Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World [Paperback]

Understanding the calendars used by ancient and medieval cultures is essential to the writing of history. Equally important, however, is understanding the basis upon which our current knowledge of these calendars rests. This second volume of Calendars and Years explores the calendars of ancient and medieval China, India, the ancient Jewish world, the medieval Islamic world, and the Maya. Particular attention is given to the preserved evidence on which our understanding of these calendars lie, the modern historiography of their study, and the role of calendars in ancient and medieval society. Topics covered include the origin of the Chinese sexagenary cycle, evidence for the 364-day year in the ancient Jewish world, and the history of attempts to establish a correlation between Mayan dates and the Julian and Gregorian calendars. 176p, b/w illus (Oxbow Books 2011)



Praise for Volume I:
"Steele has assembled an essential foundation for the further study of calendariography and chronography in the ancient Near East and Egypt."
Francesca Rochberg
Journal for the History of Astronomy (November 2008)


"It is a book from which there are absolute nuggets of incredible information to be mined."
Peter A Clayton

The Chinese Sexagenary Cycle and the Ritual Foundations of the Calendar (Adam Smith)
Mathematical Astronomy and the Chinese Calendar (N. Sivin)
Calendars in India (Kim Plofker and Toke L. Knudsen)
The 364-Day Year in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Jewish Pseudepigrapha (Jonathan Ben-Dov)
The ‘Well-Known Calendars’: al-Khazini’s Description of Significant Chronological Systems for Medieval Mathematical Astronomy in Arabic (Clemency Montelle)
The Maya Calendar Correlation Problem (Gerardo Aldana)