338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



unlawful for any worshiper of tliat god to labor. Sabbatlis are 

 found everywhere, for it appears to be a general riile throughout 

 the world that gods should have days consecrated to them, and 

 that on those days the followers of those gods may do no work, 

 no matter whether the holy day recurs weekly, monthly, or yearly. 

 The notion appears to be that to refrain from work on a day dedi- 

 cated to a god is a mode of showing respect. As soon as this view 

 becomes generally accepted, then to work on a holy day is to show 

 want of respect ; and as the gods of uncultured peoples are, like 

 uncultured peoples themselves, very sensitive to slights of this 

 nature, the god whose dignity or vanity has been hurt revenges 

 himself by punishing the sabbath- breaker or by punishing his 

 followers at large, because they have not vindicated his honor by 

 punishing the culprit themselves. Then, since to work on the 

 holy day is likely to call down punishment on the individual or 

 on the community, the axiom that it is unlucky to work on that 

 day becomes accepted, and people will not labor or transact busi- 

 ness or journey on it. 



Bna-da, the second day of the seven-day period of the Tshi 

 tribes, is sacred to the gods of the sea, and is, in consequence, the 

 sabbath of all those who are worshipers of the sea-gods that is 

 to say, fishermen and those whose vocations take them on the 

 sea. On Bna-da propitiatory offerings are made to the sea-gods, 

 and no one may catch fish. It is the fishermen's day of rest, and, 

 before the colonial government interfered with native customs, 

 any native who violated it by going fishing was put to death, 

 just as was the custom among the Israelites with their own sab- 

 bath-breakers (Exodus, xxxi, 14, 15 ; Numbers, xv, 32). Similarly, 

 the fifth day, Fi-da, is sacred to the gods who preside over agricul- 

 ture, and is the holy day or sabbath of all persons who cultivate 

 the soil. Here, then, are two cases of sabbaths recurring every 

 seventh day, just as with the Israelites. 



The Babylonian Assyrians had the seven-day week and a 

 weekly sabbath. Mr. George Smith says: "In the year 18G9 I 

 discovered among other things a curious religious calendar of 

 the Assyrians, in which every month is divided into four weeks, 

 and the seventh days or ' sabbaths ' are marked out as days on 

 which no work should be undertaken." * Whether the Assyrian 

 month here referred to was lunar or civil we are not told, but the 

 Rev. A. H. Sayce tells us that, according to the lunar division of 

 the year, " the seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty-first, and 

 twenty-eighth were days of ' rest,' on which certain works were 

 forbidden," f so that it seems that the Assyrians had subdivided 

 the lunar month in much the same way as the Tshi tribes have. 



* Assyrian Discoveries, p. 12. ) Records of the Past, vol. i, p. 164. 



