Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1909-01-06

| In excess and provided for it as it is
provided for in the Gregoran calendar.
The Egyptians seem to have had no
system of chronology. They made
use of no era, but dated events by
the regnal years of their kings Thus
the astronomers would note an
eclipse of the sun as taking place in
the fourth year of Rameses II, which
would be utterly unintelligible as re-
CARDS to time to one of another coun-
try. This fallacious method resulted
In an interminable chronological OBJ
scuration which the most astute re-
searches of savants have not sue
ceeded in unwinding
The ancient mortimer reckoned by
winters, and the beginning of their
year was probably dated from the 18th
of October. The festival in honor of
Thor was held in midwinter, about our
Christmas time, and, in fact, was the
origin of the Christian holiday merry
making. We get the names of at
least three, if not four, of our days of
the week from the Morse gods of the
Odin religion. Tuesday is from Tir,
or Dissday, on which the offerings to
fate were made and the courts Of JUS
tice held; Wednesday is from Wooden,
or Odin, one of the Morse trinity;
Thursday, or Thor's day, from Thor,
the chief of the trinity, and Friday
from F'rigg. another of the minor
dpitiaS NJ tho trinity
There is nothing of especial inn
portance in the Jewish chronology ex-
cept in so far as it pertains to Scriptu-
raj matters. and even then the only
valuable knowledge we have in this
regard is based on the Pentateuch
The only information the Jews pos
sessed of astronomy was obtained
from the Assyrians. Like the ancient
Greeks and the modern Turks, they
divided their year into - months of
20 and 80 days alternately, with an
intercalary month every three and
inaccurate measurement They had
six seasons-seedtime, winter, cold
season, harvest, summer and hot sea-
son. The Jews that returned to Pal
estine after the overthrow of the Jew
ish nation used the Mace DOMAIN era
which dated from 81 B. C. The Jews
of today, like the Freemasons, claim
to date their calendar from creation,
which, they assert, was $3.50 B. c.
1t seems a very easy and natural
thing for us to now use a year as a
unit of time measurement, but if one
would but stop to think moment he
would readily see how difficult it
must have been originally to have
formed that unit with nothing but
space upon which to operate. Even
i as late as $50 B. G. Herodotus re-
ferred to century as three genera
lions, and formerly in nearly all
countries the phrase five winters or
three summers was used instead of
the expression Of so MANY years In
4 the early times the elapse of histori-
cal events wac chronicled from cen
trail figures, as kings or great chief
and Athens reference was made to a
magistrate when an occurrence OF
that year was mentioned, and as
these officers were elected annually
| the method was a very convenient
one. In the same way Babylonian
and Assyrian events were chronicled
from the term of Office of the limu
much more frequently than from the
reigns of the kings. Such systems
however, were necessarily very linn
tied in their scope, and the want OF
better earlier chronology has been
felt in the study of authentic ancient
history.
The great progress that was made