The Origin of Our Modern Time Structure, the 7-Day Week Since the beginning of our existence, humans have had an innate desire to keep time and records of events. Having a structured sense of time was also constantly under development...

Since the beginning of our existence, humans have had an innate desire to keep time and records of events. Having a structured sense of time was also constantly under development throughout the ages. Just think about how many calendar systems there have been!

You might not have considered just how complex these systems are and how humans arrived at the divisions they did. For example, why are there 12 months in a year? How did leap days come about? Who decided an hour is 60 minutes? These are just a few questions with very interesting answers.

Today, we’ll be focusing on the seven-day week pattern. This system goes back way farther than you probably realize. Keep reading for the origins and some cool facts about the seven-day week.

Jewish Origins

If you’re familiar with the Bible or Torah, you’ve probably heard something about the creation story. Located in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, the narrative explains how God created the universe and our beloved home, Earth. This big task takes place over several days, starting with the creation of light on the first day.

Each subsequent day, God speaks into existence something new, from land to the sea, from animals to plants. Humans are created from dust on the sixth day of creation, starting with Adam, the first man, and Eve, the first woman. Finally, God decides he has finished his work and will take a day off on day seven — Sunday.

This seven-day process heavily impacted societal notions about structured time. To early Jews, this amount of time was chosen by God and thus must be important. Also, wanting to model themselves after their deity, following His framework of time seemed logical. Furthermore, there were six days of work and one day of rest, called the Sabbath.

Many societies, including the United States, have continuously used this pattern for thousands of years. However, a five-day work and two-day rest pattern was only implemented in the last 100 years.

Mesopotamian Origins

While the Biblical creation story points to a logical origin for the seven-day week, some experts say the Jews actually ‘copied’ this. According to Britannica, it’s believed that the Babylonians and Sumerians both used a seven-day week structure before the Jews did. Furthermore, their seventh day was also considered a day of rest from working, just like the Sabbath.

But where did the Mesopotamians get their seven-day structure, if not from the Bible? The number is definitely coincidental, but Mesopotamians based their week on the number of known celestial bodies. During ancient times, this included five planets—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn—and the sun and moon. They also named their days of the week after each of these bodies, a practice that continued for several calendar systems.

All these civilizations were set in the ancient Middle East, meaning they’re bound to have natural crossovers. These can happen in culture, religion, history, and even timekeeping methods. Therefore, saying one civilization ‘copied’ another is a pretty inaccurate statement. Instead, they more than likely intermixed at some point and liked the system.

The Romans’ Unique Choice

If you know anything about ancient Roman history, you’ll know that the Romans had some pretty interesting ideas. From gladiator fights to indoor plumbing, they were pioneers in many areas of culture and society. However, they also had some strange ideas about timekeeping. For example, Julius Caesar implemented the Year of Confusion, which contained 445 days and a total of 15 months.

But that wasn’t the only weird calendar move the Romans made — for centuries, they decided to use an eight-day week. They still had the seven days of Sunday through Saturday, but they added an extra day. This came after Saturday and was called Nundinae, or market day. In a sense, Nundinae acted as a Roman ‘Sabbath,’ or weekend, of sorts. No school, public assemblies like Roman Forum meetings, or business conducted on market days.

The Roman eight-day week was utilized from around the sixth century B.C. to 321 A.D. The eighth day was dropped by Emperor Constantine, the famous Roman ruler who converted the empire’s religion to Christianity. With this change, Constantine wanted to follow the Jewish seven-day week structure, with Sunday dedicated as the Sabbath. Since then, the Roman Empire has never looked back to its old, eight-day week ways. And arguably, the modern Western world might not be using the seven-day week structure today were it not for this.

Naming the Days of the Week

We’ve briefly mentioned the names of the days of the week already, but not quite their origins. Most of these come from the names of celestial bodies like planets and stars. Believe it or not, some of these names are the same as those of ancient times. This goes to show how some things never really change.

The Babylonians named the first two days of the week Sunday and Monday. These are pretty straightforward — Sunday for the Sun and Monday for the Moon. The rest of their seven days were named after planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The Romans also named these after the same planets, and their names are still in use by the Romance languages. For example, Mars-day, what we know as Tuesday, still lives on in Spanish, French, and Italian as Martes, Mardi, and Martedì, respectfully.

For some reason, the English decided to stray from other Romance languages and use the Norse terms for days of the week. These aren’t named after planets but rather Norse mythological gods. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are named after Tiu/Tyr, Odin/Woden, Thor, and Frigg, respectively. However, the English decided to keep the Roman name for Saturday, coined after Saturn.

The Lack of Astronomical Reasoning

There are several astronomical and scientific reasons behind how our units of time are measured. For example, a year is one full rotation of the earth around the sun. A month follows the pattern of the moon’s cycle, and a day is how long it takes the Earth to make a 360-degree turn.

However, the week has nothing to do with astronomy whatsoever. No natural rhythms in space or nature follow a seven-day pattern. Additionally, this length of weeks doesn’t match up evenly with months, which made using it difficult when creating the calendar. As discussed earlier, wide religious and cultural undertones are behind the decision to a seven-day week. This makes the unit of time extremely unique and stands on its own.

So Much History

It’s crazy to think just how much you can learn by looking into the origins of something as mundane as a seven-day week structure. The fact that it’s been around pretty much since the beginning of civilization makes it an ancient measurement. This alone shows just how much humans have always liked continuity. Learning the how and the why behind these things teaches that there’s so much more history behind the little things that we don’t even realize.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Alex Andrews; Pexels

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