ON THE ORIGIN OF WEEKS AND SABBATHS. 335 



seven planets, they should invent a seven-day measurement of 

 time. In the Chaldean astronomy the planets were arranged in 

 order of magnitude of orbit that is to say, as follows : Saturn, 

 Jupiter, Mars, the Sun (i. e., the Earth), Venus, Mercury, and the 

 Moon ; and if the fact of the planets being seven in number led 

 to the invention of a seven-day period, it is reasonable to suppose 

 that each day would have been named in succession after a 

 planet, and that the order of days would have been as above 

 instead of what it is viz., Saturn, Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, 

 Jupiter, Venus. This order was altogether unintelligible until 

 some clay tablets of the period of Sargon I, about 3800 b. c, which 

 explained it, were exhumed in Chaldea. From these it was 

 learned that each hour of the day of twenty-four hours was 

 consecrated to a planet in the order of magnitude of orbit viz., 

 Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, etc. and the day itself received the name 

 of the planet to which the first hour was sacred. Thus, if the 

 first hour of a day were dedicated to Saturn, the eighth, fif- 

 teenth, and twenty-second hours would also fall to that planet, 

 the twenty-third to Jupiter, the twenty-fourth to Mars, and the 

 twenty-fifth that is, the first hour of the next day to the Sun. 

 In like manner the first hour of the third day would fall to the 

 Moon, that of the fourth to Mars, that of the fifth to Mercury, 

 that of the sixth to Jupiter, and that of the seventh to Venus. 

 This is the explanation of the order of the days of the week, and 

 it appears to be the result of a new idea being grafted on to an 

 old institution viz., the seven-day week. Before the Chaldeans 

 could consecrate hours to planets, they must have divided their 

 day into hours, and, if they could do this, why could not they per- 

 form the much simpler operation of subdividing the lunar month 

 and inventing the week ? * 



The names, in the Chaldean order, appear to have been intro- 

 duced into Egypt with the Ptolemaic hypothesis (a. d. 150), and 

 the Romans borrowed them from the Egyptians. Before, how- 

 ever, the Chaldean order was introduced into Egypt, the Egyptians 

 had a seven-day period, and the sixth-seventh day was then sacred 

 to the moon, instead of the third, as under the Chaldean system. 

 In a hymn to Amen-Ra, found in a hieratic papyrus of the four- 

 teenth century b. c, and purporting to be a copy of an earlier 

 document, occurs the following : 



* The Javanese system presents some curious points of resemblance to that of the Chal- 

 deans. When they had a week of five days, each day of twenty-four hours was divided into 

 five periods viz., from sunset to 8 a. m. ; from 8 a. m. to noon ; from noon to 3 p. m. ; from 

 3 p. M. to 4 p. M. ; and from 4 p. m. to sunset. Each of these divisions was sacred to one of 

 the five gods, Sri, Kala, Wisnu, Maheswara, and Brama, but the order of dedication changed 

 every day. Thus, if the first period of one day were dedicated to Sri, that of the next day 

 was dedicated to Kala, that of the third to Wisnu, and so on. (Raifies, loc. cH.) 



