The Year of 360 Days

Prior to the last series of cataclysms, when, as we assume, the globe spun on an axis pointed in a different direction in space, with its poles at a different location, on a different orbit, the year could not have been the same as it has been since.

Numerous evidences are preserved which prove that prior to the year of 365¼ days, the year was only 360 days long. Nor was that year of 360 days primordial; it was a transitional form between a year of still fewer days and the present year.

In the Period of time between the last of the series of catastrophes of the fifteenth century and the first in the series of catastrophes of the eighth century, the duration of a seasonal revolution appears to have been 360 days.¹

In order to substantiate my statement, I invite the reader on a worldwide journey. We start in India.

The texts of the Veda period know a year of only 360 days. “All Veda texts speak uniformly and exclusively of a year of 360 days. Passages in which this length of the year is directly stated are found in all the Brahmanas.² “It is striking that the Vedas nowhere mention an intercalary period, and while repeatedly stating that the year consists of 360 days, nowhere refer to the five or six days that actually are a part of the solar year.”³

This Hindu year of 360 days is divided into twelve months of Thirty Days each.⁴ The texts describe the moon as crescent for fifteen days and waning for another fifteen days; they also say that the sun moved for six months or 180 days to the north and for the same number of days to the south.

The perplexity of scholars at such data in the Brahmanic literature is expressed in the following sentence: “That these are not conventional inexact data, but definitely wrong notions, is shown by the passage in Nidana-Sutra, which says that the sun remains 13½ days in each of the 27 Naksatras, and thus the actual solar year is calculated as 360 days long.” “Fifteen days are assigned to each half-moon period; that this is too much is nowhere admitted.”⁵

In their astronomical works, the Brahmans used very ingenious geometric methods, and their failure to discern that the year of 360 days was 5¼ days too short seemed baffling. In ten years such a mistake accumulates to fifty-two days. The author whom I quoted last was forced to conclude that the Brahmans had a “wholly confused notion of the true length of the year.” Only in a later period, he said, were the Hindus able to deal with such obvious facts. To the same effect wrote another German author: “The fact that a long period of time was necessary to arrive at the formulation of the 365-day year is proved by the existence of the old Hindu 360-day Savana-year and of other forms which appear in the Veda literature.”⁶

Here is a passage from the Aryabhatiya, an old Indian work on mathematics and astronomy: “A year consists of twelve months. A month consists of 30 days. A day consists of 60 nadis. A nadi consists of 60 vinadikas.”⁷

A month of thirty days and a year of 360 days formed the basis of early Hindu chronology used in historical computations.

The Brahmans were aware that the length of the year, of the month, and of the day changed with every new world age. The following is a passage from Surya-siddhanta, a classic of Hindu astronomy. After an introduction, it proceeds: “Only by reason of the revolution of the ages, there is here a difference of times.”⁸ The translator of this ancient manual supplied an annotation to these words: “According to the commentary, the meaning of these last verses is that in successive Great Ages … there were slight differences in the motion of the heavenly bodies.” Explaining the term “bija”, which means a correction of time in every new age, the book of Surya says that “time is the destroyer of the worlds.”

The sacerdotal year, like the secular year of the Calendar, consisted of 360 days composing twelve lunar months of thirty days each. From approximately the seventh pre-Christian century on, the year of the Hindus became 365¼ days long, but for temple purposes the old year of 360 days was also observed, and this year is called “savana”.

When the Hindu calendar acquired a year of 365¼ days and a lunar month of twenty-nine and a half days, the older system was not discarded. “The natural month, containing about twenty-nine and a half days mean solar time, is then divided into thirty lunar days (“tithi”), and this division, although of so unnatural and arbitrary a character, the lunar days beginning and ending at any moment of the natural day and night, is, to the Hindu, of the most prominent practical importance, since by it are regulated the performances of many religious ceremonies, and upon it depend the chief considerations of propitious and unpropitious times, and the like.”⁹

The double system was the imposition of a new time measure upon the old.

The ancient Persian year was composed of 360 days or twelve months of thirty days each. In the seventh century five “Gatha days” were added to the calendar.¹⁰

In the Bundahis, a sacred book of the Persians, the 180 successive appearances of the sun from the winter solstice to the summer solstice and from the summer solstice to the next winter solstice are described in these words: “There are a hundred and eighty apertures (“rogin”) in the east, and a hundred and eighty in the west … and the sun, every day, comes in through an aperture, and goes out through an aperture…. It comes back to Varak, in three hundred and sixty days and five Gatha days.”¹¹

Gatha days are “five supplementary days added to the last of the twelve months of thirty days each, to complete the year; for these days no additional apertures are provided. … This arrangement seems to indicate that the idea of the apertures is older than the rectification of the calendar which added the five Gatha days to an original year of 360 days.”¹²

The old Babylonian year was composed of 360 days.¹³ The astronomical tablets from the period antedating the Neo-Babylonian Empire compute the year at so many days, without mention of additional days. That the ancient Babylonian year had only 360 days was known before the cuneiform script was deciphered: Ctesias wrote that the walls of Babylon were 360 furlongs in compass, “as many as there had been days in the year.”¹⁴

The zodiac of the Babylonians was divided into thirty-six decans, a decan being the space the sun covered in relation to fixed stars during a ten-day period. “However, the 36 decans with their decades require a year of only 360 days.”¹⁵ To explain this apparently arbitrary length of the zodiacal path, the following conjecture was made: “At first the astronomers of Babylon recognized a year of 360 days, and the division of a circle into 360 degrees must have indicated the path traversed by the sun each day in its assumed circling of the earth.”¹⁶ This left over five degrees of the zodiac unaccounted for.

The old Babylonian year consisted of twelve months of thirty days each, the months being computed from the time of the appearance of the new moon. As the period between one new moon and another is about twenty-nine and a half days, students of the Babylonian calendar face the perplexity with which we are already familiar in other countries. “Months of thirty days began with the light of the new moon. How agreement with astronomical reality was effected, we do not know. The practice of an intercalary period is not yet known.”¹⁷ It appears that in the seventh century five days were added to the Babylonian calendar; they were regarded as unpropitious, and people had a superstitious awe of them.

The Assyrian year consisted of 360 days; a decade was called a “sarus”; a sarus consisted of 3,600 days.¹⁸

“The Assyrians, like the Babylonians, had a year composed of lunar months, and it seems that the object of astrological reports which relate to the appearance of the moon and sun was to help to determine and foretell the length of the lunar month. If this be so, the year in common use throughout Assyria must have been lunar. The calendar assigns to each month thirty full days; the lunar month is, however, little more than twenty-nine and a half days.”¹⁹ “It would hardly be possible for the calendar month and the lunar month to correspond so exactly at the end of the year.”²⁰

Assyrian documents refer to months of thirty days only, and count such months from crescent to crescent.²¹ Again, as in other countries, it is explicitly the lunar month that is computed by the Assyrian astronomers as equal to thirty days. How could the Assyrian astronomers have adjusted the length of the lunar months to the revolutions of the moon, modern scholars ask themselves, and how could the observations reported to the royal palace by the astronomers have been so consistently erroneous?

The month of the Israelites, from the fifteenth to the eighth century before the present era, was equal to thirty days, and twelve months comprised a year; there is no mention of months shorter than thirty days, nor of a year longer than twelve months. That the month was composed of thirty days is evidenced by Deuteronomy 34:8 and 21:13, and Numbers 20:29, where mourning for the dead is ordered for “a full month,” and is carried on for thirty days. The story of the Flood, as given in Genesis, reckons in months of thirty days; it says that one hundred and fifty days passed between the seventeenth day of the second month and the seventeenth day of the seventh month.²² The composition of this text apparently dates from the time between the Exodus and the upheaval of the days of Uzziah.²³

The Hebrews observed lunar months. This is attested to by the fact that the new-moon festivals were of great importance in the days of Judges and Kings.²⁴ “The new moon festival anciently stood at least on a level with that of the Sabbath.”²⁵ As these (lunar) months were thirty days long, with no months of twenty-nine days in between, and as the year was composed of twelve such months, with no additional days or intercalated months, the Bible exegetes could find no way of reconciling the three figures: 354 days, of twelve lunar months of twenty-nine and a half days each; 360 days, or a multiplex of twelve times thirty; and 365¼ days, the present length of the year.

The Egyptian year was composed of 360 days before it became 365 by the addition of five days. The calendar of the Ebers Papyrus, a document of the New Kingdom, has a year of twelve months of thirty days each.²⁶

In the ninth year of King Ptolemy Euergetes, or -238, a reform party among the Egyptian priests met at Canopus and drew up a decree; in 1866 it was discovered at Tanis in the Delta, inscribed on a tablet. The purpose of the decree was to harmonize the calendar with the seasons “according to the present arrangement of the world,” as the text states. One day was ordered to be added every four years to the “three hundred and sixty days, and to the five days which were afterwards ordered to be added.”²⁷

The authors of the decree did not specify the particular date on which the five days were added to the 360 days, but they do say clearly that such a reform was instituted on some date after the period when the year was only 360 days long.

On a previous page I referred to the fact that the calendar of 360 days was introduced in Egypt only after the close of the Middle Kingdom, in the days of the Hyksos. The five epagomena must have been added to the 360 days subsequent to the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty. We have no mention of “five days” in all the numerous inscriptions of the Eighteenth Dynasty; the epagomena or, as the Egyptians called them, “the five days which are above the year,”²⁸ are known from the documents of the seventh and following centuries. The pharaohs of the late dynasties used to write: “The year and the five days.” The last day of the year was celebrated, not on the last of the epagomena, but on the thirtieth of Mesori, the twelfth month.²⁹

In the fifth century Herodotus wrote: “The Egyptians, reckoning thirty days to each of the twelve months, add five days in every year over and above the number, and so the completed circle of seasons is made to agree with the calendar.”³⁰

The Book of Sothis, erroneously ascribed to the Egyptian priest Manetho,³¹ and Georgius Syncellus, the Byzantine chronologist,³² maintain that originally the additional five days did not follow the 360 days of the calendar, but were introduced at a later date,³³ which is corroborated by the text of the Canopus Decree.

That the introduction of epagomena was not the result of progress in astronomical knowledge, but was caused by an actual change in the planetary movements, is implied in the Canopus Decree, for it refers to “the amendment of the faults of the heaven.” In his Isis and Osiris³⁴ Plutarch describes by means of an allegory the change in the length of the year: “Hermes playing at draughts with the moon, won from her the seventieth part of each of her periods of illumination, and from all the winnings he composed five days, and intercalated them as an addition to the 360 days.” Plutarch informs us also that one of these epagomena days was regarded as inauspicious; no business was transacted on that day, and even kings “would not attend to their bodies until nightfall.”

The new-moon festivals were very important in the days of the Eighteenth Dynasty. On all the numerous inscriptions of that period, wherever the months are mentioned, they are reckoned as thirty days long. The fact that the new-moon festivals were observed at thirty-day intervals implies that the lunar month was of that duration.

Recapitulating, we find concordant data. The Canopus Decree states that at some period in the past the Egyptian year was only 360 days long, and that the five days were added at some later date; the Ebers Papyrus shows that under the Eighteenth Dynasty the calendar had a year of 360 days divided into twelve months of thirty days each; other documents of this period also testify that the lunar month had thirty days, and that a new moon was observed twelve times in a period of 360 days. The Sothis book says that this 360-day year was established under the Hyksos, who ruled after the end of the Middle Kingdom, preceding the Eighteenth Dynasty.

In the eighth or seventh century the five epagomena days were added to the year under conditions which caused them to be regarded as unpropitious.

Although the change in the number of days in the year was calculated soon after it occurred, nevertheless, for some time many nations retained a civil year of 360 days divided into twelve months of thirty days each.

Cleobulus, who was counted among the seven sages of ancient Greece, in his famous allegory represents the year as divided into twelve months of thirty days: the father is one, the sons are twelve, and each of them has thirty daughters.³⁵

From the days of Thales, another of the seven sages, who could predict an eclipse, the Hellenes knew that the year consists of 365 days; Thales was regarded by them as the man who discovered the number of days in the year. As he was born in the seventh century, it is not impossible that he was one of the first among the Greeks to learn the new length of the year; it was in the beginning of that century that the year achieved its present length. A contemporary of Thales and also one of the seven sages, Solon was regarded as the first among the Greeks to find that a lunar month is less than thirty days.³⁶ Despite their knowledge of the correct measure of the year and the month, the Greeks, after Solon and Thales, continued to keep to the obsolete calendar, a fact for which we have the testimony of Hippocrates (“Seven years contain 360 weeks”), Xenophon, Aristotle, and Pliny.³⁷ The persistence of reckoning by 360 days is accounted for not only by a certain reverence for the earlier astronomical year, but also by its convenience for every computation.

The ancient Romans also reckoned 360 days to the year. Plutarch wrote in his Life of Numa that in the time of Romulus, in the eighth century, the Romans had a year of 360 days only.³⁸ Various Latin authors say that the ancient month was composed of thirty days.³⁹

On the other side of the ocean, the Mayan year consisted of 360 days; later five days were added, and the year was then a “tun” (360-day period) and five days; every fourth year another day was added to the year. “They did reckon them apart, and called them the days of nothing: during which the people did not anything,” wrote J. de Acosta, an early writer on America.⁴⁰

Friar Diego de Landa, in his Yucatan before and after the Conquest, wrote: “They had their perfect year like ours, of 365 days and six hours, which they divided into months in two ways. In the first the months were of 30 days and were called ‘U’ which signifies the moon, and they counted from the rising of the new moon until it disappeared.”⁴¹ The other method of reckoning, by months of twenty days’ duration (“uinal hunekeh”), reflects a much older system, to which I shall return when I examine more archaic systems than that of the 360-day year. De Landa also wrote that the five supplementary days were regarded as “sinister and unlucky.” They were called “days without name.”⁴² Although the Mexicans at the time of the conquest called a thirty-day period “a moon,” they knew that the synodical moon period is 29.5209 days,⁴³ which is more exact than the Gregorian calendar introduced in Europe ninety years after the discovery of America. Obviously, they adhered to an old tradition dating from the time when the year had twelve months of thirty days each, 360 days in all.⁴⁴

In ancient South America also the year consisted of 360 days, divided into twelve months.

“The Peruvian year was divided into twelve Quilla, or moons of thirty days. Five days were added at the end, called Allcacanquis.”⁴⁵ Thereafter, a day was added every four years to keep the calendar correct.

We cross the Pacific Ocean and return to Asia. The calendar of the peoples of China had a year of 360 days divided into twelve months of thirty days each.⁴⁶

A relic of the system of 360 days is the still persisting division of the sphere into 360 degrees; each degree represented the diurnal advance of the earth on its orbit, or that portion of the zodiac which was passed over from one night to the next. After 360 changes the stellar sky returned to the same position for the observer on the earth.

When the year changed from 360 to 365¼ days, the Chinese added five and a quarter days to their year, calling this additional period “Kheying”; they also began to divide a sphere into 365¼ degrees, adopting the new year-length not only in the calendar, but also in celestial and terrestrial geometry.⁴⁷

Ancient Chinese time reckoning was based on a coefficient of sixty; so also in India, Mexico, and Chaldea, sixty being the universal coefficient.

The division of the year into 360 days was honored in many ways,⁴⁸ and, indeed, it became an incentive to progress in astronomy and geometry, so that people did not readily discard this method of reckoning when it became obsolete. They retained their “moons” of thirty days, though the lunar month in fact became shorter, and they regarded the five days as not belonging to the year.

All over the world we find that there was at some time the same calendar of 360 days, and that at some later date, about the seventh century before the present era, five days were added at the end of the year, as “days over the year,” or “days of nothing.”

Scholars who investigated the calendars of the Incas of Peru and the Mayas of Yucatan wondered at the calendar of 360 days; so did the scholars who studied the calendars of the Egyptians, Persians, Hindus, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Hebrews, Chinese, Greeks, or Romans. Most of them, while debating the problem in their own field did not suspect that the same problem turned up in the calendar of every nation of antiquity.

Two matters appeared perplexing: a mistake of five and a quarter days in a year could certainly be traced, not only by astronomers, but even by analphabetic farmers, for in the short span of forty years – a period that a person could readily observe – the seasons would become displaced by more than two hundred days. The second perplexity concerns the length of a month. “It seems to have been a prevailing opinion among the ancients that a lunation or synodical month lasted thirty days.”⁴⁹ In many documents of various peoples, it is said that the month, or the “moon,” is equal to thirty days, and that the beginning of such a month coincides with the new moon.

Such declarations by ancient astronomers make it clear that there was no such thing as a conventional calendar with an admitted error; as a matter of fact, the existence of an international calendar in those days is extremely unlikely. After centuries of open sea lanes and international exchange of ideas, no uniform calendar for the whole world has as yet been devised: the Moslems have a lunar year, based on the movements of the moon, which is systematically adjusted every few years to the solar year by intercalation; many other creeds and peoples have systems of their own containing many vestiges of ancient systems. The reckoning of months as equal to thirty and thirty-one days is also a relic of older systems; the five supplementary days were divided among the older lunar months. But at present the almanac does not ascribe an interval of thirty days between two lunations or a period of 360 days for twelve lunations.

The reason for the universal identity of time reckoning between the fifteenth and the eighth centuries lay in the actual movement of the earth on its axis and along its orbit, and in the revolution of the moon, during that historical period. The length of a lunar revolution must have been almost exactly 30 days, and the length of the year, apparently did not vary from 360 days by more than a few hours.

Then a series of catastrophes occurred that changed the axis and the orbit of the earth and the orbit of the moon, and the ancient year, after going through a period marked by disarranged seasons, settled into a “slow-moving year” (Seneca) of 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 46 seconds, a lunar month being equal to 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes,2.7 seconds, mean synodical period.