The Origin of the Modern Calendar in Ancient Egypt

The way in which we divide the day into hours and minutes, as well as the structure and length of the yearly calendar, owes much to pioneering developments in ancient Egypt. Since Egyptian life and agriculture depended upon the annual flooding of the Nile, it was important to determine when such floods would begin. The early Egyptians noted that the beginning of akhet (inundation) occurred at the heliacal rising of a star they called Serpet (Sirius). It has been calculated that this sidereal year was only 12 minutes longer than the mean tropical year which influenced the flooding, and this produced a difference of only 25 days over the whole of Ancient Egypts recorded history. 3 Egyptian Calendars Ancient Egypt was run according to three different calendars. The first was a lunar calendar based on 12 lunar months, each of which began on the first day in which the old moon crescent was no longer visible in the East at dawn. (This is most unusual since other civilizations of that era are known to have started months with the first setting of the new crescent!) A thirteenth month was intercalated to maintain a link to the heliacal rising of Serpet. This calendar was used for religious festivals. The second calendar, used for administrative purposes, was based on the observation that there was usually 365 days between the heliacal rising of Serpet. This civil calendar was split into twelve months of 30 days with an additional five epagomenal days attached at the end of the year. These additional five days were considered to be unlucky. Although there is no firm archaeological evidence, a detailed back calculation suggests that the Egyptian civil calendar dates back to circa 2900 BCE. This 365-day calendar is also known as a wandering calendar, from the Latin name annus vagus since it slowly gets out of synchronization with the solar year. (Other wandering calendars include the Islamic year.) A third calendar, which dates back at least to the 4th century BCE was used to match the lunar cycle to the civil year. It was based on a period of 25 civil years which was approximately equal 309 lunar months. The Leap Year in Ancient Egypt An attempt to reform the calendar to include a leap year was made at the beginning of the Ptolemaic dynasty (Decree of Canopus, 239 BCE), but the priesthood was too conservative to allow such a change. This pre-dates the Julian reform of 46 BCE which Julius Caesar introduced on the advice of the Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenese. Reform did, however, come after the defeat of Cleopatra and Anthony by the Roman General (and soon to be Emperor) Augustus in 31 BCE. In the following year, the Roman senate decreed that the Egyptian calendar should include a leap year, although the actual change to the calendar didnt occur until 23 BCE. Months, Weeks, and Decades The months of the Egyptian civil calendar were further divided into three sections called decades, each of 10 days. The Egyptians noted that the heliacal rising of certain stars, such as Sirius and Orion, matched the first day of the 36 successive decades and called these stars decans. During any one night, a sequence of 12 decans would be seen to rise and was used to count the hours. (This division of the night sky, later adjusted to account for the epagomenal days, had close parallels to the Babylonian zodiac. The signs of the zodiac each accounting for three of the decans. This astrological device was exported to India and then to Medieval Europe via Islam.) Egyptian Clock Time Early man divided the day into temporal hours whose length depended upon the time of year. A summer hour, with the longer period of daylight, would be longer than that of a winter day. It was the Egyptians who first divided the day (and night) into 24 temporal hours. The Egyptians measured time during the day using shadow clocks, precursors to the more recognizable sun dials seen today. Records suggest that early shadow clocks were based on the shadow from a bar crossing four marks, representing hourly periods starting two hours into the day. At midday, when the sun was at its highest, the shadow clock would be reversed and hours counted down to dusk. An improved version using a rod (or gnomon) and which indicates the time according to the length and position of the shadow has survived from the second millennia BCE. Problems with observing the sun and stars may have been the reason the Egyptians invented the water clock, or clepsydra (meaning water thief in Greek). The earliest remaining example survives from the Temple of Karnak is dated to the 15th century BCE. Water drips through a small hole in one container to a lower one. Marks on either container can be used to give a record of hours passed. Some Egyptian clepsydras have several sets of marks to be used at different times of the year, to maintain consistency with the seasonal temporal hours. The design of the clepsydra was later adapted and improved by the Greeks. The Influence of Astronomy on Minutes and Hours As a result of the campaigns of Alexander the Great, a great wealth of knowledge of astronomy was exported from Babylon into India, Persia, the Mediterranean, and Egypt. The great city of Alexandria with its impressive Library, both founded by the Greek-Macedonian family of Ptolemy, served as an academic center. Temporal hours were of little use to astronomers, and around 127 CE Hipparchus of Nicea, working in the great city of Alexandria, proposed dividing the day into 24 equinoctial hours. These equinoctial hours, so called because they are based on the equal length of day and night at the equinox, split the day into equal periods. (Despite his conceptual advance, ordinary people continued to use temporal hours for well over a thousand years: the conversion to equinoctial hours in Europe was made when mechanical, weight driven clocks were developed in the 14th century.) The division of time was further refined by another Alexandrian based philosopher, Claudius Ptolemeus, who divided the equinoctial hour into 60 minutes, inspired by the scale of measurement used in ancient Babylon. Claudius Ptolemaeus also compiled a great catalog of over one thousand stars, in 48 constellations and recorded his concept that the universe revolved around the Earth. Following the collapse of the Roman Empire, it was translated into Arabic (in 827 CE) and later into Latin (in the 12th century CE). These star tables provided the astronomical data used by Gregory XIII for his reform of the Julian calendar in 1582. Sources Richards, EG. Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History. Oxford University Press, 1998.General History of Africa II: Ancient Civilizations of Africa. James Curry Ltd., University of California Press, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 1990.

The Relationship Between Media Consumption And Eating...

Are you ever curious about what factors might influence educated women to have an eating disorder? As a female, I’ve always wondered if eating disorders that I have seen affect women are linked to the ideas that the media puts out for women to consume. Advertisements, television shows and magazines are all categorized as media. Female college students are exposed to media on a day to day basis, and would have to live off the grid to get away from its influence. When researching for my answer I was able to find an article titled, â€Å"The Relationship Between Media Consumption and Eating Disorders,† which includes a research study, which may or may not prove that there is a relationship between these two things in female college students. Kristen Harrison and Joanne Cantor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison wrote this article by composing it into sections. The first component includes the definitions of the eating disorders that will be included into the stud y then, the influence of mass media on women. Then the authors talked about a theory called the social learning theory. Lastly, Harrison and Canton write about their research study including their hypothesis, method and results. Kristen Harrison and Joanne Cantor set out to find if there is a relationship between media consumption and eating disorders, specifically anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa based on media. Anorexia nervosa or anorexia is defined in the article as †Ã¢â‚¬ ¦a potentially life threatening disorderShow MoreRelatedEating Disorders and Western Culture845 Words   |  3 Pageshas been found that eating disorders are most common in the western and industrialized culture where food is abundant. This is because these individuals attach a lot of importance to their physical appearance and are willing to do anything to get the dream figure. 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Time Management Skill Samples for Students †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Time Management. Answer: Wearing a watch has for a long time been a conventionally accepted practice among many people. Hanging wall clocks in our houses is also a very typical behavior and practice in many homes. Also, thousands of street clocks have for long been erected in the main streets and cities. The question is, what purpose do all these timekeeping apparatus serve? Time management has been a problem with most people (Koch, 2002) and some have tried to rescue themselves from this issue but to no avail. Indeed, even those with solid timemanagement abilities understand that there is dependably opportunity to get better. Getting to be plainly profitable with your chance is tied in with looking to make consistent and ceaseless enhancements to the way that you play out your work. Gratefully, there are many timemanagement aptitudes which you can enhance to enable you to improve comes about. One of the greatest mix-ups made by the individuals who battle with their time management is feeling that time management abilities are entirely behavioral, e.g., you set an objective, and you take a shot at it. In any case, in all actuality vast numbers of the most critical time administration abilities are psychological, i.e., they are thinking forms. Time management skills have an impact in attaining our life goals and in running smooth businesses and careers. (Spencer, 2001). I have selected to research time management as I think I am related to this topic and I have very often been a victim of poor time management. In this report, I would outline a few concepts on time management skills that I have learned and their implication to effective management practice. Later I would give an account of how knowledge and implementation of these skills have enabled me to improve my management practices. Time management is the act of managing your time effectively to achieve your goals (Edward 1976). Good time management depends on planning and time budgeting. In a day a person has 24 hours. To effectively manage these hours, one has to plan. Planning involves knowing what to do at that time. Planning ensures that all tasks to be done are scheduled for and are allocated enough time. Prioritizing activities is a useful step in planning. Remember good plan is only effective when written down. A planning tool is important in improving productivity. The tool should always be at your reach and should be reviewed daily. Knowing yourself is an important skill in time management. People are different and take different durations to do different tasks. In managing your time, you would probably use for hours to do tasks you find challenging. In the case where you spend more on a particular task, like preparing for work, it is important to wake up a bit early to have enough time to make. It is also good to know what time of the day you are more active. Is it during the morning or night? By doing this, you will be able to schedule important tasks within the times where you are very active and slightly critical or demanding duties in the other hours. Time management is not an independent ability. You can't watch over time however you most likely comprehend that. You can just monitor how you use your opportunity and how you use your chance ought to be determined by favorable objective setting. The most dominant of time management aptitudes is the capability to use your chance in a way which serves your objectives. Core interest. When resolving on choices about what to concentrate your opportunity on, you ought to dependably be cognizant of your objectives and how each activity is gone for conveying you nearer to achieving those goals. Set your priorities. Timekeeping requires a distinction between what is significant and what is urgent (MacKenzie, 1990). Professionals approve that the most vital tasks usually aren't the most urgent ones. However, we have a habit of to letting the urgency dominate our lives. Covey, Merrill, and Merrill (1994) study categorized our activities into four quadrants in their Time Management Matrix: urgent, not urgent, important and not important. If an activity is important and urgent, then prioritize it first. Concentrating on these important activities allows you to gain greater control over your time and possibly reduce the number of critical tasks that do become urgent. Get Organized. Good organization of tasks to be done is effective in management practice. You should devise a system that allows you to only handle a task once and complete it. Many people start one task, then even before finishing, they pick up another one. This often results in poor results of both tasks. Usually, you may have five options for handling information: To get rid of it, Delegate it, act on it yourself, file it temporarily until u find more knowledge to work on it and lastly you may file it permanently where you can easily find it later. Delegate. Delegate refers to assigning out various tasks to each person, authorizing some of your chance for errands that require your skill. Designation starts by identifying the particular errands that others can do and after that identifying the suitable person(s) to do them. You have to choose an individual with the appropriate abilities, knowledge, scheming, and expertise needed to accomplish the task. Be as specific as plausible in illustrating the undertaking and your desires, yet enable the person some chance to modify the errand. Incidentally check to decide how well the person is proceeding and to give any help, being mindful so as not to assume control over the responsibility. At long last, bear in mind to compensate the individual for a vocation well done or make commendations for changes if necessary. (Dodd and Sundheim, 2005). Stop Procrastinating. This is among one of the most important tasks. Refrain from transferring task to another time. Instead, dividing the task into smaller segments that require less time commitment and result in specific, realistic deadlines. In order to motivate you to do certain tasks, you can build a reward system at the end of every small task Managing external time wasters and distractors. Everyone can account for one time when they had seriously planned to do a certain task then all of a sudden from nowhere some friends come to visit you, and since you couldn't ignore them, you were forced to procrastinate the task. Dealing with this problem may be a hard nut to crack but if the possible drop off a few friends who may deter you from effective time management. Besides, let them understand your schedule and know when they can be free to interrupt. Abstain from multitasking. Late mental investigations have demonstrated that multi-entrusting does not really spare time. In 9. Stay away from Multi-entrusting actuality; the inverse is frequently valid. You lose time when changing starting with one assignment than to the next, bringing about lost efficiency (Rubinsteim, Meyer, and Evans, 2001). Routine multi-entrusting may prompt trouble in concentrating and keeping up center when required. Rather, sort out yourself on how you can do one undertaking at any given moment. When you require someone else to do some work for you; you will need to impart in a way which will allow them to play out the work to the coveted standard, in the speediest time. Should any mistakes happen, you will need to bring up the issue quickly and illuminate clearly about the changes that should be effected? In these situations, the nature of your communication candidly affects the quality of the work that completes. Adapting abilities and stress administration. Time administration is not only a behavioral expertise. It is psychological as well. You're considering, and mentality assumes a huge part in deciding your outcomes. Knowing how to adapt to difficulties will enable you to bob back rapidly and diminish the measure of time lost when things turn out badly. Time administration aptitudes and stress management abilities are entwined. They likewise have one noteworthy thing in like manner they enable you to comprehend that it is smarter to keep the issue happening than dealing with it once it occurs. On the off chance that you need to enhance your opportunity administration aptitudes, make proactive anxiety management a custom in your life. Tolerance is both an excellence and an ability in time management. Timekeeping abilities are tied in with guaranteeing that you complete the crucial work. You could attempt to concentrate on accomplishing all the more however you wind up hurrying things and committing errors. When you have amended the missteps (if it is conceivable to do as such), you will have invested more energy than if you'd take as much time as is needed and done the activity legitimately.In my action plan, the main aim was to improve on time management skills through some activities I learned from the concepts noted above. Before I undertook this action plan, I assessed myself using a questionnaire to range my actual position before knowledge on the concepts. From my assessment, I noted some features or behaviors I did which hindered my time management capabilities. In my assessment, I realized that I had life goal but they were not specific, and they were also not time bound. My focus was to attain the goals, but I did not have a clear and well-defined plan on how to achieve my goals. I also did not have a daily to-do list, and this made me have a difficult time in prioritizing activities to do during my studying and working hours. Lack of a to-do list resulted in doing other activities are were not aligned in steps of achieving my set goals. I also noted that I did not delegate most of my duties and this overwhelmed me resulting in a bad performance in school and at work. Since I was in school and also did part-time jobs, I had little time to be with my friends and family. I knew I was a morning person, but I did not utilize this to plan for my activities. Many at times I would struggle to read in the late hours of the night. I would procrastinate tasks including assignments from school, and this would result in poor grades and stressful moments. I did not have a well-defined plan for jobs to do and did not schedule time for interruption. At the end of my tasks, I did not have a rewarding system, and this resulted in reduced motivation to do tasks. Usually, I would start several tasks simultaneously and the end of it all the productivity of all tasks would reduce. My action plan was among many things; to buy a watch, to wake up early and plan for the day, to have a to-do list daily, to priorities activities based on their importance and urgency, to review my plan list daily and often; to avoid procrastinating, to refrain from people who would act as distractors, to finish my assignments in a timely manner and more importantly to develop a positive attitude on time management and to realize the importance of time management. Getting a new watch was very useful in monitoring time when doing activities. Before I would use my phone to check the time but this would later lead me to reply to a text message from my phone and accessing the internet social media platform, and eventually I would find myself having have wasted a lot of time on my phone while the intention was only to check the time. With my watch on my wrist, I no longer miss the bus or reach to work late. I have recently also been able to monitor the duration in which I do specific tasks, and this has helped me in the planning of these tasks. Having a daily to-do list has been of importance in the managing of my time. Every day I have a list of tasks that I should do before the day ends. My tasks are ordered based on the importance and urgency. This to-do list has helped me priorities activities and leave out those that were not purposeful and derailed me away from achieving my goals. Reviewing the "to do list" every day before I sleep has helped me keep track of the tasks I did not finish and possibly try to finish them the next day. Procrastination has still been a struggle for me and even after getting to learn concepts about it, I still find myself transferring tasks to a later date and affects my whole schedule for the next day. However, in my action plan, I am thinking of putting up ways of rewarding myself when I finish tasks way before the deadline. I am hoping this will help me solve the procrastinating problem. In school and my part-time job I get to meet and make friends every day, and some of them are distractors to my schedule. In my action plan, I proposed to avoid them and allocating time for them only when it is urgent and when I have no important pending tasks. However, this also has been a struggle because none of them understands my intentions in improving my time management skills and so would frequently distract me. The delegation of a task has been of help to me and gave me more time to finish up another task. However, to those, I delegate they are often not determined to finish up the work in time, and this has resulted in me having to finish up, or even do entirely a task I had delegated. Also, I have managed to get some free time by paying for services that would use up most of my time. For example, taking clothes to laundry or looking for a person to do household chores for me has saved me a few minutes to complete pending tasks. From my pretest measures, I realized that I am a morning person and I am most active in the morning hours. This has helped me especially in my schoolwork where I would wake up early to read instead of reading up to late in the night. Notably. I have improved my performance in class after I started doing that. Also concerning this, I had prioritized task that needs more concentration and attention and planned them in the morning. I have actualized the rewarding system whereby I often reward myself like buy a cake every time I complete a major task. This has built my motivation and spirit in doing tasks in real time. Social media is indeed a good platform, but I realized from my pretest that I would spend more time in social media until I had no time left to do other tasks. I have avoided this by only accessing social media during the night and not in the day hours. This has improved my productivity in tasks that I do during the day. Understanding the importance of time management and teaching others on the same concepts have also seen me improve my time management skills. Having people to keep you in check every time you deter from you time goals has also helped me a lot. From my action plan outcome it is clear that the principles learned in time management skills is relevant and I have been following them to the later, and the results are good on my side. I would recommend anyone with need in time management to monitor the principles. References: Spencer, B. (2001). College students who wear watches: locus of control and motivational sources.Psychological reports,88(1), 83-84. Koch, C. J., Kleinmann, M. (2002). A stitch in time saves nine: Behavioural decision-making explanations for time management problems.European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology,11(2), 199-217. Rubinsteim, J., Meyer, D. Evans, J. (2001). Executive control of cognitive processes in task switching. Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception and Performance, 27(4), 763-797 MacKenzie, A. (1990). The Time Trap (3rd ed.). New York: American Management Association. Trueman, M., Hartley, J. (1996). A comparison between the time-management skills and academic performance of mature and traditional-entry university students.Higher education,32(2), 199-215. Misra, R., McKean, M. (2000). College students' academic stress and its relation to their anxiety, time management, and leisure satisfaction.American Journal of Health Studies,16(1), 41. Britton, B. K., Tesser, A. (1991). Effects of time-management practices on college grades.Journal of educational psychology,83(3), 405. Cemaloglu, N., Filiz, S. (2010). The relation between time management skills and academic achievement of potential teachers.Educational Research Quarterly,33(4), 3.