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Date system of time since an event From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A calendar era is the period of time elapsed since one epoch of a calendar and, if it exists, before the next one.[1] For example, it is the year 2024 as per the Gregorian calendar, which numbers its years in the Western Christian era (the Coptic Orthodox and Ethiopian Orthodox churches have their own Christian eras).
In antiquity, regnal years were counted from the accession of a monarch. This makes the chronology of the ancient Near East very difficult to reconstruct, based on disparate and scattered king lists, such as the Sumerian King List and the Babylonian Canon of Kings. In East Asia, reckoning by era names chosen by ruling monarchs ceased in the 20th century except for Japan, where they are still used.
For over a thousand years, ancient Assyria used a system of eponyms to identify each year. Each year at the Akitu festival (celebrating the Mesopotamian new year), one of a small group of high officials (including the king in later periods) would be chosen by lot to serve as the limmu for the year, which meant that he would preside over the Akitu festival and the year would bear his name. The earliest attested limmu eponyms are from the Assyrian trading colony at Karum Kanesh in Anatolia, dating to the very beginning of the 2nd millennium BC,[2] and they continued in use until the end of the Neo-Assyrian Period, c. 612 BC.
Assyrian scribes compiled limmu lists, including an unbroken sequence of almost 250 eponyms from the early 1st millennium BC. This is an invaluable chronological aid, because a solar eclipse was recorded as having taken place in the limmu of Bur-Sagale, governor of Guzana. Astronomers have identified this eclipse as one that took place on 15 June 763 BC, which has allowed absolute dates of 892 to 648 BC to be assigned to that sequence of eponyms.[3] This list of absolute dates has allowed many of the events of the Neo-Assyrian Period to be dated to a specific year, avoiding the chronological debates that characterize earlier periods of Mesopotamian history.
Among the ancient Greek historians and scholars, a common method of indicating the passage of years was based on the Olympic Games, first held in 776 BC. The Olympic Games provided the various independent city-states with a mutually recognizable system of dates. Olympiad dating was not used in everyday life. This system was in use from the 3rd century BC. The modern Olympic Games (or Summer Olympic Games beginning 1896) do not continue the four year periods from ancient Greece: the 669th Olympiad would have begun in the summer of 1897, but the modern Olympics were first held in 1896.[4]: 769
The indiction cycle was an agricultural tax cycle implemented in Roman Egypt. 15 indictions made up the cycle, an indiction being a year in duration. Documents and events began to be dated by the year of the cycle (e.g., "fifth indiction", "tenth indiction") in the 4th century, and this system was used long after the tax ceased to be collected. It was used in Gaul, in Egypt until the Islamic conquest, and in the Eastern Roman Empire until its conquest in 1453.
A useful chart providing all the equivalents can be found in Chaîne's book on chronology,[5] and can easily be consulted online at the Internet Archive, from page 134 to page 172.
A rule for computing the indiction from an AD year number was stated by Dionysius Exiguus: add 3 and divide by 15; the remainder is the indiction, with 0 understood to be the fifteenth indiction.[4]: 770 Thus the indiction of 2001 was 9.[6] The beginning of the year for the indiction varied.[4]: 769–71
The Seleucid era was used in much of the Middle East from the 4th century BC to the 6th century AD, and continued until the 10th century AD among Oriental Christians. The era is computed from the epoch 312 BC: in August of that year Seleucus I Nicator captured Babylon and began his reign over the Asian portions of Alexander the Great's empire. Thus depending on whether the calendar year is taken as starting on 1 Tishri or on 1 Nisan (respectively the start of the Jewish civil and ecclesiastical years) the Seleucid era begins either in 311 BC (the Jewish reckoning) or in 312 BC (the Greek reckoning: October–September).
An early and common practice was Roman 'consular' dating. This involved naming both consules ordinarii who had taken up this office on 1 January (since 153 BC) of the relevant civil year.[4]: 6 Sometimes one or both consuls might not be appointed until November or December of the previous year, and news of the appointment may not have reached parts of the Roman empire for several months into the current year; thus we find the occasional inscription where the year is defined as "after the consulate" of a pair of consuls.
The use of consular dating ended in AD 541 when the emperor Justinian I discontinued appointing consuls. The last consul nominated was Anicius Faustus Albinus Basilius. Soon afterwards, imperial regnal dating was adopted in its place.
Another method of dating was ab urbe condita (Latin for "from the founding of the city" of Rome) or anno urbis conditae (Latin for "in the year of the founding of the city"), both abbreviated AUC.
Several epochs for this date were in use by Roman historians, all based on the incomplete surviving list of Roman consuls and the myths of the city's founding by Romulus and Remus. The chronology established by Marcus Terentius Varro in the 1st century BC intercalated several years of dictatorships, a period of anarchy, and a standardized length of reign for all of Rome's former kings to arrive at a year running from 754–753 BC,[7] taken as equivalent to the 3rd year of the 6th Olympiad. Because the Parilia had become associated with the founding of the city by his time, he took the specific date to have been 21 April 753 BC. This became the official chronology of the empire by at least the time of Claudius, who held Secular Games in AD 47 to celebrate the city's 800th anniversary. The 900th and 1000th anniversaries were then celebrated in 148 under Antoninus Pius and in 248 under Philip I.
The AUC era was seldom used in the traditional Roman or early Julian calendars. Naming each year by its two consuls or by the emperor's regnal years predominated, with Hadrian's aurei[8] and sestertii marking the Romaea in AUC 874 (ann dccclxxiiii nat vrb) a notable exception.[9] AUC dating became more common in late antiquity, appearing in Censorinus, Orosius, and others. During the early Middle Ages, some church officials like Boniface IV employed AUC and AD dating together.[citation needed]
Historical Roman dating employed several different dates for the beginning of the year. Modern application of the AUC era generally ignores this, the known mistakes[7] in Varro's own calculations, and the 752 BC epoch used by the Fasti and later Secular Games, such that AD 2024 is generally considered equivalent to AUC 2777 (2024 + 753).
Another system that is less commonly found than might be thought was the use of the regnal year of the Roman emperor. At first, Augustus indicated the year of his reign by counting how many times he had held the office of consul, and how many times the Roman Senate had granted him the power of a tribune (Latin: tribunicia potestas, abbr. TRP), carefully observing the fiction that his powers came from these offices granted to him, rather than from his own person or the many legions under his control. His successors followed his practice until the memory of the Roman Republic faded (about AD 200), when they began to use their regnal year openly.
Some regions of the Roman Empire dated their calendars from the date of Roman conquest, or the establishment of Roman rule.
The Spanish era, or the Era of Caesar, counted the years from 38 BC and, although the exact reasons for this are unknown, it is usually attributed to either the levy of a general tax from the known world by Octavian or the end of the roman conquest of the peninsula during the civil war of the Second Triumvirate. Either way the date traditionally marks the establishment of Roman rule in Spain and was used in official documents by the Suebian and Visigothic kingdoms and later in Portugal, Aragon, Valencia, Castile, and southern France. This system of calibrating years fell to disuse in the Early Modern Age and was replaced by today's Anno Domini.[10] The months and years are the same as the Julian Calendar.
Throughout the Roman and Byzantine periods, the Decapolis and other Hellenized cities of Syria and Palestine used the Pompeian era, counting dates from the Roman general Pompey's conquest of the region in 63 BC.
A different form of calendar was used to track longer periods of time, and for the inscription of calendar dates (i.e., identifying when one event occurred in relation to others). This form, known as the Long Count, is based upon the number of elapsed days since a mythological starting-point. According to the calibration between the Long Count and Western calendars accepted by the great majority of Maya researchers (known as the GMT correlation), this starting-point is equivalent to 11 August, 3114 BC in the proleptic Gregorian calendar or 6 September in the Julian calendar (−3113 astronomical).
A great many local systems or eras were also important, for example the year from the foundation of one particular city, the regnal year of the neighboring Persian emperor, and eventually even the year of the reigning Caliph.
Most of the traditional calendar eras in use today were introduced at the time of transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, roughly between the 6th and 10th centuries.
The era based on the Incarnation of Christ was introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in 525 and is in continued use with various reforms and derivations. The distinction between the Incarnation occurring with the conception or the Nativity of Jesus was not drawn until the late ninth century.[4]: 881 The first day of the numbered year varied from place to place and depended on the calendar in use: when, in 1600, Scotland adopted 1 January as the first day of the year, this was already the case in much of continental Europe. England adopted this practice in 1752.[4]: 7
The Hindu Saka Era influences the calendars of southeast Asian indianized kingdoms.
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