The sacred time of ancient Greeks
Time in the ancient people, especially in Greece and Israel, was a cycle resonated with the movements of the two main celestial bodies, the sun and the moon. The great discovery of the 19-year cycle by Meton, developed further by Callippus and Ipparchus, is a miraculous achievement based on refined astronomical observations and mathematical calculations. This cycle of years, each year lasting 12 or 13 months, complemented with the festivals in favour of the great gods and protectors of the cities, created a repeated series of events. The life of cities was inseparable from these events and it is impossible to comprehend the daily life and habits of our ancestors without the calendar cycle of these festivals.
The naturality and the beauty of our gods was the basic prerequisite for the birth of the moderate, the reason, the science, the philosophy nd the art with focus on human being and its needs.
The moderate and the beauty involved in these cults call us in the eternity, moving us to remenber once more and, why not, to apply also a calendar, where the festivals are not determined arbitrarily but through the solstices and the equinoxes of the sun and the phases of the moon..
This site concerns the Sacred Time as it was felt in Ancient Greece. It is suggested as a contribution to the knowledge of the structure of the operational everyday time in Greece, mainly Athens. In that lunar-solar cycle all the ancient cults and festival were subsumed. You can find in this site an accurate correspondence between the now used dates of the Gregorian calendar and these of the ancient Attic calendar. Besides, you could use it and apply it as your own calndar!
