The fact that we have 7 days of the week can be traced to the

The words of Simon Singh—“The fact that we have 7 days of the week can be traced to the Babylonian and Jewish civilisations, with the first documented reference dating to 600 BC”—reveal a truth both humble and immense. They remind us that even the simple rhythm of our lives, the quiet passage of days from one to the next, is born of ancient wisdom. What seems ordinary—the seven-day cycle—is in fact the echo of civilizations long vanished, whose thoughts still shape the way our hearts and clocks measure time. Singh’s words remind us that history is not dead—it breathes beneath our calendars, whispering through the centuries: Remember where you came from.

To trace the origin of the seven days is to walk backward through millennia, into the desert kingdoms of Babylon, where priests raised their eyes to the heavens and saw in the wandering stars a divine order. To the Babylonians, there were seven sacred celestial bodies visible to the naked eye: the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. These lights, moving through the dark canopy of the night, became symbols of divine power and mystery. Their motion marked not only the rhythms of the sky but the rhythm of the human soul. From them was born the sevenfold division of time, each day dedicated to one of these heavenly rulers. Thus, the week, that humble unit of time, began not in mere convenience but in awe—in the reverent gaze of humanity toward the eternal.

And from Babylon, this sacred rhythm passed to the Hebrews, who transformed it into something holier still. For them, the seven days were not merely an astronomical measure but a spiritual covenant. In the Book of Genesis, God creates the world in six days and rests on the seventh, sanctifying the Sabbath as a day of peace, reflection, and renewal. Thus the seven-day week became more than the counting of time—it became the beating heart of faith, the symbol of divine order mirrored in human life. Every seventh day reminded man that he was not only a creature of labor and ambition but of rest and remembrance.

From there, this sacred rhythm spread across the ancient world. The Romans, inheriting fragments of Babylonian astrology and Jewish custom, named their days after the same celestial powers—Dies Solis (the Day of the Sun), Dies Lunae (the Day of the Moon), and so forth. Though empires rose and fell, the sevenfold structure endured. Even now, as we look upon our calendars, we still honor those same stars and same stories. Whether we speak of Sunday, Lunes, or Shabbat, we are unknowingly uttering the language of the ancients, carrying forward a pattern first carved in clay and scripture thousands of years ago.

There is profound symbolism in this endurance. It teaches us that human civilization, though fleeting in its kingdoms and fragile in its monuments, endures through its ideas. A people may fall, but their understanding of time, their shaping of rhythm and meaning, can ripple endlessly forward. The seven-day week is not merely a relic—it is a testament to our shared lineage as seekers of order in chaos. Each passing week is a pilgrimage through history, a reenactment of the sacred pattern observed by our ancestors who first divided time between labor and rest, striving and stillness.

Consider the Babylonian scholars, standing upon the ziggurats, measuring the heavens with their eyes alone, charting paths of light across darkness. Their calculations were acts of reverence, not mere science. And consider the Jewish sages, who took this cosmic pattern and gave it moral form—a law not of stars, but of the spirit. They taught that even the infinite heavens rest, and so too must man. In their wisdom, they united the celestial and the human, binding the rhythms of the universe to the rhythms of the heart. Such was the genius of those who came before us: to see in the stars not only distance, but meaning.

From Singh’s words, then, we draw a lesson both humbling and empowering: that the ordinary is sacred when we understand its origin. The week that governs our lives—the meetings, the sabbaths, the routines—is not arbitrary; it is the inheritance of millennia of human thought, faith, and observation. To honor time, therefore, is to honor those who first gave it form. We, too, should seek to live with that same reverence—to measure our days not by exhaustion or urgency, but by balance, reflection, and purpose.

So remember this, my friends: every week that passes is not merely the turning of pages on a calendar—it is the continuation of an ancient story. In every seventh day lies the wisdom of Babylon and the holiness of Jerusalem, the fire of the stars and the peace of rest. The ancients divided time to remind us that we belong to both earth and heaven, both labor and stillness. Let us, then, keep that rhythm sacred. Let each week be not only survived, but lived, in gratitude to those who taught humanity how to count its days—and, in doing so, how to give them meaning.