why does a week have seven days?
this is shrouded in mystery. some claim its origins are in
persia (but i couldn't find any documented evidence on the net), some claim it comes from egypt (but what I read about the egyptian calendar system only mentions a calendar of 365 and 1/4 days, leap year, and 12 months), and, of course, some
claim that this is because
god created the world in six days, and rested on the seventh. some claim that it is an even division of the 27 day cycle of the moon. some say it is because there were seven visible
planets known to man around the time of the beginings of the seven-day calendar. no one really knows for sure.
what is the origin of the name of the days of the week?
we'll start with the
babylonians. they bestowed the names of their
gods upon celestial bodies whose movement they could observe with their unaided eyes.
they named the
planets based on the characteristics they shared with the
gods. because there just isn't much
babylonian mythological information about the
planets and the specific names of the
gods they represented, we'll jump straight to the
romans and how they named the
planets in relation to their
gods:
+-------+--------------------+---------------------------+
| | | associated god(dess) |
|planet | characteristics | title |
+-------+--------------------+---------------------------+
|sun | brightest object | apollo/sol |
| | in the sky | god of enlightenment |
+-------+--------------------+---------------------------+
|moon | next brightest | diana/luna |
| | object. also, the | goddess of fertility |
| | observable | goddess of childbirth |
| | relations to | female, sister of apollo |
| | the menstrual | |
| | cycle | |
+-------+--------------------+---------------------------+
|mercury| fastest object | mercury |
| | in the sky | messenger of the gods |
+-------+--------------------+---------------------------+
|venus | the brightest | venus |
| | planet | goddess of beauty |
+-------+--------------------+---------------------------+
|mars | the red planet | mars |
| | | god of war |
+-------+--------------------+---------------------------+
|jupiter| the largest | king of the gods |
| | planet | |
+-------+--------------------+---------------------------+
|saturn | the slowest | god of time |
| | planet | |
+-------+--------------------+---------------------------+
The planetary names for the days aren't as
obvious in modern english as they
are in modern
romance languages (for example,
french: lundi (lune,
moon),
mardi (
mars), mercredi (mercure,
mercury), jeudi (
jupiter), vendredi
(
venus), samedi (saturne,
saturn), dimanche (from latin: "day of
god" is the only one that doesn't follow suit). as the seven-day, god/planet-based calendary spread around the world, it was localized. in the case of people who speak english, the mythological origins of our days is
anglo-saxon. here is how we get from
jupiter to
thursday:
ROMAN DAYS:
latin name translation
---------------------------------------
monday dies lunae moon's day
tuesday dies Martis mars' day ------+
wednesday dies mercurii mercury's day --|---+
thursday dies jovis jupiter's day --|---|---+
friday dies veneris venus' day -----|---|---|---+
saturday dies Saturni saturn's day | | | |
sunday dies solis sun's day +---------------> gods of war, Battle
| | | |
ENGLISH DAYS: | | | |
| +-----------> gods of wisdom,
old english | | | | communications, poetry1
name translation | | | |
---------------------------------------- | | +-------> gods of the sky,
monday monondæg moon's day | | | | thunder
tuesday tiwesdæg tiw's day ------+ | | |
wednesday wodnesdæg woden's day --------+ | +---> goddesses of
Thuredæg, | | beauty, love,
thursday Thurredæg, thor's day -------------+ | marriage, fertility
Thunredæg |
friday Frigedæg frigg's day ----------------+
saturday Sæterndæg saturn's day
sunday sunnandæg sun's day
in modern english,
sunday,
monday, and
saturday retain their planetary names. it is surmised that
saturday kept it's
roman roots because there wasn't a
god analogous to
saturn,
god of harvest and agriculture. the
roman words for
sun and
moon were translated directly. the others come from the
anglo-saxon mythology.
tuesday comes from
tiw(also known as
tyr2), the norse
god of war, the
roman counterpart to
mars.
wednesday is named after
woden (also known as
odin, the norse
god of
poetry, and
wisdom, the
roman counterpart to
mercury.
thursday is named for
thor (both
thor and
jupiter are
gods of
thunder).
friday is from frigg's day (
frigg was the wife of
odin, who respresented
beauty,
marriage, motherhood,
love and
fertility, similar to the greek
venus).
so why are the days in that order?
well, knowing that the days are named for gods/planets, it would seem to make sense that there is an astronomical or astrological reason for the order.
nope
the
babylonians devised the following system (which the
romans adopted in 321CE when
emperor constantine moved from an 8-day calendar to a seven day calendar after having been converted to christianity-- a wonderful mixture of
christian and
pagan symbolism):
in their observations of the
planets, the
babylonians could not determine the distance of the planets, but they could determine how quickly they moved across the
sky. from slowest to fastest:
they split the day into 24 hours, and each hour was "governed" by one of the
planets (each of which represented a
god or
gooddess). the
god which ruled the first hour of the day corresponds to it's name.
for example:
pick a day... Let's say it's
saturday. Starting with
saturday (
saturn), assign the
planets from (slowest - fastest) to hours of the day, and cycle through until you've gone through 24 hours:
saturday sunday monday
--------------------------------------------------------
saturn 1 +--> sun 1 + --> moon 1
jupiter 2 | venus 2 | saturn 2
mars 3 | mercury 3 | ...
sun 4 | moon 4 |
venus 5 | saturn 5 |
mercury 6 | jupiter 6 |
moon 7 | mars 7 |
saturn 8 | sun 8 |
jupiter 9 | venus 9 |
mars 10 | mercury 10 |
sun 11 | moon 11 |
venus 12 | saturn 12 |
mercury 13 | jupiter 13 |
moon 14 | mars 14 |
saturn 15 | sun 15 |
jupiter 16 | venus 16 |
mars 17 | mercury 17 |
sun 18 | moon 18 |
venus 19 | saturn 19 |
mercury 20 | jupiter 20 |
moon 21 | mars 21 |
saturn 22 | sun 22 |
jupiter 23 | venus 23 |
mars 24 | mercury 24 |
| |
continue ---+ continue ---+
tomorrow tomorrow
that's why they are in that order. i think that's pretty
neat.
1 there is some discussion as to whether or not
mercury and
woden are analogous gods. My take on the situation is that they are. Both are considered to be
gods of
wisdom.
woden (also called
odin), though typically considered a
god of battle and war, made great sacrifices in order to gain
wisdom. he sacrificed an
eye in order to gain knowledge by drinking from a sacred well guarded by a
giant. he also hung himself from Yggdrasil in order to learn the runes (used as an alphabet in some norse countries until 1000CE). the runes as language and as a divination tool correspond well to the idea of
mercury as a messenger
god.
2 the
rune tyr is an
arrow pointing upward, similar to the
astrological glyph for
mars, which is a circle with an
arrow pointing upwards and to the right.
. --+
/|\ / \
/ | \ __/
| / \
| \__/
tyr mars