Rest Days; A Sociological Study 105 



that at one time the other months were similarly marked, though 

 as yet there is no certain evidence for the observance of the five 

 " evil days " in all the months of the Babylonian year. 



The choice of the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty- 

 eighth days has obviously some relation to the number seven and 

 its multiples. The difficulty which arises with respect to the 

 inclusion of the nineteenth day has been solved to the satisfaction 

 of most scholars by the suggestion that the nineteenth day was 

 regarded as seven times the seventh day (i. c, the forty-ninth 

 from the first of the preceding month). The nineteenth day 

 marked a " week of weeks. "^ 



With regard to the reasons wdiich dictated the choice of the 

 seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days, two 

 radically divergent views have been entertained. It has been 

 argued, in the first place, that the " evil days " were selected as 

 corresponding to the moon's successive changes; hence that the 

 seventh day marks the close of the earliest form of the seven- 

 day week, a week bound up with the lunar phases. According 

 to a second opinion, the setting apart of every seventh day was 

 due to a belief in the sanctity of the number seven among the 

 Babylonians ; hence the seven-day cycles were not regarded origi- 

 nally as quarters of the lunar month but rather as periods con- 

 taining the sacred number of seven days, which, as a mere coin- 

 cidence, happened to be roughly the fourth part of a lunation.* 

 The latter hypothesis deserves extended consideration. 



^ Cf. Jensen, " Die siebentagige Woche in Babylon und Xineveh," 

 Zeitsclirift fiir deutsche Wortforschnng, 1901, i. 152. The celebration of 

 the nineteenth day may be further explained as the outcome of an old 

 custom of reckoning by double months of sixty days. The fact is of 

 considerable importance since it indicates that the nineteenth day was not 

 divorced from the moon, being reckoned, as the other " evil " days, from 

 'new moon. Hommel has recently sought to show that in long months of 

 30 days the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first and twenty-eighth were regu- 

 larly observed, in short 29-day months, the fifth, twelfth, nineteenth [and 

 twenth-sixth?]. But this is pure speculation ("Calendar [Babylonian],'' in 

 Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, 191 1, iii. 76). 



■* For this second view cf. F. Delitzsch, Babel and Bible, London, 1903, 

 pp. loi sq. 



105 



