Why is there 7 days a week?

A week with seven days has long been an almost obvious thing. But to understand its origins, we need to return to ancient civilizations. The BBC will help us answer these questions.

Greeks give us democracy. The Romans created bridges and roads. The ancient Babylonians left their heritage as seven-day weeks.

Before the rise of Greece and Rome, Mesopotamia - or modern Iraq, was the most flourishing culture in the two millennia BC and the cradle of ancient civilization.

The belief in rituals to mark the seventh-day becomes important.

They are extremely talented and learned astronomers, developed a calendar to describe and predict the movement of the moon and planets in the sky, becoming a form of astrology.

While the movement between the Earth and the Sun gives us natural concepts such as day and year, the Moon's cycle produces 12 months, there is really no natural reason to explain 7 days of the week .

The number seven has a mystical meaning to the Babylonians . It involves seven celestial bodies in the sky: the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn.

For this reason, the belief in rituals to mark the seventh-day becomes important. A seven-day week based on similar celestial objects was also applied in other remote countries such as Japan and ancient China.

Number seven is also important in Judaism, where stories are created for seven days. But unlike other cultures, in Hebrew, the days of the week with numbers are not the names of gods, festivals, elements or planets - the only exception is Saturday (Saturday) - Yom Shabbat (יום שבת) means the Sabbath (day of rest and worship).

But the popularity of the seven-day week and its prominence in the modern calendar is a great work of the Romans.

Romans named the days of the week after the pagan gods of Rome.

They named the days of the week after the pagan gods of Rome, the Sun and the Moon.

Although used since the first century BC, but when the true Roman Emperor Constantine adopted from 321 AD, the seven-day week became popular. A Christian converted the Constantine Sunday into Sabbath in Christianity - the first day of the week and Saturday became the last day of the week.

For many people, the start of a week is simply the first working day.