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Some online
calendars of interest
http://www.butlerwebs.com/holidays/calendar.htm
http://www.interfaithcalendar.org/
http://www.timeanddate.com/date/duration.html
History of the
Calendar
The purpose of the calendar is to reckon past or future time, to
show how many days until a certain event takes place—the harvest
or a religious festival—or how long since something important
happened. The earliest calendars must have been strongly
influenced by the geographical location of the people who made
them. In colder countries, the concept of the year was determined
by the seasons, specifically by the end of winter. But in warmer
countries, where the seasons are less pronounced, the Moon became
the basic unit for time reckoning; an old Jewish book says that
“the Moon was created for the counting of the days.”
Most of the oldest calendars were lunar calendars, based on the
time interval from one new moon to the next—a so-called lunation.
But even in a warm climate there are annual events that pay no
attention to the phases of the Moon. In some areas it was a rainy
season; in Egypt it was the annual flooding of the Nile River.
The calendar had to account for these yearly events as well.
The Jewish Calendar
The Jewish calendar is based on both solar and lunar years. The
average lunar year of about 354 days is adjusted to the solar
year by the addition of a leap year and an intercalary month.
Nisan is considered the first month, although the new year begins
with Rosh Hashanah, on the first of Tishri, which is in fact the
seventh month—the calendar has different starting points for
different purposes. The year 2006 translates to the Jewish year
5766–5767. The year 2007 translates to the Jewish year 5767–5768.
The Egyptian Calendar
The ancient Egyptians used a calendar with 12 months of 30 days
each, for a total of 360 days per year. About 4000 B.C. they
added five extra days at the end of every year to bring it more
into line with the solar year.1 These five days became a festival
because it was thought to be unlucky to work during that time.
The Egyptians had calculated that the solar year was actually
closer to 3651/4 days, but instead of having a single leap day
every four years to account for the fractional day (the way we do
now), they let the one-quarter day accumulate. After 1,460 solar
years, or four periods of 365 years, 1,461 Egyptian years had
passed. This means that as the years passed, the Egyptian months
fell out of sync with the seasons, so that the summer months
eventually fell during winter. Only once every 1,460 years did
their calendar year coincide precisely with the solar year.
In addition to the civic calendar, the Egyptians also had a
religious calendar that was based on the 291/2-day lunar cycle
and was more closely linked with agricultural cycles and the
movements of the stars.
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