Culture
The Origins of the Ethiopian Calendar
SBS · 2 months ago · Read the Full Story on SBS
AI SUMMARY
The Ethiopian calendar’s unique seven-to-eight-year divergence from the Gregorian calendar stems from ancient Egyptian astronomical structures and differing calculations of the year of Christ’s incarnation.
- The Ethiopian calendar trails the Gregorian calendar by seven years from September 11/12 to December 31, and by eight years from January 1 to September 10/11.
- The Ethiopian day begins at dawn, whereas the Gregorian day starts at midnight.
- The Ethiopian calendar is closely structured after the ancient Coptic (Alexandrian) calendar, consisting of 12 months of 30 days and a 13th month of five or six epagomenal days (Pagume).
- While the Gregorian calendar is a reform of the Julian calendar introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, the Ethiopian system shares a leap-year cycle of 365 days expanding to 366 days every fourth year.
- Neither calendar's New Year was originally rooted in Christianity; both systems adopted the Christian era system later based on different calculations of the Incarnation.
- The seven-to-eight-year gap exists because the Gregorian system relies on Dionysius Exiguus’s calculations (5493 BCE creation baseline), while the Ethiopian system follows the era of Annianus of Alexandria (5500 BCE baseline).
- The names of the days in Amharic reflect numerical and liturgical order, while the concept of the month natively links to the word for moon across Semitic and non-Semitic languages.
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