WHY IS WEEK A WEEK?
Hey there inquisitive ones! So it is a beautiful Sunday. Whoa, whoa, whoa! No, it is a Wednesday, right? Ah, it is Friday. Nah, never mind, it is one of the seven days of the week. So, have you wondered why there are seven days in a week rather six or ten days? I mean a year is calculated by the position of Earth completing a revolution around the Sun, a month is based on the cycle of the moon’s appearance and a day is measured by position of Earth’s surface completing a rotation, but on what basis is a week set on?
Besides that, almost all calendars around the world are based on the seven days!
Seven is an odd choice to consider for a week, not just because it is an even number; but also that it is a “Prime” number. Dividing seven with a year gives an uneven number of days. Yet still seven has an important significance in most of the religions, superstitions, cultures and mythologies around the world for centuries. The seven chakras, seven virtues, the seven sins, seven samurais, seven days of creation, seven lucky Gods, seven heavens, the magnificent seven… umm, hold on there, “Magnificent Seven” isn’t mythology it is a movie. Back to the sevens, the first human astronauts to fly to space are seven in number, the “Mercury seven” also known as the “Original Seven”. Even the NASA had planned seven missions for Apollo space shuttles to land on the Moon.
Ah! the Moon, it is the reason behind all these seven day week.
There is roughly 12 moon cycles in a solar year, since 12 isn’t a large number to count and can be easily divided into two halves, three halves, four halves or six halves, hence easy for calculations. Having said this, let see how moon cycle has to do with daily weeks. Our ancestors divided the Earth’s revolution into twelve parts by observing the moon’s cycle position and with the relatively stationary stars’ position in the backdrop, forming the “12 zodiacs signs”. Though, these zodiac star clusters did not move in space in correspondence with each others, there were some structures seen moving the space like the moon itself. These were called the “Wanderers” as in the Greek word “Planetes”, they are the Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and the Moon. These wanderers were thought to revolve around the Earth, though these all are not planets by definition and it is not the way the Solar system works. But the ancient astrologers all over, had placed the planets in an order based on how fast the wanderers appeared in the sky, with the Saturn having the longest cycle at the top.
This is how astronomy became astrology, as in seven days, seven planets and seven Gods, see where it is going?
Though, the days aren’t in order yet. It was in 3 B.C., when the Greek astrologers running the horoscopes thought that each God was in-charge for an hour. For example, Saturn rules for an hour then Jupiter rules for an hour so it goes on. Since a day has 24 hours and with only seven planet, the planets started to continue having the name of the first hour of the day as the day name. After 126 hours, the eighth day, Saturn again became the first planet; forming a week comprising of seven days. Yet the words don’t sound familiar, right? Leave apart the Saturnday, Sunday and Moonday, the rest aren’t in place as in Marsday, Mercuryday, Jupiterday and Venusday, also sounds weird, right?
Unless you know Spanish or French or any other related languages, as the Greek astrologer adopted this planetary naming of the days and the seven day week ideas, it was spread across the Roman empires as wildfire in those days. As Christianity spread all over Europe, the days were later arranged according to the religious order, placing Moon at the first. Thus, Monday becoming the first.
I do like Moon, but not the Moondays!
I understand that you’re thinking, “Yet the names of other days came into play isn’t clear”, right? Here you go, the Northern European ancestors also adopted the seven days week system, but renamed the Roman planets names with their local God names in accordance to those planets, in order to send a message to their Roman conquerors.
By 1500 years ago, this seven day week had even spread to other parts of the planet, including Asia. The names of the days in Indian languages and Chinese are the dialects of the same astronomical bodies and Gods as the Roman and Greek system. In the same order!
Apart from the planetary reason, the Jewish weeks which date back up to 500 B.C., also has 7 day week; with first six days numbered in order and last rest day named as “Shabbat”. The word has its origin from the ancient Babylonian word “Shabbatu”, a festival of the full moon. One cycle of the moon from full moon to crescent moon and back to full moon gave birth to the “Month” idea in the English calendar. Four quarter moon phases lasts approximately 7 days each, from new moon to full moon takes around 14 days and a complete moon cycle lasts around 29.53 days.
Still not done!
The Babylonians and Greek mathematics has deep roots with relation to “Seven”, hence, it is associated with superstitions. Having said about superstition, that astrologer, who noticed seven planets across stars in the solar system, he saw it as a sign. There are seven stars in most of the “Asterisms”, despite it was a coincidence, we humans find seldom in putting meanings in coincidences. For some reasons our ancestors thought our universe has something special with the number SEVEN, and to their eyes there were only seven planets, while there are eight in our solar system.
Don’t digress with the Dwarf planets, now.
Our planet is one of the eight revolving around the Sun, not the other way. With moon, not as a wandering space God, but as a terrestrial rock that struck Earth a long while ago and got stuck around revolving the Earth. Alas, by the time we figured all this out there were already seven days a week and none felt to change, without anyone wondering why there are seven days in a week.
Now that you know about this, share this knowledge to your friends and known ones about the seven days. Explaining them the whole story of how our ancestors converted astronomy to astrology, with the seven planets getting their names for the days and then how they had the superstition over the number seven, while it was later found a myth, or…
