ON THE ORIGIN OF WEEKS AND SABBATHS. 329 



" Man's thought is like Antteus, and must be 

 Touched to the ground of Nature to regain 

 Fresh force, new impulse, else it would remain 

 Dead, in the grip of strong Authority. 

 But, once thereon reset, 'tis like a tree, 

 Sap-swollen in springtime ; bonds may not restrain. 

 Nor weight repress ; its rootlets rend in twain 

 Dead stones, and walls, and rocks, resistlessly. 



" Thine then it was to touch dead thoughts to earth 

 Till of old dreams sprang new philosophy. 

 From visions, systems, and beneath thy spell 

 Swift they uprose, like magic palaces. 

 Thyself half- conscious only of thy worth. 

 Calm priest of a tremendous oracle ! " 



ON THE ORIGIN OF WEEKS AND SABBATHS. 



Bt the late Colonel A. B. ELLIS. 



ALL over the world we find that peoples who are low in the 

 - scale of civilization reckon time by moons. In some cases 

 a moon is the sole measure of time ; in others a lunar year, com- 

 posed of a certain number of moons, has been evolved ; but the 

 solar year only appears to come into use when some progress in 

 civilization has been made. The most primitive method of meas- 

 uring time, that which is found among all savages at the present 

 day, is to count by moons, the recurrence of the moon at regular 

 and short intervals of time affording a natural and easy mode of 

 reckoning its lapse. A moon, or month, is reckoned from the 

 first appearance of a new moon, and as the moon is chiefly visible 

 by night, so it is by nights rather than by days that a moon is 

 computed. In other words, time is measured by moons and 

 nights. 



The next step is to divide the moon into periods corresponding 

 with its principal changes, which generally results in its being di- 

 vided into halves and quarters, the fourteenth to the fifteenth night, 

 which is the night of the full moon, dividing the twenty-nine and 

 a half days which elapse between the advent of two new moons 

 into two. In this connection it is curious to note that we still 

 speak of the *' quarters " of the moon. The month is thus divided 

 into four equal periods ; but as twenty-nine and a half days will 

 not divide exactly by two or by four, each period consists of seven 

 complete days and some nine hours extra. This is the plan which 

 has been adopted by the Tshi tribes of the Gold Coast of West 

 Africa. They have what may be called a seven-day week, but 



