In the much disputed questions of the ancient Babylonian astronomy and calendar the non-expert is in a situation of despair: for whoever cannot himself make use of the sources is referred to the often directly contradictory statements of the experts. I cannot however shirk the task of investigating whether in Babylonian calendric systems traces of the primitive time-reckoning are not also to be found. Unfortunately I cannot limit myself to matters upon which a certain unity of opinion prevails, but must also touch upon burning questions, such as the intercalation. What is here offered is in the nature of things only an attempt: but I may perhaps be allowed to express the hope that competent specialists, not led astray by chronological hypotheses, may afterwards observe how far the few but obvious characteristics of the primitive time-reckoning recur also in the Babylonian system.
The multiplicity and variability of the names of the months are found once more in ancient Sumer. In so comparatively late a period as the kingdom of Ur (in the middle of the second half of the third millenium B. C.) each minor state had its own list of months, which I here reproduce, together with the suggested explanations, chiefly from the latest work of Landsberger[834]. At this time there was in use in Nippur a list of months the terms of which later served as general ideograms for the months. The names are:—1, bar-zag-gar(-ra) month of habitation or inhabitants of the sanctuary; 2, gu(d)-si-sa, the name is derived by the Babylonians themselves from an agricultural occupation, the driving of the irrigating-machine drawn by oxen: the moderns connect this name with the gu(d)-si-su festival celebrated in this month at Nippur; 3, šeg-ga, shortened from šeg-u-šub-ba-gar-ra, ‘month in which the brick is laid in the mould’; 4, šu-kul-na, probably ‘sowing-month’, although the time does not fit: for displacements see below p. 261; 5, ne-ne-gar(-ra), named from a festival; 6, kin-d Inanna, named from an Istar festival; 7, du(l)-azag(-ga), from a festival; 8, apin-du-a, ‘month of the opening of the irrigation-pipes’, which fits very well with the time of year; 9, kan-kan-na, probably ‘ploughing-month’, which also agrees very well with the season; 10, ab(-ba)-e(-a), from a festival; 11, aš-a(-an), ‘month of the spelt’; 12, še-kin-kud-(du), ‘month of the corn-harvest’. There are therefore some names of the familiar kind, taken from agricultural occupations, but more are borrowed from festivals. It is very natural that the list of months should be regulated by ecclesiastical points of view, since Nippur was a great and very ancient centre of the religious cult.
Most interesting are the months from Girsu (Lagash). From the pre-Sargonic period about 25 names of months have hitherto been found, of which only 8 or 9 persisted up to the second and third periods. These 25 names of months are divided by Landsberger into the following groups:—(1) occasional names of months, under which he includes those which are consciously named after the object or employment mentioned in the document itself, or even improvised from the domestic occupation in question. Four names are given but are not translated. (2) isolated and foreign names of months: ‘month in which the shining (or white) star sinks down from the culmination-point’, a type familiar to us; ‘month in which the third people came from Uruk’, doubtless an accidental description. Further, two months named from festivals at Lagash. (3) agricultural by-names: itu še-kin-kud-du, see above; itu gur-dub-ba-a, ‘month in which the granary is covered with grain’; further a name not explained, perhaps identical with the foregoing. (4) terms belonging to the religious cult. Of these no fewer than 17 exist, not counting those already mentioned: they are nearly all named after festivals. Great pains have been taken to arrange the months in their position in the calendar, and the superfluous names have been set down merely as doublets, since they have been judged by the lists of months current among ourselves. When we compare the terms with those of the primitive time-reckoning, it becomes clear that the naming of the months is here in the same fluctuating state as e. g. among the Melanesians. According to circumstances, an agricultural occupation, the rising of a star, a festival, etc., is seized upon in order to describe the month. Certainly the months can be chronologically arranged, but to draw up a fixed series from these 25 names is impossible, even if tendencies towards the formation of such a series already exist. The development tends in this direction in order to facilitate a general understanding, and in the second period, at the time of the kingdom of Akkad in the 28th to 26th centuries, a list of this nature occurs[835]:—1, itu ezen gan-maš, perhaps ‘month of the reckoning’, i. e. of the profits of the agriculture, or ‘mois où la campagne resplendit’; 2, itu ezen har-ra-ne-sar-sar, ‘month in which the oxen work’; 3, itu ezen dingir ne-šu, of uncertain meaning but connected with the cult; 4, itu šu-kul, see above; 5, itu ezen dim-ku, month of the feast in which the dim consecrated to the deity was eaten; 6, itu ezen dingir Dumu-zi, month of the Tammuz feast; 7, itu ur; 8, itu ezen dingir Bau, month of the feast of the goddess Bau; 9, itu mu-šu-gab, meaning uncertain; 10, itu mes-en-du-še-a-na (?); 11, itu ezen amar-a(-a)-si, amar = ‘young brood’, a = ‘water’, si = malu = ‘to be full’, and therefore probably ‘spawning month’; 12, itu še-še-kin-a, another form for še-kin-kud; 13, itu ezen še-illa, ‘mois où le blé monte’, according to Radau ‘grain grow(n)’, according to de Genouillac, whom Kugler follows, ‘mois où on lève le blé pour les moutons’: i. e. after the corn has been trodden out on the threshing-floor by the oxen, the stalks are taken up for the cattle. The list has therefore thirteen months. Further, two points are to be noted. In the first place only eight months (nos. 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 11, 12, and 13), or perhaps nine—if itu ur is to be regarded as an abbreviation of itu ga-udu-ur-(ra-)ka—are taken over from the preceding period. The multiplicity and instability of the names of months were therefore at an earlier period still greater than the known names indicate. In the second place the word ezen, ‘feast’, is a secondary addition to the names of the 2nd, 3rd, 13th, and probably the 4th months, that is to say, the ecclesiastical point of view has penetrated into the nomenclature of the months to such an extent that even months with names borrowed from agricultural occupations are explained anew by festivals. The third period is the time of Dungi and his successors. The list of months differs only in that 7, itu ur, was re-named as itu ezen dingir Dungi, and the tenth month of the above list is missing, so that we have 10, itu amar-a-asi; 11, itu še-kin-kud; 12, itu se-illa; in the intercalation 11 is doubled, itu dir še-kin-kud. The seventh month takes its name from a festival celebrated in honour of the deified king Dungi; it is therefore the oldest example of a naming of a month from deified rulers which originates in the festivals bound up with the cult; such names are familiar from the Graeco-Roman period and examples still survive in the words ‘July’ and ‘August’. Still another version of this list exists in the so-called syllabar of months, in which six series of names of months are enumerated. This list is not completely preserved. The most considerable deviation is that only two months instead of three intervene between the months šu-kul-na and ezen d Bau: the order of succession is therefore broken. Landsberger conjectures that we have to do either with a later form of the calendar from Lagash, at the time of the kings of Larsa and Isin—afterwards the Nippur list was used, this being employed everywhere, at least ideographically—or else with a local offshoot. In any case the list affords valuable evidence of the instability of the months.
In modern Drehem there is found a list of months in which each month is allotted to an official of the cult, so that the result is a monthly regulation of the cult. The list is assigned to the town of Ur. 1, maš-da-ku, ‘month of the gazelle eating’, from a festival ceremony; 2, šeš-da-ku, and 3, u-bi-ku, borrowed from religious festivals; 4, ki-sig d Nin-a-zu, month of the mourning festival of Ninazu; 5, ezen d Nin-a-zu, month of the (joyful) festival of Ninazu; 6, a-ki-ti, named from a feast; 7, ezen d Dungi, see above; 8, šu-eš-ša, unexplained, later ousted by itu ezen d Su- d Sin; 9, ezen-mah, ‘month of the high feast’; 10, ezen-an-na, month of the Anu feast; 11, ezen Me-ki-gal, doubled in intercalation; 12, še-kin-kud. There are also many variants. The names, with the exception of that of the old harvest month, are all taken from feasts: the ecclesiastical nomenclature has therefore been carried out very fully.
The list of months from Umma:—The months 1, 2, and 6 are borrowed from the Nippur list. Of undoubted religious origin are:—9, d Ne-gun; 10, ezen d Dungi; 12, d Dumu-zi. 11 has the variant itu d Pap-u-e. To none of the four local systems can itu azag-šim be allotted.
A fifth list is known only from the above-mentioned syllabar, and is not certainly localised. The names of months refer to festivals and religious ceremonies, and have not all been completely preserved.
We have seen what a multiplicity prevails among the Sumerian names of months. At the time of the dynasty of Hammurabi the signs of the Nippur list are used as ideographic signs of the months. The phonetic readings are known. The names are the common ones which were also adopted by the Jews in exile. The explanations are, according to Muss-Arnolt:—1, nisanu, from nesu = ‘to stir, to move on, to leap’; 2, airu, from aru, ‘bright’, or ir, ‘to send out, to sprout’, and therefore the month of blossoming and sprouting; 3, sivanu; 4, duzu, ‘son of life’; 5, abu, ‘hostile’ (on account of the heat); 6, ululu; 7, tašritu, ‘origin, beginning’; 8, arah-samna, ‘the eighth month’; 9, kislivu; 10, dhabitu, ‘the gloomy month’; 11, sabadhu, ‘the destroyer’; 12, addaru, ‘the dark (month)’. The names are therefore borrowed throughout from natural phenomena. Numerous phonetic writings in legal documents are alone sufficient to shew that, at least for Sippar, our common pronunciations of the month-ideograms of this time were not the only ones in use. Landsberger gives 12 other names, of which only a few can be explained. Sibutim, sibutu is the name for the 7th day and its festival, as the name of a month therefore, carrying over the idea to the year, it is the sibutu of the year; ki-nu-ni, ‘oven month’, because the oven must then be heated; arah ka-ti-ir-si-tim, ‘hand of the underworld’, probably something like ‘month of epidemics’. One or two are named from gods. Therefore among the Semites of Babylonia also a fixed series of months was formed only gradually, by selection, and indeed under the influence of the Sumerian calendar from which the ideograms were borrowed.
The Elamite calendar is known partly from the so-called syllabar of months, and partly from documents[836]: the latter offer 13 names of which Hrozný tries to explain away the last by identifying it with another. The names in the two sources sometimes vary considerably, but are chiefly of Babylonian origin. Several, according to Hrozný’s interpretations, refer to the seasons: še-ir(-i)-eburi, (month of the) prospering of the harvest; tam-ti-ru-um, month of rain; tar-bi-tum (month of the) growth (of plants). Pi-te-bâbi means ‘opening of the gate’, and probably refers to a religious ceremony.
The ancient Assyrian list of months is partly preserved in the syllabar of months, and also occurs in the inscriptions of the early Assyrian kings and in the so-called Cappadocian tablets, which come from an Assyrian colony of the third millenium at Kara Eyjuk in Asia Minor. We find:—2, perhaps month of the moon-god; 3, ku-zal-li, shepherd’s month; 4, al-la-na-a-ti, also shepherd’s month; 6, ša sa-ra-te, perhaps the name of some employment; 12, qar-ra-a-tu, name of an occupation (?). The other names are missing or are uncertain. In regard to the interpretation of the names from occupations a certain caution should be exercised, since in accordance with all the examples hitherto given a name like ‘shepherd’s month’ ought to refer not to the occupation as such but to the pasture season. All other explanations are quite problematical.
In the above I have only been able to reproduce the material collected by Assyriologists and the explanations given by them: but from this it clearly appears that the development of the series of months has proceeded in the same fashion here as elsewhere. At the beginning we find an indefinite number of names of months borrowed principally from natural phenomena. Among these a selection takes place, the result of which, however, is different in each city. At first it seems as though series of 13 months arose. But these series, as the examples from Lagash shew, were not fixed throughout. New names penetrate into them, even the position of the month can be altered. Finally the series becomes quite fixed, and with this seems to be connected the falling away of the thirteenth month: in the series of months now fixed at twelve the leapmonth becomes a doubling of the preceding month. While this development continues, the calendar takes on more and more an ecclesiastical stamp, since months named from festivals are constantly ousting those named from natural phenomena, and finally attain to almost exclusive predominance. This is easily to be understood in the case of ancient Sumer, since not only were the priests alone—here as elsewhere—in possession of the art of writing and the other higher branches of knowledge of the people, but the temples also had the largest landed property, with an extensive administration. Occupations and religious ceremonies, festival seasons and time-reckoning for practical purposes were more closely connected at that time than at any other. The Semitic calendars all present the same characteristics as the ancient Sumerian, a resemblance which is only slightly disguised by the fact that the signs of the now fixed Sumerian series of months are used as ideograms of the months. Everyone read the ideograms in accordance with his custom, so that a variety in the names of months still existed, as the phonetic writings testify. But the fixed writing naturally contributed to bring about fixed readings, i. e. a fixed series of months.
The Israelites, like all Semitic races, reckoned in lunar months. I need not discuss the views which ascribe to them a solar year, or would make the old Canaanitish months divisions of the solar year. From early times the day of the new moon was celebrated with general festivities and rest from labour, and the old feasts of the agricultural year seem to have been postponed till the time of full moon. Like the Homeric Greeks, the Jews at their immigration had no names of months. Hence they took over the old Canaanitish names. The latter appear in the oldest portions of the law, in the regulations for the feast of the Passover, which is to be celebrated in chodesh ha-abib, the month of ears of corn, and in the history of the building of Solomon’s temple[837], where three others—chodesh or yerash ziv, yerash bul, yerash ha-etanim—are mentioned and compared with the numerical months by which their position is fixed. Of these y. bul and y. etanim recur among the eleven Phoenician names of months known from inscriptions. The above-mentioned series of months, which we possess only in fragments, was therefore at least in part identical with the Phoenician: hence the term ‘old Canaanitish’ is justified. The explanations are also clear, having regard to the position of the months in the year. Chodesh ha-abib, corresponding to the first month, about April, is the month of the ripening ears. Yerash ziv, the second, about May, the month of brightness (though certainly the etymology is not certain), is referred to the splendour of the blossoming season, though this falls earlier. But in May the dry season begins, and so one would think rather of the splendour of the sun. Yerash ha-etanim, corresponding to the seventh, about September, means month of the flowing, i. e. of the perennial streams, which now at the end of the dry season are the only ones that have water. Yerash bul, the eighth, cannot be referred to the gathering of the fruit (bul), which has already taken place, but probably means the rainy month, since the autumn rains now begin[838]. The descriptions are therefore of the kind already sufficiently familiar.
But in the writings of the Old Testament the numbering of the months, beginning at the Feast of the Passover, is the common method of description, which is only replaced by the Babylonian names of months after the Captivity. It seems to be fairly generally recognised that the numbering is later, and according to what has already been shewn about the numbering of months[839] this is always a phenomenon of an advanced stage of civilisation. The inclination of the people towards concrete descriptions of months must also have prepared the way for the introduction of the Babylonian names. As to the date of the introduction of the numbered months there is considerable difference of opinion: at the time of Solomon[840], about 600 B. C.[841], first demonstrable among the writers of the Captivity[842]. For our purpose the chief point to note is that the numbering is more recent than the naming of the months. This question is again connected with that of the beginning of the year, which will be dealt with below. For if the series of numbered months begins in spring, yet there are also indications of an earlier beginning in autumn[843].
New evidence both for the beginning of the year in autumn and for the months is found in an inscriptional calendar from Gezer, dating from about the year 600[844]. It runs:—Two months: bringing in of fruits; two months: sowing; two months: late sowing; one month: pulling up of flax; one month: barley harvest; one month: harvest of all other kinds of corn; two months: vintage; one month: fruit-gathering. This agrees with the course of the agricultural occupations, reckoning from about September,—the bringing in of fruit is not the harvest but the carrying home of the harvest from the fields—but is naturally systematised so as to cover the months. Whoever drew up this list knew neither fixed names nor a fixed enumeration of the months: the question can only be whether this state of affairs must have been general at the date 600 B. C. The purpose of the list does not seem to me to have been clearly recognised. It is obvious that such a list must have been drawn up for practical ends. It helps to regulate the calendar. From the agricultural work just engaged in the present month is recognised: and then, with the aid of this calendar, it becomes possible to calculate how many months will elapse before some other occupations begin. If this calendar came into general use, names of months of the usual type would arise from it.
It has been remarked above that the Israelites at their immigration into Canaan had no names of months. Of course, like all other primitive peoples, they occasionally reckoned a few months up to or after this or that event, e. g. pregnancy. This counting was a shifting one, i. e. it had no reference to the solar year. That the practice of counting the months was known is proved by the common word for month, chodesh, literally ‘newness’, ‘new moon’, from chadash, ‘new’. The word for moon is yareach. Among the Phoenicians chodesh means only ‘new moon’: ‘month’ is yerach. In the Old Testament this latter word also occurs several times: in the account of the building of Solomon’s temple[845] (in three cases characteristically combined with the old Canaanitish names), in Exodus[846], in Deuteronomy and II Kings (in the expression yerach yamim[847]), and lastly, poetically, in Moses’ departing blessing[848] and a few times in Job and Zechariah.
When it is remembered that the months are counted not only continuously but also by the appearance of each new moon[849], it becomes clear how the word chodesh has come to mean ‘month’, and this is also a sure evidence for the practice of counting the months, though not from a definite point of departure. The latter process, i. e. the numbering of the months, is much later. The earlier books of the Old Testament provide interesting material for the significance of the word[850]. Chodesh means ‘new moon’, ‘feast of the new moon’ in the old narrative of Jonathan and David[851]; in the combination ‘new moons and sabbaths’[852]; and in the regulations of the Priestly Code about the burnt offering of the new moon[853]. From the new moon the days of the month can be counted, and this is done in one case[854]. The number of months is determined by counting the new moons: thus certain passages can be understood (though not necessarily so), e. g. in the Yahwist, Gen. XXXVIII, 24, “it came to pass about three new moons (months) after”, and in Amos IV, 7, “when there were yet three new moons (months) to the harvest”. Here ‘new moon’ and ‘month’ are essentially identical: in this manner a change of sense has come about. Another point is whether at the time in question the word in this connexion had the sense of new moon or of month: I should be inclined to regard the latter supposition as correct. In the regulations for the Passover Feast also the sense is not to be determined definitely[855]. If prominence is given to the idea of duration of time, the sense ‘month’ clearly appears, e. g. in the story of Jephthah’s daughter:[856] “Let me alone two months, that I may depart and go down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity.” Thus the word in earlier and later times is often used in the counting of the months[857]. The sense ‘month’ can be rendered clear by the addition yamim[858], which is an older idiom, for neither with chodesh nor with shana, ‘year’, is yamim originally an empty addition. Shana perhaps means ‘change’, ‘recurrence’, i. e. of the seasons. If the word is used in a calendarial sense, yamim is a practical explanation. The result is that chodesh stands for ‘month’, even where the idea of the new moon is completely excluded, e. g., with numbers of days added, as early as in the Yahwistic part of the old History of the Kings, II Sam. XXIV, 8, ‘nine months and twenty days’, or in the history of Solomon, I Kings V, 14: “And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month by courses: a month they were in Lebanon, and two months at home”. The older senses belong in general to the older writings; it is however to be presumed that before the beginning of the literary period the change of sense had already advanced rather far.
In by far the greatest number of cases chodesh stands in combination with an ordinal numeral, not in Deuteronomy, but in Jeremiah and the writers of the Exile, in the last Reviser of the Pentateuch, in the Priestly Code. Hence it follows that these numbered months are a late innovation, and they will be spoken of again in connexion with the matter of the beginning of the year[859].
The series of months now used by the Arabs is the ancient Meccan series, which, on account of the importance of Mecca as a centre of trade, had acquired a more than local extension and was adopted by Islam. Besides this series others are handed down, partly by Arabian writers, and partly in the Sabean inscriptions: the latter I pass over, since there is no translation of them, so that they are of no use for my purpose[860]. The Meccan series is:—1, safar I, now called muharram, ‘the holy’, a re-naming which, according to an Arabic author, Buchari, first took place under Islam; 2, safar II; 3, rabi I; 4, rabi II; 5, jumada I; 6, jumada II; 7, rajab; 8, sha’ban; 9, ramadan; 10, shawwal; 11, dhu-l-qa’da; 12, dhu-l-hijja. These names, in so far as they are explainable, refer to seasons and festivals. This is best seen from the three pairs of months which form the first half-year. I quote Wellhausen:[861]—“For the season Çafar the Lisan 6, 134 gives abundant examples; it gives a name to plants which grow at that time, animals which are born then, and rains which fall in it. It falls in the autumn. Gumâda often occurs in the old poetry and always refers to the worst winter-cold, the dear time in which the poor must be fed by the rich. Especially favoured is the description of the evil night in Gumâda, when the dogs do not bark, the snakes, which are otherwise out at night-time, remain in their holes, and the traveller eagerly looks out for a friendly fire. The Rabî’ falls, according to the calendar, between Çafar and Gumâda, and therefore in late autumn. But commonly the Rabî’ is the season when, after the autumn and winter rains, the steppe becomes green and the tribes disperse to the pastures, where the camels bring forth their young and the rich milking-season approaches.... The camels are pregnant ‘in the tenth month’, and bring forth their young in February.” This statement is supported by the etymology. Safar comes from a root with the meaning ‘to be empty’. Since two months appear between safar and the cold season, the two months of safar include the end of the dry and the beginning of the rainy season, before a more abundant vegetation has sprung up, and are therefore the worst period of lack of food. The root from which jumada comes has the sense ‘to grow stiff’, which suits the time of the sharp cold. Rabi as a season has a double sense, it is partly used to describe a period in autumn which is often identified with charif, the date-harvest, and partly to describe the pasture-season in spring. The explanation of this fact is doubtless that the word refers to the sprouting vegetation, the pasture-season, partly, indeed, to the vegetation which appears simultaneously with the autumn rains, but partly to the richer pasture which springs up with the increasing heat after the winter rains. Out of these three seasons, according to a familiar precedent, six months are made. They do not exactly cover the winter half of the year, but fall somewhat earlier, since the last month, jumada II, belongs to the cold period. As for the other months, the sense of ramadan, ‘the hot’, is certain, and it alludes to the warm season, in fact to its beginning, since ramadan is the third month after jumada II. The attempted explanations of sha’ban and shawwal are all very uncertain. The other three names refer to festivals. In rajab a festival was celebrated in all holy places, in which sacrifices of camels and sheep were offered up. The root means ‘to fear, to reverence’; the month is therefore called the ‘holy’, or the ‘deaf and dumb’, since the noise of weapons is stilled. The names of the last two months refer to the great pilgrimage to Mecca. Dhu-l-qa’da is ‘the month of sitting’, and the explanation given for the name—that the month was so called because in it no expeditions or predatory excursions took place—is doubtless correct. It is the first month of the holy peace which prevails during the time of pilgrimage. The second month is named from the feast of pilgrims itself, dhu-l-hijja.