# Chronologies and Calendars/Chapter 2

CHRONOLOGY is defined as 'the science which treats of measuring time by regular divisions or periods, and which assigns to events or transactions their proper dates.' In the first place, we may consider the reckonings used by the Aborigines, which usually took their origin in the need of some rotation for the rites of Pagan worship. The new moon, full moon, and winter solstice have been severally so used. Or the seasons were sometimes marked off by stellar appearances and disappearances. The Zulus call the Pleiades the Digging Stars, as indicating the season for cultivating the soil. The rising of the Nile has likewise aided the fellahin in dividing the year. 'It has risen to within a few hours of the same time, year after year, for unknown ages. At Khartoum it begins to increase early in April, but in lower Egypt the inundation usually begins about the 25th of June, and attains its height in three months; it remains stationary for about twelve days, and then subsides.' The recurring migrations of birds may also be mentioned in the same connection. A missionary tells of a rude reckoning in use among the South Sea Islanders. They had made a deep cut in the earth—as a reminder of some massacre—and year by year ​the cut was repeated, until this curious calendar had, when the Doctor saw it, run up to eighty years. Again, the North American Indian spoke of 'coming over the trail of many moons from the land of the setting sun,' to mean that he had travelled from the west for many months. For any period less than a lunar month, he would use the term 'nights,' not weeks.
9. The Asiatic Indian, long before the Christian era, speaking of the moon, meant a month; he had one word only for the two things, and that word carried the idea of measuring, seeing that time was measured by moons, nights, and winters long before it was reckoned by suns, days, and years. De Foe, in attributing the keeping of a calendar to Crusoe, practically gives us a description of the Runic calendars of Scandanavia and Britain eight hundred years ago. He says for his immortal hero that "upon the sides of this square post I cut every day a notch with my knife, and every seventh notch was as long again as the rest, and every first day of the month as long again as that one; and thus I kept my calendar, or weekly, monthly, and yearly reckoning of time.'
10. Such, then, were the quaint methods adopted by the barbarians of keeping a tally of the years. We pass now to the domain of civilization. The Savants of China, while Norman and Saxon were fighting with each other in England, and unrest, ignorance, and warfare were the sad symbols of European progress, had begun to preserve their opinion in printed characters. Their philosophy and religion were old and established when Christianity was ​dawning in the West. Their first historic writings belong to remotest times—perhaps as early as the twenty-second century B.C. They seem to have divided their epochs into dynasties, for the building of 'The Wall' is placed in the fourth Imperial Dynasty. But there is evidence that from 163 B.C. the methods of dates was to count the years from each accession. Cycles of sixty lunar years were also in vogue, and the latest of such cycles ended in 1864 A.D. The first of such epochs is now computed to have commenced in Anno Mundi 2173, that is, 2636 B.C. This is the first historic cycle. It is a pity that the Chinese neglected the study of astronomy, for the interdependent data and synchronisms would now be of great service. Compared with this, their reputed discovery of the magnetic pole, in pre-Advent ages, is a secondary consideration.
11. The vague Egyptian year was 'so called because it consisted of 365 days, without any intercalculation. As the length of the solar year is nearly 365¼ days, the Egyptian year was, astronomically speaking, too short. In every 400 years it lost 97 days. Thus, in the period of 1504 equinoctial years, an entire solar year was gained by the Egyptian reckoning; and the first of the month of Thoth occurred on each of the 365 days of the solar year in turn.' (B. E., vol. iii., p. 332.) Unlike the Chinese, the Egyptians were earnest students of the stars, and, indeed, invented dances to represent the stellar motions.
12. As to Assyria, there are conjectures that they also were fairly well advanced in astrology; and that at times they chose 360 as the diurnal basis for the year. Now, as ​there are 360 degrees in a circle, an equality as to the year possibly arose. Longer than the Chinese, but shorter than the Egyptian year, it follows that neither of these nations had copied their styles from this famous empire. The empire had formerly no importance in chronology, for it belonged to that period of the sciences which was held as being empirical. Besides, many dates could not be checked with the eras of other nations. For the reasons already given, it was, therefore, all the more gratifying to historians to find that Rawlinson had rescured a whole series of dates from oblivion; and that by means of recondite calculations in regard to a solar eclipse in the eight century B.C. But particulars of this discovery will be more conveniently given in chapter xii., under 'Kindred Sciences.'
13. In Phoenician chronology, 'the Phoenician records, no longer extant, gave to their kingdom an antiquity of 30,000 years. Sanchoniathon, who, it is said, lived about roo years before the Trojan War, has left a chronological table (found in Eusebius) of the antedeluvian, and a few of the post-deluvian, heads of the generations of man.' It only remains for me to add that nothing more romantic or more mythical could be conceived than the contents of these tables. They are simply fables in excelsis.
14. 'The Hindoo Maba Yuga,' the same authority points out, 'consisted of four lesser yugas or ages, corresponding to the Golden, Silver, Brazen, and Iron Ages of the Greeks. In the first age (Satya Yuga) all mankind was virtuous; in ​the second (Treta Yuga), only three-fourths; in the third (Duapar Yuga), about half; and in the fourth only one part was good.' And no one wonders after this that many of the books of the Brahmins on astronomy are now condemned as false. They have been proved to be antedated. The famous Kalpa was claimed by them as being equal to four and one-third billions of years. The Samvat era, dating from 57 B.C., is not, however, affected by the refutation of the Brahmin's claims.
15. In the Persian (ancient) Empire, Ewald holds that 'a weekly circle of seven days' was kept. But the subsequent discovery that the regions around Thibet have possessed a week or circle of five days only, seems to militate against the argument as to the universality of any weekly circle east or west of ancient Persia. The ruling reckoning is now the Moslem Calendar, in modern Persia.
16. Coming now to the eras of Greece, one finds that there were several. The years were lunar, with seven intercalculated months extra during nineteen years, like the Jewish style. The greatest and most enduring era is that of the Olympiads. This was initiated as from the year 776 B.C., or twenty-three years before A.U.C. It contains four years, being the period which elapsed between the national games. It was not in general use till the third century B.C. There was also the Metonic Cycle and the Callippic Cycle, which are explained in later sections. Regarding the earlier chronology of Greece, Clinton, in his Fasti Hellenice, points out that ​'in all history, where our information is exact, we direct our attention to some leading events, which mark the beginning of a new order of things, and we distribute our subject according to the character of affairs. But in the early times of Greece we are obliged to have in view the nature of our information in the distribution of the subject. It is enough if we can conjecture the probable date of a few principal facts, by comparing the scanty memorials and uncertain traditions which descended to posterity, and from which the learned of a later age composed their chronology.'
We can thus observe how all nations and races have worked from a simple to a complex chronology:—Beginning by mentioning the year (of the dynasty, reign, or other epoch), then adding the month, and finally the day of the month. Hence as civilization spread over the earth, and international communications grew more frequent, the subject of chronology became a more exact science. No longer content with scanty memorials, the custodiers of national records endeavoured to rescue the history of their own times from oblivion. But too often their efforts have been futile:—
Aided by such calamities as the destruction of the Fasti at Rome by the Gauls (B.C. 390), the burning of many sterling muniments in the Alexandrian Library in 391 A.D., and the sacking of Constantinople, with the MSS. lost thereby in 1453 A.D., the ravages of time have obliterated. much which was valuable in the records of epochs and ​chronological bases. All systems of chronology have suffered, more or less, from the obliterating tendency of time, and the wilful, as well as the accidental, destruction of documents. The most important chronology in the ancient world, that of Rome, is a striking example of what has been said. It is dealt with in the next chapter. Lord Acton's dicta regarding opinions versus documents, receives, in the history of the "City," a continuous current of high support from those who have striven to obtain cosmos in classical chronology.
* ↑ Webster, p. 254.
* ↑ Business transactions as well.
* ↑ Encycl. Chambers, vide Nile.
* ↑ Dr. Paton's Biography, p. 327.
* ↑ Young, p. 90.
* ↑ Max Müller, p. 6.
* ↑ De Foe, p. 117, Cassells' reprint.
* ↑ It was began in 212 B.C.
* ↑ Encycl. Brit. For current calendar see section 147 infra
* ↑ Encycl. Metrop, vide chronology.
* ↑ He lived between 264 A.D. and 340 A.D.
* ↑ Pouchet, p. 431.
* ↑ One Brahmin day.
* ↑ See chapter x.
* ↑ Antiquities of Israel.
* ↑ See section 17 infra.
* ↑ See section 57 infra.
* ↑ See section 51 infra.