Would you believe a modern scholar’s interpretation of an ancient custom that seems utterly contrary to that ancient community’s benefit and common sense? You should probably follow your instincts and reject that explanation of history. Nevertheless, we must keep our minds open; we cannot understand everything about ancient cultures and their reasons for doing things. Suppose convincing evidence proves that an ancient people adopted a seemingly impractical practice lacking common sense. Then, we must accept it, but we should seek to understand their motivations for doing something that seems to be blatantly illogical.
During part of the second millennium BCE, the Assyrians had such a superficially illogical process. Like most peoples across the Fertile Crescent, they had a lunisolar calendar system that required adding a thirteenth month, usually every second or third year, to keep their calendar aligned with the tropical (or solar) year. Nevertheless, during one period of their history, they skipped those (13th) intercalary months for decades and made no effort to align their calendar with the solar year.
What was the consequence? After each year, the calendar shifted 10 or 11 days toward the start of the tropical year. After eight years, the month names would move almost an entire season! Imagine if we did something similar and October through December became the summer months! It must have been tremendously inconvenient and confusing for the ordinary people of their nation.
Many extant documents that originated during the reign of Assyrian King Tiglath-pileser I (AKL #87) have double dates. They included the current day of the lunar month plus the names of both the Assyrian and Babylonian months. Their existence proves the following: 1) The Assyrians did have a calendar without intercalations. 2) This system was inconvenient for their citizens, resulting in many scribes adopting the practice of including Babylonian months on their documents. 3) They adopted this method no later than the start of this king’s tenure and continued it into his third decade.
Why would they implement this bizarre custom? The 14-page Appendix G in The Six Pillars (forthcoming) discusses this topic thoroughly and reveals the goals Tiglath-pileser I and his predecessor, Aššur-rēša-iši I (AKL #86), were trying to achieve.
A minority of researchers try to extrapolate this practice to earlier centuries without understanding why the Assyrians instigated this method. Moreover, they misunderstand the historical data they use as evidence. The usual Fertile Crescent agricultural practice of planting in the autumn and harvesting in the spring depended on four things: 1) latitude, 2) elevation, 3) general climate warmth conditions, and 4) sufficient precipitation or irrigation water. Some farmers within the Assyrian Empire at the cooler-temperature higher altitudes and elevations always planted in the spring and harvested in the summer and autumn, contrary to the habits of most Mesopotamian and Levantine peoples. During an extended period of much colder than usual climate conditions, most or all the Assyrians adopted this alternative farming schedule.
Without knowledge of these two divergent agricultural systems and climate changes, the long-term non-intercalation theory advocates mistakenly interpret the reversal of the Assyrians’ seasonal farming practices during that longer-term cold period as evidence of continually shifting calendar months within the tropical year. What lesson can we learn from this error?
Although the evidence surprisingly does prove two Assyrian kings adopted this inconvenient non-intercalary calendar system, even if we did not understand their motivations, it would be contrary to common sense to assume they continued it any longer than necessary. When researchers find data that seems to support a theory about an ancient impractical custom, we should use our critical and lateral thinking ability to question their interpretation and consider alternative ideas.
To their credit, most conventional chronologists have concluded that this theory of a centuries-long non-intercalated calendar system must be mistaken. That sort of critical thinking is an excellent first step. Asking more questions and seeking alternative answers would be the next steps in solving such a mystery.