98 Hutton Webster 



Though periods of six days are unusual, and to my knowledge 

 have been discovered only in Africa/'' the 5-day cycle enjoys a 

 wide distribution. Whatever considerations may have led to the 

 choice of such a period it certainly represents a very close division 

 of the lunation, five days exceeding a sixth of the month by 

 rather less than two hours. The Javanese used such a cycle 

 before they adopted the 7-day week from the ]\Iohammedans,^'* 

 as still do the non-Mohammedan Lampong of Sumatra. The old 

 Scandinavians likewise divided their month into six weeks, each 

 of 5 days.^^ A 5-day period, hamustu, employed as a sixth of 

 the month, has been recently shown to have been familiar to the 

 Babylonians in the third millennium B.C.^- The cuneiform evi- 

 dence clearly indicates that the changes in the moon's appearance 

 were successively associated with these five-day periods, since 

 the first five days of the month are spoken of as those of the 

 crescent moon, the next as those of the half-moon ("kidney"), 

 and the five following days as those of the full or nearly full 

 moon.'^ It is possible, though to my mind scarcely probable, in 



■*' Gottschling, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1905, xxxv. 

 382 (Bantu tribes occupying the northeast corner of the Transvaal). 



'° (Sir) T. S. Raffles, History of Java'i" London, 1830, i. 475. As in 

 Africa the principal use of the Javanese week was to determine the 

 markets or fairs held in the important towns. Each day had its distinc- 

 tive name — laggi, palling, pon, wngi, kliiifon. The natives considered these 

 names to have a mystical relation to colors and the divisions of the 

 horizon, the first day (white, east), the second (red, south), the third 

 (yellow, west), the fourth (black, north), and the fifth day a mixed 

 color or center (John Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago, Edin- 

 burgh, 1820, i. 289 sq.). These fancies must be explained by the color 

 symbolism which so frequently attaches to the cardinal points. 



^'P. B. Du Chaillu, The Viking Age, New York, 1889, i. 37 sq.; Vig- 

 fusson, Icelandic-English Dictionary, Oxford, 1874, s. v. " fimt." Cf. also 

 F. B. Gummere, Germanic Origins, New York, 1892, p. 418. 



^^ Sayce, in Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1897, 

 xix. 288; H. Winckler, Altoricntalische Forschungen, Leipzig, 1898, ii. 95 

 sqq.; Jensen, "Die siebentiigige Woche in Babylon und Nineveh," Zeit- 

 schrift fiir deutsche Wortforschung, 1901, i. 150 sq. 



•'■^ Rawlinson, Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, iii. 55, no. 3, 17 

 sqq. 



■ 98 



