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When counting is it three years from the date so wouldn't 126/5 be year 1 125/4 year 2 124/3 Year 3? Sorry I know it is just silly semantics but I am still getting my head around dating most of the time.
Would they have referred it as "year zero" I mean if the calendar begins in 126/5 then that would logically have been year 1 wouldn't it?
Correct. The ancients had no concept of "year zero"; very little concept of zero at all, as their numeral systems usually demonstrate. Greek philosophers had a field day debating whether zero was a number or not. The first day of reign of a new ruler or founding of a city was Day 1 of Year 1. For the same reason, the BC/AD calendar does not have a "year zero" between 1 BC and AD 1.
Therefore, this coin dated Year 3 of the Tyrian calendar would correlate to 124/123 BC; because their Day 1 of Year 1 occurred partway through our year 126 BC, Tyrian years do not have a precise one-for-one correlation with our years.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Posted 06/06/2013 11:55 am
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