calendar
calendar [De].A formal system for measuring and documenting the passage of time. The basic unit of nearly all known calendars is the cyclical movement of the sun, giving the units known in the modern western world as days, and—rather less easy to gauge—the annual cycle or solar year. In ancient Egypt, for civil purposes, a solar calendar of 365 days to the year was used in which there were 12 months of 30 days and 5 intercalary days. For agricultural purposes, and for determining the timing of religious festivals, a second calendar was used, based on observations of the dog star Sirius (Sothis to the Egyptians). The annual heliacal rising (i.e. at the same time as the sun) usually preceded the Nile flood. The two calendars would coincide every 1460 years, a period known as the Sothic Cycle. The cycle of the moon provides a lunar month and this was used as the basis for the calendar in ancient Mesopotamia, where 12 months of 29.5 days were adjusted over 19...
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