Twenty-four hours a day
Why do we have twenty-four hours in a day? Why not twenty hours? Or
sixteen hours?
As a matter of fact, we have twenty-four hours in a day simply because
the Egyptians did. They invented the twenty-four hour day long ago, and
people have used it ever since I
And why did the ancient Egyptians select twenty-four hours for their
day? Actually, they didn’t think of it as twenty-four hours, they
thought of it as two twelves—twelve hours of daytime and twelve hours
of nighttime. And why twelve? Well, they divided the day into\’ ten
hours, and then assigned one more hour for the dawn, and one for the
dusk, making twelve all together. They gave the same number of hours to
the night, to make it even.
The ancient Egyptians made star charts, such as this, so that they could
tell time at night. As each star shown on the chart rose in the sky, a
new hour began.
Of course, the Egyptians, whose language was different from ours, didn’t
use the word hours. They used a word that may have sounded something
like “wihn oo wiht.”
“Wihn oo wiht” meant “priest’s duties,” and telling time was one of the
many duties of the Egyptian priests. The priests marked off the hours
during the day by means of clocks that measured the shadow cast by the
sun. And they marked off the hours during the night by watching for
certain stars to rise on the eastern horizon. As each of these stars
appeared, a new hour, or “wihn oo wiht” began.
The ancient Egyptians, and also the Romans, began and ended their day at
midnight, as most people do now. The Babylonians and the Greeks began
their day at sunrise. And the ancient Jews began their day at sunset.
