Mesopotamian time reckoning
Topic: Bronze Age Civilisations: Mesopotamia, Egypt, China · NCERT: Class 11, Ch 1 "Writing and City Life"
Meaning
Mesopotamian time reckoning is the way the people of ancient Mesopotamia divided time. They split the year into 12 months that followed the moon (lunar months). They split the month into 4 weeks, the day into 24 hours and the hour into 60 minutes. We still use these divisions today. They reached us in steps: from Alexander's successors to the Roman world, then to the Islamic world, and then to medieval Europe.
Example
Mesopotamian scholars wrote down eclipses of the sun and moon. They also noted where stars stood in the sky, recording each sighting by year, month and day. This was only possible because they had writing and schools, where students copied older tablets and added to earlier work.
Don't confuse with
- Egyptian calendar: it was based on the rising of the star Sirius. It had 365 days, made of 12 months of 30 days plus 5 extra days. It did not follow the moon.