The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East.

• Author: Hunger, Hermann

The book begins with an introduction called "Overview and Background" (pp. 3-20). Here the author discusses basic concepts of the calendar and lists the main calendrical systems. After a relatively brief chapter on early Semitic calendars, mainly from the Ebla texts (pp. 23-36), the author turns to the third-millennium Sumerian evidence. This chapter, the longest (pp. 37-222), is organized by sites: Lagas and Girsu, Nippur, Ur, Umma, and other cities are dealt with. For each site, the author discusses the month names, their order, and place in the year. Then he lists the cultic events which are known to have taken place in each month. It is this Sumerian material that has been the author's main field of research heretofore, and he feels very much at home in it. Depending on the available material, this section is in part quite detailed; sometimes texts are not only translated, but transliterated, and readings of crucial words discussed. The chapters on the early second millennium (pp. 223-94), and on the second and first millennia (pp. 295-386) are again subdivided geographically. A final chapter (pp. 387-481) is devoted to festivals which are attested in many places and in more than one time period. The best-known example is the akitu-festival (pp. 400-453). An index of words and names, and a bibliography complete the book. Unfortunately, there is no index of texts quoted. Misprints are rare; on p. 306, e.g., read "allusion" instead of "illusion."

A review by M. Dietrich of this volume appeared in Ugarit-Forschungen 24 (1992): 500ff.

For the sources from the Ur III period there is now the very detailed investigation by W. Sallaberger, Der kultische Kalender der Ur III-Zeit (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993).

Remarks on details:

P. 4. A first sighting of the new crescent can take place only in the evening.

P.6. Apart from conflicting evidence for the year 381/380 B.C., the nineteen-year-cycle can now be seen as beginning around 500 B.C. (J.P. Britton, "Scientific Astronomy in Pre-Seleucid Babylon," in Die Rolle der Astronomie in den Kulturen Mesopotamiens, ed. Hannes D. Galter [Graz: rm-Verlag, 1993], 62).

I do not understand why, at the equinoxes, "the sun and the moon vied with each other for time in the sky." At an equinox, the full moon is above the horizon as long as the sun; at the winter solstice, the full moon is in the sky about as long as the sun at summer solstice, and vice versa. But the equinox will only rarely coincide with the full...