Calendars in antiquity : empires, states, and societies / Sacha Stern.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stern, Sacha.

Contributor:

Francis A. Jackson Memorial Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Calendar--Mediterranean Region--History--To 1500.

Calendar.

Calendar--Middle East--History--To 1500.

Calendar--Political aspects--Mediterranean Region.

Calendar--Political aspects--Middle East.

History.

Mediterranean Region--History--To 476.

Mediterranean Region.

Middle East--History--To 622.

Middle East.

Physical Description:

vi, 457 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2012.

Summary:

Calendars were at the heart of ancient culture and society, and were far more than just technical, time-keeping devices. Calendars in Antiquity offers a comprehensive study of the calendars of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, Gaul, and all other parts of the Mediterranean and the Near East, from the origins up to and including Jewish and Christian calendars in late Antiquity. In this volume, Stern sheds light on the political context in which ancient calendars were designed and managed. Set and controlled by political rulers, calendars served as expressions of political power, as mechanisms of social control, and sometimes as assertions of political independence, or even of sub-culture and dissidence. While ancient calendars varied widely, they all shared a common history, evolving on the whole from flexible, lunar calendars to fixed, solar schemes. The Egyptian calendar played an important role in this process, leading most notably to the institution of the Julian calendar in Rome, the forerunner of our modern Gregorian calendar. Stern argues that this common, evolutionary trajectory was not the result of scientific or technical progress. It was rather the result of major political and social changes that transformed the ancient world, with the formation of the great Near Eastern empires and then the Hellenistic and Roman Empires from the first millennium BC to late Antiquity. The institution of standard, fixed calendars served the administrative needs of these great empires but also contributed to their cultural cohesion.

Contents:

pt. I: From city states to great empires : the rise of the fixed calendars. Calendars of ancient Greece

The Babylonian calendar

The Egyptian calendar

The rise of the fixed calendars : Persian, Ptolemaic, and Julian calendars

pt. II: The empires challenged and dissolved : calendar diversity and fragmentation. Fragmentation : Babylonion and Julian calendars in the Near East, third century BCE-seventh century CE

Dissidence and subversion : Gallic, Jewish, and other lunar calendars in the Roman empire

Sectarianism and heresy : from Qumran calendars to Christian Easter controversies

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Francis A. Jackson Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

0199589445

9780199589449

OCLC:

781432295

Publisher Number:

99961925632