🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan27.163007.1@stsci.edu> hathaway@stsci.edu writes:
>The author claims the Babylonian astrologers (that word again!) took 
>the seven then-known-moving-celestial-objects, (which 'wandered' = 'planets') 
>and to make their gig more impressive to the (paying) public, they assigned 
>each planet to one of the 24 hours of a day.  (Where the word 'hour' came from 
>is a whole 'nother trip - ask if you're interested.)  As an aside, the use of 
>24 supposedly developed from the convenient three watches sailors (and others) 
>used to break up both the daylight and nighttimes.  Well three per was too 
>coarse a breakdown for businessmen to make appointments, etc, so they got 

This assumes that things needed a finer detail.  Not in evidence.

>This book then claimed that these dudes used the first hour's 'ruler' as the 
>name of that day.  As a little reflection will show (write out all 168 hours 
>of the week if need be), the first hour of each day (and thereby the name of 
>the day itself) will then be: 
>
>nth day  Planet  English   Babylon  Teuton       French 
>
>1st day  Sun     Sunday    Shamash  Sunnundag    Dimanche (Lord's Day) 
>2nd day  Moon    Monday    Sin      Monandag     Lundi 
>3rd day  Mars    Tuesday   Nergal   Tiesdag      Mardi 
>4th day  Jupiter Wednesday Nebo     Wodenesdag   Mercredi 
>5th day  Mercury Thursday  Marduk   Thorsdag     Jeudi  
>6th day  Venus   Friday    Ishtar   Frigadag     Vendredi 
>7th day  Saturn  Saturday  Ninurta  Saeternesdag Samedi (from Latin Sambati 
>                                                         - Sabbath) 

Note that the Teuton (German?) names match quite nicely in the latter half
with the Norse gods - Tiw, Wotan, Thor, Frig/Frey....

why postulate a complex system when a few simple numbers give you a good
answer?

the lunar cycle is ~28 days; divide by 4 (cardinal directions) gives a
7 day week (also helped by 7 being mystic in Near East prehistory).  The
sun and moon figure strongly in everyone's cosmology, so they get days.  The
rest get named for local religious entities, then mix with a few cultural 
invasions over the millenia, and we get the chart above.



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