📜 DYK: Before Calendars, the Sumerians Counted Days by the Moon?

Long before printed calendars or digital dates, the Sumerians looked up—to the moon—to measure time.

They used a lunar calendar, tracking the cycle from new moon to new moon (about 29.5 days) to structure their months. Days were counted within each lunar phase, often aligned with agricultural rituals, temple offerings, and celestial events.

The first day of the month began with the first visible crescent—a sacred signal to priests and scribes that a new time had begun.

🌙 Each day was a divine marker in the sky, not a number on a wall.

And to align the lunar cycle with the solar year, Sumerian astronomer-priests periodically added intercalary months—an early version of what we now call leap months!

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🥖 DYK: Sumerians Also Counted Days by Watching Bread Mold?

While the Sumerians used the moon to track months, they also had down-to-earth ways to mark the passing of days.

In daily life, especially outside the temples, people observed how long it took for fresh bread to go stale or develop mold—a kind of edible hourglass. In the humid Mesopotamian climate, a loaf could signal time’s passage: one day, fresh; by the third or fourth, hardened or fungal.

Farmers, servants, and even traveling traders used this bread-aging method as a natural clock—especially when the stars were hidden or when formal calendars were inaccessible.

🕰️ Time could be read not just in the heavens, but in the crust of a loaf.

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