THE BABYLONIAN “EVIL DAYS” AND THE SHABATTUM
It is time to return to Babylonia. We have seen that here the cult of
seven as a symbolic number was long anterior to the recognition of
the seven planets; and, furthermore, that the planetary week, instead
of being an early creation of Babylonian astrology, arose during the
Hellenistic Age from the union of Greek and Oriental speculations. But
for many centuries previously a seven-day week, in which the days were
numbered, not named, had existed as a Jewish institution in western Asia;
and we have still to determine whether this Jewish form of the week was
derived remotely from Babylonia, and according to what conceptions the
assumed Babylonian original was itself developed.
In the year 1869 the late George Smith, well known as a pioneer student
of Assyriology, discovered among the cuneiform tablets in the British
Museum “a curious religious calendar of the Assyrians, in which every
month is divided into four weeks, and the seventh days, or ‘Sabbaths,’
are marked out as days on which no work should be undertaken.”[694] Six
years afterward Sir Henry Rawlinson published this calendar in the fourth
volume of his standard collection of cuneiform inscriptions. It appears
to be a transcript of a much more ancient Babylonian original, possibly
belonging to the age of Hammurabi, which had been made by order of
Asshurbanipal and placed in his royal library at Nineveh. The calendar,
which is complete for the thirteenth or intercalary month, called Elul
II, and for Markheshwan, the eighth month of the Babylonian year, takes
up the thirty days in succession and indicates the deity to which each
day is sacred and what sacrifices or precautionary measures are necessary
for each day. All the days are styled “favourable,” an expression which
must indicate a pious hope, not a fact, since the words _ud-khul-gal_ or
_ûmu limnu_ (“the evil day”) are particularly applied to the seventh,
fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days. The second
Elul, being an intercalated month, might be thought to have enjoyed a
special significance, as intercalary months have had elsewhere;[695]
but such a hypothesis will not explain the inclusion of the month of
Markheshwan in the calendar.[696] Hence it is highly probable that at one
time the other months were similarly marked, though as yet there is no
inscriptional evidence for the observance of the five “evil days” in all
the months of the Babylonian year.[697]
With regard to the reasons which dictated the choice of the seventh,
fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days, two views have been
entertained. It has been held, in the first place, that the “evil
days” were selected as corresponding to the moon’s successive changes;
hence that the seventh day marks the close of the earliest form of the
seven-day week, a week bound up with the lunar phases. According to
another opinion the setting apart of every seventh day was due to the
importance ascribed to seven; hence that the seven-day cycles were not
regarded as quarters of the lunation but rather as periods containing
the symbolic number of seven days, which happened to coincide, roughly,
with a fourth part of the lunar month. The second view would be merely an
amplification of the first, if we assume, with perhaps the majority of
Assyriologists, that the rôle of seven as a symbolic number is ultimately
connected with the moon changing her phases at intervals of approximately
seven days.
It must be admitted, however, that in the present state of our knowledge
we cannot obtain any satisfactory explanation of the origin of a symbolic
number. As far as seven is concerned, the American evidence, previously
referred to,[698] indicates that cosmical speculations may sometimes
account for its significance; while in the Semitic area, again, one root
of the cult of seven may lie in the observation of the Pleiades and the
early use of Pleiades calendars by the agriculturist.[699] That the
Pleiades number seven stars has been noted even by savage peoples, who
have also observed that each one of three other prominent constellations,
Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, and Orion, contains seven principal stars. Such
unexplained coincidences may have served to confirm the impression of the
significance of seven in the minds of Babylonian astrologers, even though
the mystic quality of that number was based originally on a different
set of ideas. But it is unnecessary to discuss further what popular
superstitions and priestly speculations gave rise to the symbolism of
seven in ancient Babylonia.
The month in Babylonia was a lunar month, and the year was a lunisolar
year. Unlike the Egyptians, who passed from moon- to sun-reckonings
before the dawn of history, the Babylonians always retained the
primitive lunar calendar, harmonized with the solar year by the crude
method of intercalating an extra month at the necessary intervals. As
in all lunar calendars the month began with the visible new moon. So
important was this for the determination of the month that _arxu_, the
Babylonian expression for “month,” meant, properly, the beginning of the
month; while Nannar (_nannaru_), one of the names of the moon-god, was
originally applied to the new moon.[700] The length of the month was
reckoned at thirty days as an approximate average of the duration of
the moon’s course, a calculation familiar enough to many half-civilized
peoples.[701] The ideogram for _arxu_ is the number “thirty” enclosed in
the ideogram for “day”; and the ideogram for Sin, the moon-deity, is made
up of that for “god” and of that for “thirty,” which number was sacred
to him. When in late mythological syncretism the goddess Ishtar was
represented as the daughter of Sin, her sacred number became fifteen, and
this, with the determinative of goddess prefixed to it, was often used to
express her name.[702]
Though the calendar assigned to each month thirty full days, the actual
month must have often included only twenty-nine days, since the reckoning
employed was purely lunar. We may assume, in the absence of definite
statements as to the way of fixing the length of the month, that the
Babylonians at first followed the rough-and-ready method of modern Arabs:
on the twenty-ninth of the month, after the sun has gone down, they look
in the western sky for the faint sickle of the moon; if this is seen, the
new month begins forthwith; if it cannot be seen, the following day is
also included in the old month, which then contains thirty days. By the
middle of the seventh century B.C., and perhaps at an even earlier date,
a more exact means of calculating the length of the month had come into
use. The royal astrologers, who sent regular reports to the king as to
the appearance or non-appearance of the moon at the expected time, appear
to have carefully observed the day of the opposition of the sun and moon
in the middle of the month; when the full-moon day was known, it became
an easy matter to determine how many more days should be counted to the
end of the month.[703] It was not until the third or second century B.C.,
when exact astronomical methods had supplanted purely empirical study of
the heavens, that the Babylonians were able to calculate the appearance
of the true new moon. By this time, too, the progress of astronomical
knowledge allowed them to adopt the more accurate calendarizing of the
lunation into months of twenty-nine and thirty days, five of the former,
and seven of the latter, length.[704]
These details concerning the Babylonian calendar, in all but its latest
form, are enough to indicate that it presents no striking divergence
from the general type of lunar reckonings. The Babylonians, like all
other peoples of the ancient East, based their calculations of time on
the moon. It follows, therefore, that the seven-day periods described
in the Rawlinson calendar were also reckoned from the visible new moon;
indeed, this fact is clearly indicated by the description applied in
that calendar to the first day of the month.[705] We may reasonably
assume that the last day of the month (when the latter actually included
only twenty-nine days) or the last two days of a thirty-day month were
regarded as forming an epagomenal period, interrupting the regular
succession of seven-day cycles. Possibly the Babylonians may have
employed some such device as that found among the negroes of west Africa,
in order that four of their lunar periods should correspond exactly to
the length of the lunation.[706]
We may next inquire whether additional evidence exists to indicate
that the seven-day periods of the Rawlinson calendar were definitely
associated with successive phases of the moon. It has already been
noticed that very early in the Assyro-Babylonian cultural area there was
in at least occasional use a five-day cycle, called _khamushtu_.[707]
Whether it preceded the hebdomadal cycle or afterwards supplanted it
(perhaps as forming a closer divisor of the lunation), or whether the
two periods may not have existed more or less contemporaneously, are
matters concerning which the cuneiform records tell us nothing. They do
tell us, however, that a five-day period, possibly to be identified with
the _khamushtu_, was closely associated with the successive appearances
of the moon, as in a text where the first five days of the month are
spoken of as those of the crescent moon, the next five, as those of the
half-moon (“kidney”), and the five following days as those of the full or
nearly full moon.[708] A similar association with the moon’s course is
set forth in the case of a seven-day period in a text which specifically
indicates the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days
as those of Sin, the moon-god.[709] Another text connects several days
of the month with the moon’s course in the following order: first day,
new moon; seventh day, moon as “kidney” (half-moon); fifteenth day,
full moon.[710] Finally, in the fifth tablet of the Babylonian _Epic of
Creation_, a work which in its original form is traced to the close of
the third millennium B.C., it is told how the god Marduk, having created
and set in order the heavenly bodies, then placed the moon in the sky to
make known the days and divide the month with her phases. Although this
interesting production, in its present mutilated state, mentions only the
seventh and fourteenth days, we are entitled to believe that the original
text also referred to the twenty-first and twenty-eighth days of the
month.[711]
The cuneiform evidence thus makes it reasonably certain that the cycles
of seven days’ duration found in the Rawlinson calendar were regarded as
divisions of the lunar month. This conclusion does not require us to hold
that these cycles originated in the quartering of the lunation. Their
choice may conceivably have been dictated in the first instance by the
desire to apply the prevailing symbolism of seven to periods of time;
while only later, and as a secondary development, were they brought into
connection with the phases of the moon. In either case the seven-day
periods can be only loosely and inaccurately described as “weeks.”
Nothing in the cuneiform records indicates that the Babylonians ever
employed them for civil purposes. These periods seem to have had solely
a religious significance, as was true also of the four divisions of the
month, similarly connected with the lunar phases, in the sacred calendars
of both Buddhism and Zoroastrianism.[712] What we have disclosed in
Babylonia is, not the week itself, but the material out of which such an
institution might be formed.
Each septenary period in the calendar for Elul II and Markheshwan closed
with an unnamed “evil day.” The symbolism of seven cannot in itself
account for the unlucky quality attaching to this seventh day. Seven to
the Babylonians bore no unlucky character. It stood, rather, for the
notion of completeness or totality, appearing in prayers, incantations,
and exorcisms to indicate the sum total of the gods or spirits recognized
by the worshipper; sometimes marking the length of the period during
which such important actions as the dedication of a temple or the
mourning for a death must be performed; and often, again, assuming a
mythological rôle, as in the seven gates of the underworld, the seven
names of the goddess Ishtar, and the periods of seven days’ duration
found in the Babylonian Deluge narrative.[713] In these and many other
instances seven appears as a symbolic, but not as a portentous, number.
Assuming, however, that the seven-day periods of the Rawlinson calendar
were associated with successive phases of the moon—whether originally or
secondarily does not matter—it is clear that the seventh day, marking
the critical or transition point in each phase, would possess a special
importance. In fact, the negative or prohibitive regulations enforced
among the Babylonians on the “evil days” bear a close resemblance to the
taboos which many other peoples have observed at the changes of the moon.
Recent students of Semitic magic have shown that the Sumerians and their
successors, the Babylonians and Assyrians, were familiar with the idea
of taboo; the term _mamit_, which appears frequently in magical texts,
is exactly equivalent to _tabu_, since it refers to that state of ritual
impurity or ceremonial uncleanness attending certain circumstances or
actions.[714] A great part of the so-called _Shurpu_ series[715] deals
with the methods of removing the condition of _mamit_ into which a man
may have wittingly or unwittingly fallen. The murderer, the adulterer,
or the thief became _mamit_ in consequence of his breach of ordinary
social morality, but equally cursed was the unlucky person who ran up
against another who was under a taboo, slept on his bed, ate out of his
plate, or drank from his cup. A man might be contaminated by putting his
foot in some unclean water, by treading in some libation that had been
poured forth, by touching a bewitched woman, and even by seeing one of
unwashed hands. The third tablet of the _Shurpu_ series enumerates no
less than one hundred and sixty-three taboos, including “those which come
from the family, old or young, friend or neighbour, rich or poor; oven,
bellows, pots and cups, bed or couch, chariot or weapons. To drink out of
an unclean vessel, to sit in the sun, to root up plants in the desert,
to cut reeds in a thicket, to slay the young of beasts, to pray with
unclean hands, and a host of other common actions, might under certain
conditions bring a _tapu_ on the man.” Such tabooed acts placed the man
under an interdiction; if he fell sick, he knew that his sufferings were
due to the hostility of some supernatural power; and a professional
exorcist would be called in to drive away by magical words, prayers,
and rites the divine curse clinging to his person.[716] It seems to be
clear, then, that the taboos observed on the “evil days” represented to
the Babylonians only a particular application of an ancient and generally
accepted superstition.
The calendar for Elul II contains specific directions for the observance
of the five “evil days,” in each case the same except for differences in
the names of the deities.[717] The regulations for the seventh day read
as follows:
“An evil day. The shepherd of great peoples shall not eat flesh cooked
upon the coals, or bread of the oven.[718] The garment of his body he
shall not change, he shall not put on clean [garments]. He shall not
bring an offering. The king shall not ride in his chariot. He shall not
speak as a ruler (?). The priest shall not give a decision in the secret
place. The physician shall not lay his hand on a patient. To issue a
malediction it [the day] is not suitable.[719] At night the king shall
bring his gift before Marduk and Ishtar, he shall offer a sacrifice. The
lifting up of his hands will then be pleasing to god.”
It is clear that the rules for the seventh day prescribe a season of
abstinence affecting many royal activities. The “shepherd of great
peoples” must not eat any food which has been cooked with fire; he must
not change his clothes; and he must not offer a sacrifice until the end
of the day. The king is not to speak in public; and he is even forbidden
to travel. The Babylonian monarch who observed all these taboos five
times a month would have been as strictly secluded as was the Hawaiian
ruler, who, likewise, during the four monthly _tabu_ periods retired to
the inner precincts of his temple.[720]
The Babylonian regulations have been interpreted as survivals from
ancient times, when priest-kings were accredited with a divine or
supernatural nature, and hence were subjected to numberless restrictions
designed to prevent any impairment of their sanctity and magical
power.[721] A consideration of the evidence yielded by primitive
societies suggests, however, that the Babylonian regulations may have
been connected originally with taboos imposed on the entire community.
In Hawaii, where the lunar phases were observed as _tabu_ periods, the
prohibitions affecting the king represented only an intensification of
the communal taboos, to be explained by the extreme sanctity attached
to the Hawaiian ruler. In Assam, where the _genna_ institution enjoys a
vigorous life, we find that, besides the prohibitions communally observed
at critical times, the _khullakpa_, or priest-chief, is surrounded by
many elaborate taboos. Their purpose is “to protect the man who acts on
behalf of the whole subdivision or village on the occasions of general
_genna_, from any accident which might impair his power.” He is subject
to various food restrictions, must content himself with only one wife,
and must even separate himself from her on the eve of a general _genna_.
In one group the headman may not eat in a strange village, nor,
whatever the provocation, may he utter a word of abuse. The violation
of any one of these taboos is thought to bring misfortune on the entire
village.[722] It is not wholly speculative to suggest that, were the
natives of Assam to discard their communal taboos as burdensome, the
special regulations affecting the _khullakpa_ might survive, in deference
to old tradition, and might even be increased in severity, if that
individual should grow in authority and holiness. The situation would
then furnish a very close analogy to what existed in ancient Babylonia.
The regulations concerning the “evil days,” it may be noted, did not
pertain to the king alone. We may reasonably assume that “the shepherd
of great peoples” and the king mentioned further on in the calendar are
one and the same; but the record also describes certain rules imposed
on the priest and on the physician, both important functionaries among
the Babylonians. It seems also evident that the day was regarded as
unsuitable for any one to lay a curse or ban; according to another, and
possibly more accurate, rendering, unsuitable for all business. These
considerations increase the probability that at one time some taboos on
the seventh day were observed by the entire community.[723]
It is questionable, however, whether in late historic times there was any
general abstention from work and other activities on the “evil days.”
The Babylonians were a highly organized commercial and manufacturing
people who would have found such regulations burdensome to the highest
degree. Taboos once generally observed may have been gradually relaxed
and at last abandoned, just as modern Jews are now neglecting the
observance of the Sabbath. The practice might have been kept up, however,
by the king and the priests as the special guardians of conservative
institutions.[724]
The cuneiform records contain a term _shabattum_, which has been
generally accepted as the phonetic equivalent of the Hebrew _shabbāthôn_,
perhaps an intensive form of _shabbāth_ or Sabbath, referring to a
Sabbath of particular solemnity.[725] _Shabattum_, a word which has
been found as yet only five or six times in Assyro-Babylonian documents,
occurs in a lexicographical tablet containing the equation _shabbattu(m)
= ûm nûkh libbi_.[726] The accepted translation of the latter expression
is “day of rest of (or for) the heart” (_s.c._, “of the angered gods”).
Various scholars in England and Germany, intent on discovering Babylonian
parallels for all Hebrew institutions, have therefore explained
_shabattum_ and its equivalent phrase by the five “evil days” found
in the calendar already noticed. This identification was based on the
observation that these seemed also to be penitential days, when by
special observances the gods must be appeased and their anger averted.
The Hebrew Sabbath would therefore represent an institution directly
derived from the Babylonian regulations for the “evil days.”[727]
Until recently, however, Assyriology has sounded no certain note
concerning the etymology and significance of the term _shabattum_. Thus,
Delitzsch holds that “the only meaning that may be justifiably assumed
is ‘ending (of work), cessation, keeping holiday from work.’”[728] As
the result of linguistic analysis Hirschfeld concludes, on the contrary,
that “the idea of resting for religious reasons after a certain spell
of working days is far too complicated to be the original meaning of a
primitive root.”[729] Jastrow, again, points out that _ûm nûkh libbi_,
with which _shabattum_ has been equated, was a standing expression for
the pacification of a deity’s anger. It occurs frequently in Babylonian
religious literature, where it is more particularly used in hymns
addressed by penitentials to some god who has shown his ill-will toward
them. _Shabattum_ implies, therefore, a day of propitiation, and the
idea of rest involved refers to gods and not to men—a refraining from
or cessation of divine anger.[730] Zimmern suggests that _shabattum_
may be derived from the verb _shabâtu_, with the sense of “discontinue”
or “desist,” applied to the anger of the gods.[731] Pinches, on the
contrary, believes that the word comes from the Sumerian _shabat_, which
probably had no connection with the Semitic verb _shabâtu_.[732] Nielsen
goes still further afield for a satisfactory explanation, and considers
_shabat_ a term taken over from the Arabic _thabat_, from a root meaning
“rest,” applied to the lunar phases.[733] As the outcome of extensive
philological study Hehn argues that _shabattum_ meant originally
“fulness,” “completeness,” the notion of rest being later and entirely
secondary.[734] Still another interpretation makes _shabattum_ equivalent
to “day of lament.”[735] Finally, in a brief, though highly suggestive
study, Professor Toy holds that the root idea in the Babylonian
expression was that of abstinence, though _shabattum_ might also have
been regarded as a day of propitiation because of the restrictions
attached to it.[736]
These conflicting interpretations scarcely made for confidence in the
results of a purely philological analysis. Recent discoveries, however,
have thrown new light on the problem. A lexicographical tablet from the
library of the Assyrian king Asshurbanipal gives the names attached to
several days of the Babylonian month; and among these is the designation
_shabattum_, applied to the fifteenth day.[737] Still more recently a
similar use of _shabattum_ has been found in a text which contains an
account of the moon’s course during the month. Reference is here made to
the first appearance of the new moon, its ash-grey light until about the
seventh day thereafter, its opposition with the sun on the fourteenth
day, its aspects on the twenty-first, twenty-eighth, and twenty-ninth
days, and finally its disappearance on the thirtieth day, being the time
of conjunction with the sun. In this description, which for minuteness
recalls the Polynesian naming of the nights from successive aspects of
the moon,[738] the fifteenth day again appears as _shabattum_.[739]
It is clear that the Babylonians recognized, with many other peoples, the
two most prominent stages of the lunation, new moon and full moon, and
described them by particular names, _nannaru_ and _shabattum_. Evidence
exists, moreover, showing that these two days from very early times were
observed as festivals, particularly in the cities of Ur and Harran. Here
were the chief seats of the cult of Sin, the moon-god, always one of the
most important members of the Babylonian pantheon and anciently enjoying
precedence over Shamash, the sun-god.[740] Certain cuneiform tablets,
all written down during the time of the Fourth Dynasty of Ur and dating,
therefore, from the third millennium B.C., distinctly refer to sacrifices
which were made to the divine kings of Ur on the new-moon day and on the
fifteenth of the month.[741] At Harran, where the cult of Sin continued
to flourish under the Roman Empire and into the early Middle Ages, four
sacrificial days were observed every month, and of these at least two
were determined by the conjunction and opposition of the moon.[742]
Outside the Babylonian cultural area, but within the general field of
Semitic religion, there is also the interesting evidence yielded by the
inscription of Narnaka, which indicates that as late as the time of the
Ptolemies new moon and full moon were the chief periods of sacrifice
observed by the Phœnicians.[743]
The choice of the fifteenth day as the _shabbatum_ was obviously
determined by the length of the Babylonian month, which in the earlier
period was regularly taken at thirty days’ duration. We have seen,
however, that, where lunar reckonings are employed and the month begins
at sunset with the visible new moon, the fourteenth day more commonly
coincides with the full of the moon.[744] _Shabattum_ being the technical
expression for the fifteenth day as the time of full moon, it is only
reasonable to conclude that, if not the name, at any rate the observances
belonging to this day would be often transferred to the fourteenth of
the month, or to any other day on which the moon became full. No other
hypothesis will explain the outstanding fact that _shabattum_ was equated
with _ûm nûkh libbi_ as a day for appeasing the anger of the deity. And
if for practical purposes the fourteenth day might be a _shabattum_,
it is not difficult to assume that this was also the case with the
days (seventh, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth, perhaps, also, the
nineteenth), which marked other characteristic stages of the lunation. In
the developed Babylonian cult all these were “evil days,” when the gods
must be propitiated and conciliated. In the primitive faith of Semitic
peoples they were occasions observed with superstitious concern as times
of fasting, cessation of activity, and other forms of abstinence.[745]