Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/350

336  O Ra! adored iu Aptu (Thebes): High-crowned in the house of the obelisk (Heliopolis): King (Ani), Lord of the New-Moon festival: To whom the sixth and seventh days are sacred."

Thus, in Egypt, in the fourteenth, century the festival of the new moon was from sunset on the sixth to sunset on the seventh; and since the sixth-seventh of a month was always coincident with a new moon, the Egyptian months must have been lunar months, and their seven-day periods, if true quarters of a lunar month, must have been similar to those of the Tshi and Gã tribes. When, fifteen hundred and fifty years later, the planetary names arranged on the Chaldean system came into use for the days of the week, the Egyptians had adopted a civil month of thirty days, twelve of which, with five supplementary days, completed the solar year; and, as the month had become a civil period no longer connected with the moon, so the week became also a civil period, and was made seven days long exactly.

Among the Romans the first mention of a day named after a planet occurs in the third elegy of the first book of Tibullus, written about 24, where we find the words "Saturn's unlucky day"; and from Ovid, A. A. i, 415, it is clear that this notion was derived from Palestine. Every seventh day was considered unlucky, but whether the Romans had a civil week, and names for the other days, is uncertain, though the general belief is that they did not adopt the Chaldean seven-day period from Egypt till after the reign of Theodosius, 395. It is, however, fairly clear that in the early days of their history they reckoned time by half-moons and quarter-moons or lunar weeks. When they had invented civil months, the calends were invariably on the first day of the month, and were so named because the priests had been accustomed to call the people together on that day and announce what days were to be kept sacred during the month. The ides—so called, according to Macrobius ( 400), from the Etruscan verb iduare, to divide—were at the middle of the month, either on the thirteenth or fifteenth, and the nones were at the ninth day before the ides, counting inclusively. If the ides fell on the fifteenth, the nones were on the seventh. The days between the calends and nones were called "the days before the nones"; those between the nones and ides,"the days before the ides"; and those from the ides till the end of the month, "the days before the calends." In March, May, July, and October the ides fell on the fifteenth and the nones on the seventh; in the remaining months the ides fell on the thirteenth and the nones on the fifth. Thus the only number that was constant was the number of days