Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 6.djvu/409

 COMPUTATION OF TIME— OUR CALENDAR.

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��COMPUTATION OF TIME— OUR CALENDAR.

��BY HON. J. E. SARGENT, LL. D.

��There are no means of determining with precision how far back in the re- mote antiquity of time any system of dates, or of the computation of time, was adopted. It is quite natural to suppose that every nation would early have some method of dividing time and keeping dates : but, beyond the most simple sub-divisions, there would be likely to be little in common between the different countries and peoples. Hence it is found that no two ancient nations, or races of men, adopted the same rules for computing or measuring time, nor did they agree in the object or event from which they began their reckoning.

The change of day and night, and their regular succession, would be first observed ; and the different phases of the moon and their regular order, and the different seasons of the year and their regular return, could not long be ignored. Observations would also soon be made among the stars ; for the shepherds upon the plains of Chal- dea, in those eastern cloudless nights, as well as upon those of Egypt, where the Nile enriched its borders, away back in the times of the shepherd kings, and long before the building of the pyramids, were keen observers of the heavenly bodies, and of their dif- ferent motions, changes, and relative positions.

The Chaldeans, the Egyptians, the Chinese, and the Hindoos, all claim to have known something of astronomy, or perhaps more properly of astrology, some three thousand years before Christ ; but there is much uncertainty in regard to their dates, and, also, in regard to the real amount of knowl- edge of the heavenly bodies which they each possessed. But they all ac- quired some general knowledge of astronomy at an early date, though 2

��how early can not be known with any certainty.

The sun, the moon, and the five planets which are visible to the naked eye, namely, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, were very early distinguished from the fixed stars. The early star-gazers in Egypt, Assyria, or elsewhere, were not long in discov- ering the fact that these seven heaven- ly bodies had an entirely different motion from that of the fixed stars — that " heavenly host" of which some three thousand could be seen with the naked eye. All these were sup- posed to revolve around the earth daily, in regular succession, the earth being considered as the center of the universe. But the planets were soon discovered to have other motions, and to change their relative positions in regular and successive intervals. They were also easily distinguished from the fixed stars by their mild and steady light.

The Egyptians, being early known as great astrologers, had named the days of their week, probably, long be- fore the children of Israel were held in bondage in that country, from the seven planets ; namely, the sun. moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, with whose motions and changes they had become somewhat familiar, beginning with Saturn, which was supposed to be the most distant from the earth, and following in the order of their supposed distances, as follows : Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the sun, Venus, Mercury, and the moon. But instead of giving these names to the days of the week in this order, a more complicated system was adopted, in accordance with the theory of the astrologers of that day — that as the day was divided into twenty-four hours, each hour must be dedicated, or con-

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