A Minoan Calendar
The Oldest Surviving System of Bronze Age Time

INTRODUCTION

Most of what we know about ancient time calculation is derived from (a) monuments such as stone circles and alignments in the landscape, (b) the calendars that have passed into our age through later writings and lastly (c) time-keeping practices still used today. But a humbly presented “perforated vessel” in the Heraklion Museum records, within its “perforations”, a numerical system of time recording that concurs with the most inexplicable unit of time still in use today: the week.

The Disk of Chronos
Item 2646: A “Perforated Utensil” possibly for use with incense,
New Palace Period:
"Advanced and Final Phase of the Palace of Knossos"
Gallery V, The Heraklion Museum

The week is traditionally associated with the planet Saturn, but why the ancients do not tell us. The convention of using a seven day week is thought to derive from Mesopotamia, possibly during the later Chaldean period in which astrology and astronomy dominated the court of Nebuchadnezzar. The chain of transmission for its subsequent use as the European then Global standard week, is possibly through the Semitic religions that used it and the logic runs that the Jews came to use it after their captivity in Babylon.

Planetary Diagram found at Pompeii
where the inner lines yield the Order of the Days in a Week.
The outer order is of decreasing maximum angular speed
clockwise starting from the Moon

However there is also an existing argument for its origins through Greece and then Rome. This involves the absorption of eastern thought by the invading armies of Alexander the Great. The difference between the Greek and Semitic versions can be seen in a diagram surviving from Pompeii, showing two important features.

The Greco-Roman system assigns planetary names to the days and this is how we use the seven day week today since Monday is the Moon’s day, Saturday that of Saturn, Sunday of the Sun and so on. Most of Europe used such planetary assignments, whilst the Semitic religions used a numbering system, almost certainly because of their rejection of polytheism.

The above logics of how a seven day week came into modern day usage are based upon “diffusionist” ideas that propose most of the innovations leading to the modern world diffused from the neolithic revolution in Mesopotamia and Central Asia. However, the preservation of Minoan civilisation on Crete can, through the above “perforated vessel”, indicate that this system of using seven days was already in use, at least in Crete. It has become more likely therefore that the classical Greek and Roman worlds inherited their week from Crete, since so much else in their mythology points back there as foundational.

It is also likely that a system of thought, connected to astronomy, led to the use of a calendar associated with Saturn or Kronos (equated to Chronos, the King of Time) that was based upon the seven day week. After all, Greek myths place Chronos as the predecessor of Zeus, who was himself born on Crete and who represents the other visible and giant planet, Jupiter, who became chief amongst the gods for Greece and Rome.