96 Hutton Webster 



Roscher believes he has found traces of 9-day periods among 

 various Indo-Germanic peoples, particularly the Greeks of the 

 Homeric and pre-Homeric age.*^ It cannot be conclusively 

 shown, however, that the numerous illustrations of 9-day periods 

 given by him were ever employed for civil purposes as regular 

 divisions of the month.^^ A similar remark applies to the fre- 

 quent mention in old Irish texts of periods of 3 days and nights 

 and of 9 days and nights.** 



Periods of 8 days are of rare occurrence though known, in the 

 lower culture, to some African tribes. Thus the Bini of Benin 

 now employ an 8-day week, but this seems to have developed 

 from an earlier week of four days regarded as a seventh of the 

 lunation, which is found so frequently in west Africa.*^ On 

 the other hand, an 8-day week called 'smncii is found among the 



*' Roscher, op. cit., 14 sqq. Cf. idem, " Die Sieben- und Neunzahl im 

 Kultus und Mythus der Griechen," Abhandlungeti der philologisch- 

 historischen Klasse der kdniglich-sdchsischen Gesellschaft der Wissen- 

 schaften, 1904, xxiv. no. i, pp. 54 sqq., 69, 83. 



"The same must be true of the 7-day periods with which, as Roscher 

 has shown, the early Greeks were as famiUar as with the 9-day periods 

 ("Fristen," 41-68; idem, "Sieben- und Neunzahl," 67 sqq.; idem, "Die 

 Hebdomadenlehren der griechischen Philosophen und Arzte," Abhand- 

 limgen, etc., 1906, xxiv. no. 6, p. 8). 



^■' Cf. Thurneysen, " Die Namen der Wochentage in den keltischen Dia- 

 lekten," Zeitschrift fiir deutsche Wortforschung, 1901, i. 191. Loth, how- 

 ever, regards the Celtic periods as having been employed as ordinary 

 weeks (" L'annee celtique d'apres les textes irlandais," Revue celtiqtie, 

 1904, XXV. 136). He accepts Roscher's theory of the sidereal month 

 having furnished the basis for such 9-day periods as are found among the 

 Celts, and argues further, that subsequently, the sidereal, having been 

 abandoned for the synodic month, the 9-day periods became artificial 

 units, independent of any connection with the moon. But so strange a 

 transition as that from the sidereal to the synodic month cannot be sup- 

 ported by any Celtic evidence and has no analogy among other peoples. 

 The number 9, it is worth while notihg, enjoyed a high degree of sanctity 

 among various Indo-Germanic races (O. Schrader, Reallexikon, 970 sq.). 

 It is possible, however, to conjecture that the 9-day period arose, originally, 

 as a multiple of a 3-day cycle in earlier use. 



''R. E. Dennett, At the Back of the Black Man's Mind. London, 1906. 

 pp. 214, 364. Cf. also, Waitz, op. cit., ii. 224 (Old Kalabar). 



■ 96 



