ms. (
Clm 14456 fol. 71r) of
St. Emmeram Abbey. The week is divided into seven days, and each day into 24 hours, 96 (quarter-hours), 240 (tenths of an hour) and 960 (40th parts of an hour).
Ancient Near East The earliest evidence of an astrological significance of a seven-day period is a decree of king
Sargon of Akkad around 2300 BC. Akkadians venerated the number seven, and the key celestial bodies visible to the naked eye numbered seven (the Sun, the Moon and the five closest planets).
Gudea, the priest-king of
Lagash in
Sumer during the
Gutian dynasty (about 2100 BC), built a seven-room temple, which he dedicated with a seven-day festival. In the flood story of the
Assyro-Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, the storm lasts for seven days, the dove is sent out after seven days (similarly in Genesis), and the
Noah-like character of
Utnapishtim leaves the ark seven days after it reaches the firm ground. Counting from the
new moon, the Babylonians celebrated the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th of the approximately 29- or 30-day lunar month as "holy days", also called "evil days" (meaning inauspicious for certain activities). On these days, officials were prohibited from various activities and common men were forbidden to "make a wish", and at least the 28th was known as a "rest day". Tablets from the Achaemenid period indicate that the
lunation of 29 or 30 days basically contained three seven-day weeks, and a final week of eight or nine days inclusive, breaking the continuous seven-day cycle. The forerunner of all modern Zoroastrian calendars is the system used to determine dates in the
Persian Empire, adopted from the Babylonian calendar by the 4th century BC.
Judaism A continuous seven-day cycle that runs throughout history without reference to the phases of the moon was first practiced in
Judaism, dated to the 6th century BC at the latest. and indeed the
Babylonian calendar used
intercalary days to synchronize the last week of a month with the new moon. According to this theory, the Jewish week was adopted from the Babylonians while removing the moon-dependency.
Frank C. Senn in his book
Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical points to data suggesting evidence of an early continuous use of a seven-day week; referring to the Jews during the
Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BC, In a frequently-quoted suggestion going back to the early 20th century, the Hebrew
Sabbath is compared to the Sumerian
sa-bat "mid-rest", a term for the
full moon. The Sumerian term has been reconstructed as rendered
Sapattum or
Sabattum in
Babylonian, possibly present in the lost fifth tablet of the
Enûma Eliš, tentatively reconstructed "[Sa]bbath shalt thou then encounter, mid[month]ly".
Eviatar Zerubavel believes that the
Biblical Sabbath may have been inspired by Babylonian customs during the
Babylonian exile of Judah. However, he states that the cycle based exclusively on the Sabbath and fully independent of astronomical phenomena is a Jewish innovation. In his view, "the establishment of a seven-day week based on the regular observance of the Sabbath is a distinctively Jewish contribution to civilization. The choice of the number 7 as the basis for the Jewish week might have had an Assyrian or Babylonian origin, yet it is crucial to remember that the ancient dwellers of Mesopotamia themselves did not have a seven-day week." However,
Niels-Erik Andreasen,
Jeffrey H. Tigay, and others claim that the
Biblical Sabbath is mentioned as a day of rest in some of the earliest layers of the
Pentateuch dated to the 9th century BC at the latest, centuries before the
Babylonian exile of Judah. They also find the resemblance between the Biblical Sabbath and the Babylonian system to be weak. Therefore, they suggest that the Sabbath, and thus the seven-day week, may reflect an independent
Israelite creation. Tigay writes: It is clear that among neighboring nations that were in position to have an influence over Israel – and in fact which did influence it in various matters – there is no precise parallel to the Israelite Sabbatical week. This leads to the conclusion that the Sabbatical week, which is as unique to Israel as the Sabbath from which it flows, is an independent Israelite creation. Further difficulties with
Friedrich Delitzsch's
origin theory connecting Hebrew
Shabbat with the Babylonian
lunar cycle include reconciling the differences between an unbroken week and a lunar week, and explaining the absence of texts naming the lunar week as
Shabbat in any language. the interval between two weekly Sabbaths.
Jesus's parable of the
Pharisee and the Publican describes the Pharisee as fasting "twice in the week". In the account of the women finding the tomb empty, they are described as coming there "toward the one of the sabbaths"; translations substitute "week" for "sabbaths". As Jews settled in different parts of the Roman Empire, their customs became widely known and there are references to the Jewish Sabbath by Roman authors such as
Seneca and
Ovid.
Hellenistic and Roman era The ancient Romans traditionally used the eight-day
nundinum. However, after the
Julian calendar had come into effect in 45 BC, the seven-day
astrological or
planetary week came into increasing use. It associated the days of the week with the Sun, the Moon and the five planets visible to the naked eye. However, Ilaria Bultrighini and Sascha Stern have recently argued that the custom actually seems to have appeared earlier in Roman Italy. They also speculate that the idea may have been loosely inspired by the Romans' knowledge of the Jewish week. For a while, the week and the nundinal cycle coexisted, but by the time the week was officially adopted by
Constantine in 321 AD and the
Day of the Sun () was made a legal holiday, the nundinal cycle had fallen out of use. The continuous seven-day cycle of the days of the week can be traced back to the reign of
Augustus; the first identifiable date cited complete with day of the week is 6 February 60 AD, identified as a "
Sunday" (as "eighth day before the ides of February, day of the Sun") in a Pompeiian graffito. According to the (contemporary) Julian calendar, 6 February 60 was, however, a
Wednesday. This is explained by the existence of two conventions of naming days of the weeks based on the
planetary hours system: 6 February was a "Sunday" based on the sunset naming convention, and a "Wednesday" based on the sunrise naming convention.
Islamic concept According to Islamic beliefs, the seven-day week concept started with the creation of the universe by Allah.
Abu Huraira reported that
Muhammad said: Allah, the Exalted and Glorious, created the clay on Saturday and He created the mountains on Sunday and He created the trees on Monday and He created the things entailing labour on Tuesday and created light on Wednesday and He caused the animals to spread on Thursday and created Adam after 'Asr on Friday; the last creation at the last hour of the hours of Friday, i.e., between afternoon and night.
Adoption in Asia China and Japan The earliest known reference in Chinese writings to a seven-day week is attributed to Fan Ning, who lived in the late 4th century in the
Jin dynasty, while diffusions from the
Manichaeans are documented with the writings of the Chinese Buddhist monk
Yi Jing and the Ceylonese or Central Asian Buddhist monk
Bu Kong of the 7th century (
Tang dynasty). The Chinese variant of the planetary system was brought to Japan by the Japanese monk
Kūkai (9th century). Surviving diaries of the Japanese statesman
Fujiwara Michinaga show the seven-day system in use in
Heian Period Japan as early as 1007. In Japan, the seven-day system was kept in use for astrological purposes until its promotion to a full-fledged Western-style calendrical basis during the
Meiji Period (1868–1912).
India The seven-day week was known in India by the 6th century, referenced in the
Pañcasiddhāntikā. Shashi (2000) mentions the
Garga Samhita, which he places in the 1st century BC or AD, as a possible earlier reference to a seven-day week in India. He concludes "the above references furnish a
terminus ad quem (viz. 1st century) The
terminus a quo cannot be stated with certainty".
Christian Europe The seven-day weekly cycle has remained unbroken in
Christendom, and hence in
Western history, for almost two millennia, despite changes to the
Coptic,
Julian, and
Gregorian calendars, demonstrated by the date of
Easter Sunday having been traced back through numerous
computistic tables to an Ethiopic copy of an early Alexandrian table beginning with the Easter of 311 AD A tradition of divinations arranged for the days of the week on which certain feast days occur develops in the early medieval period. There are many later variants of this, including the German and the versions of
Erra Pater published in 16th- to 17th-century England, mocked in
Samuel Butler's
Hudibras. South and East Slavic versions are known as
koliadniki (from
koliada, a loan of Latin ), with Bulgarian copies dating from the 13th century, and Serbian versions from the 14th century. Medieval Christian traditions associated with the lucky or unlucky nature of certain days of the week survived into the modern period. This concerns primarily
Friday, associated with the
crucifixion of Jesus.
Sunday, sometimes personified as
Saint Anastasia, was itself an object of worship in Russia, a practice denounced in a sermon extant in copies going back to the 14th century.
Sunday, in the ecclesiastical numbering system also counted as the or the first day of the week; yet, at the same time, figures as the "
eighth day", and has occasionally been so called in Christian liturgy.
Justin Martyr wrote: "the first day after the Sabbath, remaining the first of all the days, is called, however, the eighth, according to the number of all the days of the cycle, and [yet] remains the first." A period of eight days, usually (but not always, mainly because of Christmas Day) starting and ending on a Sunday, is called an
octave, particularly in
Roman Catholic liturgy. In German, the phrase (literally "today in eight days") can also mean one week from today (i.e. on the same weekday). The same is true of the Italian phrase (literally "today eight"), the French , and the Spanish . ==Numbering==