COMMON THINGS TIME. 



Lexandria, maintained that the period of a week was in us 

 among all ancient peoples. Goguet, a modern French authorit 

 adopts the same opinion. Others, on the contrary, among whom 

 may be mentioned Costard and Maiiry,* contend that no ancient 

 use of the period of seven days prevailed except among the Jews, 

 who took it of course from the traditions of the creation, given in 

 the Pentateuch. 



48. Both these extreme opinions, but especially the latter, are 

 erroneous. The week, as a division of time and multiple of a day, 

 was in general use among the ancient Chinese, the Egyptians, 

 the Chaldeans, and the Arabs, as well as among the Jews. It 

 was not in the calendar of the Greeks, who divided the month 

 into three periods of ten days, and it was not adopted by the 

 Romans until the time of Theodosius, who reigned in the latter 

 part of the fourth century of our era. There is properly no word 

 in the Latin classics equivalent to the term WEEK. Jfebdomas 

 signified seven of anything, and when applied to days had 

 reference to diseases, in which the physicians held (as now 

 appears erroneously) that crises were manifested of which the 

 periods were 7, 14, and 21 days. 



"While most authorities trace the use of weeks to the Mosaic 

 account of the creation, others ascribe it to the phases of the 

 moon, and others again to the planets as known to the ancients. 

 The lunar phases not being even nearly commensurate with the 

 week, they can scarcely be regarded as the origin of this chrono- 

 metric unit, and the denomination of the days having in all 

 languages more or less reference to the celestial objects, the latter 

 opinion seems to be most generally entertained. 



49. In the ancient Egyptian astronomy, the sun and moon being 

 included among the planets, and of the bodies properly called 

 planets, five only being known, Mercury, Yenus, Mars, Jupiter, 

 and Saturn, the total number of planets was taken to be seven. 

 They were ranked in the order of their supposed distances from 

 the earth as follows : 



1. SATURN 



2. JUPITER, 



3. MARS 



4. THE SUN 



5. VENUS 



6. MERCURY 



7. THE Moux. 



ia jrum 



Dion Cassius, an eminent historical writer of Home, who was 

 consul about 220 A.D., gives the following explanation of 

 manner in which the Egyptians derived the names of the days 

 the week, and their order, from those of the seven planets. 



* See dissertation Ly M. Biot upon the astronomical chronology. Mt 

 Acacl. Sc. tome xxii. 

 140 



