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The Pentecontad Calendar is a unique agricultural calendar system thought to be of Amorite origin in which the year is broken down into seven periods of 50 days, with an annual supplement of fifteen or sixteen days. Identified and reconstructed by Hildegaard and Julius Lewy in the 1940s, the calendar's use dates back to at least the 3rd millennium BCE in Western Mesopotamia and surrounding areas. Used well into the modern age, forms of it have been found in Nestorianism and among the fellaheen of modern Palestine.

Tawfiq Canaan (1882 - 1964) described the use of such a calendar among people in southern Palestine, as did his contemporary Gustaf Dalman who wrote of the practices of Muslim agriculturists who used Christian designations for the fiftieth day, "which in turn overlaid far more ancient agricultural practices: grape-watching, grape-pressing, sowing, etc."

References[]

  • Calendar, Chronology and Worship: Studies in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity by Roger Thomas Beckwith (2005)
  • Jewish Women Philosophers of First Century Alexandria by Joan E. Taylor (2003)
Wikipedia This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original article was at Pentecontad calendar. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with the Calendar Wikia, the text of Wikipedia is available under Creative Commons License. See Wikia:Licensing.
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