Thursday, April 5, 2012

Which is the first day of the week?




There are many different opinions as to how the history of the seven-day week came about, but the most common explanation is that the seven-day week seems to have originated when Babylonian astrologers assigned their planet gods to the days of the week around 700 BC. The Romans later replaced these names with their own planet-gods. Ancient Mesopotamian astrologers linked a planet-god to each hour of the day and then arranged them to their correct cosmological order. They used a seven-sided figure to keep track of the proper names of the hours and days in relation to the planet gods where each vertex was marked with a planet’s name in the proper order.

The First Day of the Week
The first day of the week varies all over the world. In most cultures, Sunday is regarded as the first day of the week although many observe Monday as the first day of the week. According to the Bible, the Sabbath or Saturday is the last day of the week which marks Sunday as the first day of the week for many Jewish and Christian faiths, while many countries regard Monday as the first day of the week.

The day and night is due earth's rotation. Primarily, our civilization has used the motion of the Sun as a measurement of time ( its actually earth's rotation with reference to Sun ). A "unit" of time is the interlude between any two successive events - the fundamental one for us being the length of time between two successive risings of the Sun or one syndodic Earth rotation - 24 hours. Since the Sun was involved in the calculation of time and naming of days of the week. They named the first day of the week as SUNDAY...!!!!!

According to the international standard ISO 8601, Monday shall be the first day of the week ending with Sunday as the seventh day of the week. Although this is the international standard, countries such as the United States still have their calendars refer to Sunday as the start of the seven-day week.

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