circa 1780 BCE, the spoken month names became a mix from the calendars of the local subjugated cities, which were Akkadian. Historians agree that it was probably Samsu-iluna who effected this change. After no more than three isolated exceptions, by 380 BCE the months of the calendar were regulated by the cycle without exception. In the cycle of 19 years, the month Addaru 2 was intercalated, except in the year that was number 17 in the cycle, when the month Ulūlu 2 was inserted instead.

{| class="wikitable" style="margin:1em auto;"

|+ Civil calendar

|-

!rowspan=2|

! rowspan="2" |Sumerian month names

! Levantine and Iraqi

! Gregorian

|- :3

| 1

| <sup>ITI</sup>BARA<sub>2</sub>.ZAG(.GAR) – 'Month [the proxies of the gods are] placed besides the throne'

|Araḫ Nisānu –

|Nisan

נִיסָן

|Nisan

ࡍࡉࡎࡀࡍ

|Naysān نَيْسَان

|Mar/April

|-

| 2

| <sup>ITI</sup>[EZEM.]GU<sub>4</sub>.SI.SU<sub>3</sub> – 'Month the horned oxen marched forth'

|Araḫ Āru - – 'Month of the Blossoming'

|Cheshvan

מַרְחֶשְׁוָן/חֶשְׁוָן

|Mašrwan

ࡌࡀࡔࡓࡅࡀࡍ

|Tishrīn ath-Thānī تِشْرِين الثَّانِي

|Oct/Nov

|-

| 9

| <sup>ITI</sup>GAN.GAN.(MU.)E<sub>3</sub> – 'Month when the clouds(?) come out'

|Araḫ Kislimu – 𒌚𒃶

|Kislev

כִּסְלֵו

|Kanun

ࡊࡀࡍࡅࡍ

|Kānūn al-Awwal كَانُون الْأَوَّل

|Nov/Dec

|-

| 10

| <sup>ITI</sup>AB.E<sub>3</sub> – 'Month of the father'

|Araḫ Ṭebētum – 𒌚𒀊

'Muddy Month'

|Araḫ Addaru / Adār –

|Adar

אֲדָר

(אֲדָר א׳/אֲדָר רִאשׁון if there is an intercalary month that year)

|Adar

ࡀࡃࡀࡓ

|Ādhār آذَار

|Feb/Mar

|-

| 13

| <sup>ITI</sup>DIRI.ŠE.KIN.KU<sub>5</sub> – 'Additional harvest month'

|Araḫ Makaruša Addari

Araḫ Addaru Arku –

|Adar II

אֲדָר ב׳/אֲדָר שֵׁנִי

|

|Mart (Âzâr)

|

|}

Accuracy

As a lunisolar calendar, the civil calendar aimed to keep calendar months in sync with the synodic month and calendar years in sync with the tropical year. Since new months of the civil calendar were declared by observing the crescent moon, the calendar months could not drift from the synodic month. On the other hand, since the length of a calendar year was handled by the Metonic cycle starting after 499 BCE, there is some inherent drift present in the formulaic computation of the new year when compared to the true new year. While on any given year the first day of the first month could be up to 20 days off from the vernal equinox, on average the length of a year was very well approximated by the Metonic cycle; the computed average length is within 30 minutes of the true solar year length.

Administrative calendar

left|thumb|The MUL.APIN, which details guidelines for intercalation in the civil calendar and calculation of new moons using the administrative calendar.

Since the civil calendar was not standardized and predictable for at least the first millennium of its use, a second calendar system thrived in Babylon during the same time spans, known today as the administrative or schematic calendar. The administrative year consisted of 12 months of exactly 30 days each. In the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE, extra months were occasionally intercalated (in which case the year is 390 days), but by the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE it did not make any intercalations or modifications to the 360-day year. that Shabbat originally arose from the lunar cycle, containing four weeks ending in Sabbath, plus one or two additional unreckoned days per month. The difficulties of this theory include reconciling the differences between an unbroken week and a lunar week, and explaining the absence of texts naming the lunar week as Shabbat in any language.

The rarely attested Sapattu<sup>m</sup> or Sabattu<sup>m</sup> as the full moon is cognate or merged with Hebrew Shabbat, but is monthly rather than weekly; it is regarded as a form of Sumerian sa-bat ("mid-rest"), attested in Akkadian as um nuh libbi ("day of mid-repose"). According to Marcello Craveri, Sabbath "was almost certainly derived from the Babylonian Shabattu, the festival of the full moon, but, all trace of any such origin having been lost, the Hebrews ascribed it to Biblical legend." This conclusion is a contextual restoration of the damaged Enûma Eliš creation account, which is read as: "[Sa]bbath shalt thou then encounter, mid[month]ly."

Impact

The Akkadian names for months surface in a number of calendars still used today. In Iraq and the Levant, the solar Gregorian calendar system is used, with Classical Arabic names replacing the Roman ones, and the month names in the Assyrian calendar descend directly from the Aramaic ones, which descended from the Akkadian ones. Similarly, while Turkey uses the Gregorian calendar in the present day, the names of Turkish months were inspired by the 1839 Rumi calendar of the Ottoman Empire, itself derived from the Ottoman fiscal calendar of 1677 based on the Julian calendar. This last calendar month names of both Syriac and Islamic origin, and in the modern calendar four of these names descend from the original Akkadian names.

See also

Lunisolar calendars

  • Hebrew calendar
  • Ancient Macedonian calendar

Other systems

  • Assyrian calendar
  • Mandaean calendar
  • Persian calendar
  • Islamic calendar
  • Solar Hijri calendar
  • Pre-Islamic Arabian calendar
  • Babylonian astrology
  • Babylonian astronomy
  • Arabic names of Gregorian months
  • MUL.APIN
  • Egyptian, Coptic, and Ethiopian calendars
  • Zoroastrian and Armenian calendars
  • Turkish months

References

Citations

Bibliography

  • Parker, Richard Anthony and Waldo H. Dubberstein. Babylonian Chronology 626 BC.–AD. 75. Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1956.
  • W. Muss-Arnolt, The Names of the Assyro-Babylonian Months and Their Regents, Journal of Biblical Literature (1892).
  • Sacha Stern, "The Babylonian Calendar at Elephantine" in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 130 (2000) 159–171 (PDF document, 94&nbsp;KB)
  • Fales, Frederick Mario, “A List of Umma Month Names”, Revue d’assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale, 76 (1982), 70–71.
  • Gomi, Tohru, “On the Position of the Month iti-ezem-dAmar-dSin in the Neo-Sumerian Umma Calendar”, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie, 75 (1985), 4–6.
  • Pomponio, Francesco, “The Reichskalender of Ur III in the Umma Texts”, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiastische Archäologie, 79 (1989), 10–13.
  • Verderame, Lorenzo, “Le calendrier et le compte du temps dans la pensée mythique suméro-akkadienne”, De Kêmi à Birit Nâri, Revue Internationale de l'Orient Ancien, 3 (2008), 121–134.
  • Steele, John M., ed., "Calendars and Years: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient Near East", Oxford: Oxbow, 2007.
  • The Babylonian Ritual Calendar
  • The Mul.Apin Tablets
  • Structure of the Babylonian calendar
  • The Babylonian Calendar (with a date converter based on Parker & Dubberstein (1971))