Athenian calendar converter

They would use plants and flowers for food, drinks, medicine, cosmetics, aromatherapy, and even religious worship. Fun fact: According to the U. Where it got its name: Juno — the goddess of love and marriage. Midsummer was important in ancient Rome as it was a time where powerful families would arrange marriages. June was a very popular month for these weddings, which is why it was named after the goddess of love and marriage.

Where it got its name: birth month of Julius Caesar — Roman general who was famously assassinated in 44 BC. It only made sense for Julius Caesar to be represented somewhere in the Roman calendar. After all, he is credited with creating the Julian system of telling time in Rome. Fun fact: An estimated million hot dogs are eaten every year on the Fourth of July in the United States. He was a respected leader in Rome just like Julius Caesar and was even able to restore the city to its former glory following the war.

The name just kind of stuck. Fun fact: September is the most common birthday month in America. The original Roman calendar only had 10 months. Fun fact: October is the most popular month for weddings in the United States. Even though November is the eleventh month, it was the ninth month in the original Roman calendar.

As Rome made the switch to the Gregorian calendar, no one bothered to change the names. Now the numbers are all jumbled up in the modern calendar we use today!

Fun fact: 46 million turkeys are eaten every year on Thanksgiving , which is observed on the fourth Thursday of November. December was the tenth month in the Roman calendar. History and tradition were important in Rome, which could explain why they wanted to hold onto some of the names from their original calendar. Ancient Romans based each month on the time between two new moons, which is The pattern alternates between shorter and longer months, with the exception being July and August which each have 31 days.

Hello, longer summer! February is short because of leap years. That extra time adds up every four years, which is why February gets an extra day. So why does February get less days instead of June or November? This can be attributed to Roman superstition! King Numa Pompilius divided the 12 cycles of the moon across 12 months. Since February was a month of spiritual purification, the shorter number of days kept evil spirits on Earth for less time.

The 7-day week was first found in the Babylonian calendar. It represents the time it takes for the moon to transition between each of its phases, starting and ending at the crescent moon. The days of the week are a mash-up of many different languages and cultural ideas. So why do we have a five-day workweek? The answer comes from 20th century New England where overworked men were demanding a sabbath, or a couple days of rest. The Great Depression sealed the deal since a two-day weekend meant shorter hours and less unemployment.

Historians believe both ancient Egypt and Rome had a role to play in this fact. Worship was seen as a suitable way to start a new week. Ancient Rome may have also contributed to Sunday as the first day of the week. The Romans believed that the week started with the sun Sunday and moon Monday and ended with Saturn Saturday. The 24 hour day was observed in ancient Egypt in BC. The Egyptians used shadow clocks and sundials to measure the daytime and nighttime in 12 hour increments.

In the summer, the days would be longer. In the winter, the nights were longer. There are many other holidays that we look forward to every year as well.

It just depends on your individual beliefs and traditions. Talk about chaos! Calendars keep our society moving forward. Time flies by, so be sure you cherish every moment! The way we tell time has evolved over the years, and no culture seemed to think of it in the same way.

No matter what, appreciate every moment and use your calendar to stay organized! Johnson, B. Give Us Our Eleven Days. Rampton, J. The History of the Calendar. Web Exhibits. History of Our Calendar. Forrest, K. National Geographic. Caesar Augustus. For the historian inclined towards tidy orderliness, the regrettable fact is that the Athenians were simply unwilling to stick to a completely regular calendar, which makes reconstruction difficult.

Their irregularity was not from lack of astronomical knowledge. In BCE, the Athenian astronomer Meton instituted his year cycle, fixing regular intercalations whether Meton got this cycle from Babylonia or discovered it himself is not known. From that point, a small group of Greek astronomers used the Metonic cycle in their calculations, but this should be regarded as an astronomer's ideal calendar. Abundant epigraphical evidence demonstrates that in the civil calendar, while the archons inserted approximately the correct number of intercalary months over the long term, the specific corrections were somewhat arbitrary, as the archons saw fit.

This irregularity doesn't really affect the long-term workings of the calendar, but it does make things very confusing when trying to establish a precise date for an event. The Athenians seem to have taken a rather casual attitude towards their calendar. It appears they used neither a regular formula nor continuous direct observation to determine the length of the months. Most likely, they followed a general rule of alternating months 29 and 30 days long , subject to periodic correction by observation.

In addition to this calendar, which has been called the festival calendar, Athenians maintained a second calendar for the political year.

This "conciliar" year divided the year into "prytanies," one for each of the "phylai," the subdivisions of Athenian citizens. The number of phylai, and hence the number of prytanies, varies over time.

Until BCE, there were 10 phylai. After that the number varies between 11 and 13 usually Prytany 1,1 fell consistently, more or less, during the first week of July prior to BCE , but the Conciliar Year might begin anywhere from mid-Thargelion to late-Hekatombaion. With the absence of any computations on interest for specific loans, moreover, the exact length of any subsequent Bouletic Month within any given year remains unknown.

If a scholar desires to uncover a more precise Julian date for a specific Athenian or Greek event, then they must first construct a table between the Civil and Conciliar Calendars when possible , and populate it with as much information as available gathered from inscriptions and textual evidence.

Nevertheless, wading into the excessively sophisticated and specialized debates regarding these two calendars remains a most hazardous excursion even for the expert. An infamously long and often vitriolic controversy erupted between Professors Benjamin Meritt and William Pritchett over Attic time-reckoning.

The arguments occasionally transcended studies of the calendars themselves to include disagreements over specific assumptions and methodologies, proposed restorations, and even Attic epigraphy itself. Scholars will encounter both duelling epigraphical reconstructions, judgments on the textual evidence, and then disagreements over specific equations Full and Hollow months versus Intercalary Years , which seek to align the two calendars using known fixed points.

The disagreements become so abstruse that, for decades, few scholars have even ventured into the jungle.

Nevertheless, reconstructing this methodology becomes paramount for any precise conversions to Julian dates to take place, but any conclusion will still possess a significant margin of error. Lastly, Historians and Classicists commonly provide Julian dates when known for those years that fall before the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar in CE. Ancient History Encyclopedia Foundation is a non-profit organization. Hemispherical Sundial. Ancient Athenians and other Greeks used the Olympiad Calendar only for historical purposes.

Parapegmata recorded seasonally recurring weather changes in relation to the first and last appearances of stars. Athenians used the conciliar calendar in only one real capacity: to record and date financial transactions. Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication.

Become a Member Donate. Bibliography Bell Dinsmoor, W. The archons of Athens in the Hellenistic age. Hakkert, Bickerman, E. Chronology of the Ancient World. Cadoux, T. Hannah, R. Greek and Roman Calendars. Bristol Classical Press, Kahrstedt, U. Studien zum offentlichen Recht Athens. Scientia Verlag, Lang, M.

Lehoux, D. Astronomy, Weather, and Calendars in the Ancient World. Cambridge University Press, Meritt, B. Athenian Financial Documents of the Fifth Century. Ann Arbor, Meritt, B. Athenian Year. University of California Press, American School of Classical Studies, Merrit, B. Mikalson, J. It is based on a purely solar year of The era is based on the accession of Ptolemy II to the coregency.

Ptolemy translates the 7 Dionysian observations into Nabonassar dates. From these, and from the observational detail provided, we can establish synchronisms to the Julian calendar as follows:.

This data was first analysed by A. The year most probably started on the summer solstice, and the months were of 30 days each, except for the last month, Didymon Gemini , which had 35 days, or 36 in a leap year unless the extra 5 or 6 days were treated as epagomenal days in the Egyptian manner. This reconstruction has recently been strikingly confirmed by some scholia on the Almagest, probably from the sixth century A.

Jones, Cent aur us 45 These state explicitly that the months were named after the zodiac signs, that they were of 30 days each, and that the year began on the summer solstice.

However, Jones cautions that these statements reflect the understanding of whoever converted the Dionysian dates into Egyptian ones, and probably do not reflect Dionysios' actual calendar, since "several of the observations do not best fit the Egyptian dates to which Ptolemy sic?

Jones, Ann. He suggests that the actual Dionysian calendar was a parapegmatic calendar, similar to the calendar of Geminus. Geminus, Elementa Astronomiae , published a solstice-based zodiacal calendar with months of lengths 31, 31, 30, 30, 30, 29, 29, 30, 30, 31, 32, 32 days, incorporating observations dating back to Euctemon in the 5th century.

Similar calendars, with different epochs and month-lengths, are known from Varro, Columella and others. Specifically, while noting that other solutions are certainly possible, Jones suggested Ann.

The Egyptian Callippic Cycle. The Callippic Cycle is the most important of the astronomical eras for chronological purposes, since it appears to have had the most widespread use. It is an astronomical cycle invented by the Athenian astronomer Callippus, probably from the Babylonian data sent to Athens by Callisthenes. It is a refinement of the Metonic cycle of days in which lunar months fits almost exactly into 19 solar years. Since 19 solar years of The cycle was used by Hipparchus and other Hellenistic astronomers, and the dates of a number of astronomical observations are recorded according to it in the Almagest of Claudius Ptolemy.

From these observations it can be shown that year 1 of the First Callippic cycle began on the summer solstice of , which was a new moon. This is confirmed by two of Hipparchus' equinoctal observations that are dated to both year 32 of the Third Callipic Cycle and year from the death of Alexander.

Dates within a Callippic cycle are either given in an astronomical Athenian calendar, which are then converted to their Egyptian equivalents, or directly as Egyptian dates, apparently according to the convention used by Ptolemy's source. The latter convention was used by the second century astronomer Hipparchus. The Hipparchan equinoctal observations Almagest 3.

However, he also reports three lunar eclipses observed at Alexandria in and Almagest 4. Jones, ZPE , showed that the year involved with these observations was the Egyptian civil year beginning in the Athenian year, since the two eclipses in year 55 were before and after the summer solstice, the year boundary in the Athenian version of the cycle. The same convention would explain a solar positional observation by Hipparchus Almagest 5.

Until recently Callippic dates were not known outside the Almagest. However, in the same article, Jones noted that the newly-published papyrus pOxy Based on this analysis, he was able to show that two other astronomical documents dated according to hitherto unidentified eras were actually using Callippic dates:. Neugebauer et al. In this case, the years were not aligned to the Egyptian year. Jones, CdE 68 , had shown that the planetary alignments of the astronomical almanac Tab.

While no other documents are presently known using this era, now that three have been identified it seems likely that there will be more. Moreover, its significance is not entirely technical. An ephemeris calculator according to the principles of the Almagest which can provide calendar conversions to Callippic dates is available here. Seasonal Identity. Theophorous Name. I Akhet. Thoth the god of the moon. II Akhet. P n jpt. The one of the Opet feast.

III Akhet. IV Akhet. KA Hr Hb kA. The joining of kas. I Peret. The offering. II Peret.