Note 697 — Chapter VII · THE BABYLONIAN “EVIL DAYS” AND THE SHABATTUM

The difficulty which arises in respect to the nineteenth day has been solved to the satisfaction of most Assyriologists by the suggestion that the nineteenth day was regarded as seven times the seventh day (i.e., the forty-ninth from the first of the preceding month). This, of course, would not be strictly true, when the preceding month had only twenty-nine days, but it seems that the early Babylonian month was conventionally taken at thirty days’ duration.