Etudes Celtiques

The starting-points in the Coligny Calendar

Emily B. Lyle

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Lyle Emily B. The starting-points in the Coligny Calendar. In: Etudes Celtiques, vol. 30, 1994. pp. 285-289;

doi : https://doi.org/10.3406/ecelt.1994.2050

https://www.persee.fr/doc/ecelt_0373-1928_1994_num_30_1_2050

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THE STARTING-POINTS
IN THE COLIGNY CALENDAR

Emily LYLE

From the time of its discovery in the late nineteenth century, one of
the difficulties about interpreting the Gaulish Coligny calendar and setting
it in a broad comparative framework has been that of knowing where the
starting-points come in its beautifully balanced structure. While there was a
lack of agreement about this, is was not possible to draw comparisons very
securely with the Celtic insular tradition or with non-Celtic Indo-European
material. It seems to me that the recent exhaustive study of the calendar
by Paul-Marie Duval and Georges Pinault1 has solved the questions about
the beginnings of the months and years in a satisfying fashion that does
allow comparative study to proceed, although still rather tentatively. We
can begin now to see the Coligny calendar as a vital bridge between the
earlier common Indo-European heritage and the later folk tradition of Celtic
peoples.
One thing that is completely clear about the calendar is that both
the year and the month are divided in halves. Duval and Pinault relate
the half-years to the periods in insular tradition that run (in terms of our
modern calendar) from 1 May to 1 November (the summer “bright” half)
and from 1 November to 1 May (the winter “dull” half)·2 In the case of the
month, Duval and Pinault, accepting Pliny's statement that the beginning
of the month was on the sixth day of the moon, give the period from the
sixth day as the bright half of maximum moonlight and the period from the
twenty-first day of one moon to the fifth day of the next as the dull half. In
this connection, Pinault writes in an appendix on the phases of the moon :
On peut à bon droit mettre en doute certaines des infor¬
mations de Pline, mais il semblerait que ses affirmations sur

scriptions
1. Paul-Marie
gauloises, vol.
DuvalIII et
LesGeorges
calendriers
Pinault,
(Coligny,
XLV6Villards
supplément
d'Héria),
à Gallia,
Paris, Recueil
1986. des in¬
2. Ibid., pp. 403 and 404-405.
286 THE STARTING-POINTS IN THE COLIGNY CALENDAR

les débuts du mois, de l'année et du siècle trentenaire soient

à retenir : ils commencent, très sensiblement, le sixième jour
révolu de la lune, c'est-à-dire au début du passage du premier
quartier réalisé à la pleine lune ; la lre quinzaine est celle de la
pleine lune (en son milieu) : claire, la 2e, celle de la nouvelle
lune (en son milieu) : sombre.3
Mac Neill noted that “Hindu calendars, ancient and modern, divide
each month into a bright half and a dark half, and, like the Coligny Calendar,
number the days separately in each half.”4 There is no evidence, though, in
Indian calendars of a beginning on the sixth day of the moon and Mac Neill
asked : “Is it possible that the Coligny Calendar preserves the older Indo-
European tradition, and that the commencement of months with the new
moon was adopted from some oriental civilisation?” However, he quoted in
his notes the following negative reply to his question from the astronomer,
J.K. Fotheringham :
I think it most unlikely that the Celtic calendar preserved
the older Indo-European tradition, if it is true that it reckoned
the month from the sixth day [of the moon's visibility]. It is most
natural to begin the month or moon when the moon is first seen.
All lunar calendars known to me aim at beginning in the neigh¬
bourhood of new moon, except a group of Indian calendars
which begin at full moon. If the Celtic calendar really began on
the sixth day, it must be regarded as a peculiarity.5
Mac Neill's comparison with Hindu calendars is especially helpful
because it gives us examples both of shared features, which are probably
to be regarded as Indo-European, and also of differences. Since Indian
calendars divide the month and year in halves6 and a duality at both these
calendrical levels is present also in the Coligny calendar, we can assume
tentatively that this treatment is part of the Indo-European inheritance. On
the other hand, when we consider the starting-points, we find that they
are quite different in the two cultures, and we can postulate that the Celtic
the
ones,
innovations.
which have no parallels elsewhere in the Indo-European world, are

I suggest that we can see what the changes involved by looking com¬
paratively at the case of Rome, which is assumed here to reflect an Indo-
European pattern with respect to beginnings that was modified by the Celts.

3. Ibid., p. 417.
4. Eóin MAC Neill, On the Notation and Chronography of the Calendar of Coligny,
Éñu X, 1926-28, 16.
5. Ibid., p. 65.
6. Duval et Pinault, op. cit., pp. 405 and 409.
 E. LYLE 287

The start of the Roman month is associated with the first day of the moon.
Day 6 of the moon's period of visibility in the Celtic calendar would cor¬
respond to day 1 in the Roman one, and J.G. Frazer, rather interestingly,
noted that whereas Pliny, speaking of the Dmids of Gaul, refers to the
cutting of mistletoe on the sixth day of the moon, in another passage in
the Natural History which apparently refers to Italy he speaks again about
the cutting of mistletoe, but this time on the first day of the moon.7 It is
not only the month that has an unusually late beginning in Celtic tradition ;
the summer part of the year, running from 1 May in terms of the modern
calendar, also has a uniquely late start. Normally the summer half would
start about the period of the equinox in March - as was the case in Rome
before the shift to January8 - and I suggest that the month and the year
are tied together analogically and that what we have in the Celtic case is a
departure from a system which had a beginning at the first appearance of
the moon and springtime to a system which began the bright part six days
later in the month and two months later in the year.9 It seems that we find
in both the month and the year in Celtic calendars a deferred start of the
bright period, and also, of course, of the opposed dull period for which
the beginnings are the twenty-first day of the moon and 1 November.9
The bright and dull halves occur alternately, but which comes first?
In the twenty-four-hour day, the Indo-European practice is for night to pre¬
cede day and Caesar bears witness that the Celts followed this system.10
There is no difficulty in the Celtic context about taking the year in the
same way, with winter preceding summer and with a starting-point for
the whole year in November, or in Samon-in the Coligny calendar.11 The
month, however, begins with the bright half, as already noted, giving a
year-beginning on the sixth day of the moon at the start of the dull half
of the year, as shown in Figure 1 where the arrow indicates the direction
of movement from this starting point. The figure represents the recurrent
lunar-year cycle of the Coligny calendar showing the division into bright
and dull half-years and half-months, and the points of insertion of the
two intercalary
stand for the month
months
names
of thewhich
five-year
are cited
cycle.as
The
follows
two-letter
in Duval
abbreviations
and Pin-
ault : Samon-, Dumann-, Riuros, Anagantio-, Ogronn-, Cutios, Giamoni-,

pp. 76-8,
7. J.G.
quoting
Frazer,
Pliny,
TheNatural
Golden History,
Bough, Part
XVI.xcv
XI, Balder
and XXIV.
the vi.
Beautiful, voi. 2, London, 1955,
8. Duval et Pinault, op. cit., p. 409.
9. The implications of such a shift for the comparative study of calendar customs are
discussed in chapter 8 of Emily Lyle, Archaic Cosmos : Polarity, Space and Time, Edinburgh,
1990.
10. Duval et Pinault, op. cit., p. 400.
11. Ibid., p. 403.
288 THE STARTING-POINTS IN THE COLIGNY CALENDAR

Simiuisonna-, Equos, Elembiu-, Edrini-and Cantíos. In the calendar, while

each bright half is headed by the month name, each dull half is headed
“atenoux” and this is indicated by the abbreviation “a” in the figure.

Intercalary month 2
V

Cu MONTHS a

YEAR

Intercalary month 1
Fig. 1.

Duval and Pinault note the existence of a special festival in Samon-

which they associate with the start of the year :
Le Calendrier porte au deuxième jour de la seconde quin¬
zaine du premier mois (Sa. 2a) l'indication *trinox samoni “les
trois nuits de samon-”, qui désigne, évidemment, un moment
important de l'année, une fête de trois jours. Or l'année celtique
insulaire commence par la même particularité, qui se place au
début de novembre et prendra en irlandais ancien le nom de
samain ...12

The unique notation for the day runs *trinox samoni sindiu which is trans¬
lated by Duval and Pinault as “c'est aujourd'hui le *tñnox de Sa.”13 “Sindiu,”
meaning “today,” occurs elsewhere in the calendar and Duval and Pinault

12. Ibid., p. 403; cf. pp. 313 and 331-334.

13. Ibid., p. 427.
 E. LYLE 289

comment : “La fonction de ce mot est de marquer que tel événement excep¬
tionnel a bien lieu ‘aujourd'hui’.”14 This leaves some room for interpretation
about
it that which
the notation
three days
means
are“les
those
troisofnuits
the festival.
de Samonios
Françoise
[commencent]
Le Roux takes
au¬

jourd'hui15,” but alternatively the named day might be at the mid-point of a

threefold ceremony, perhaps one involving “preparation, cel[e]bration an[d]
thanksgiving” as noted by Myles Dillon in a passage she quotes.16 Although
Rhys interprets the notation as indicating the first day of the three, the par¬
allels he gives include cases where the named festival day comes in the
middle of the period referred to.17 If that is the case here, the three-day
festival marked on the second day of the atenoux of Samon-would begin
on the first day of the atenoux, that is, at the beginning of the dull half¬
month. In whichever way the notation is read, we have a festival at the
approximate beginning of this half-month, but the exactness with which
the festival would mark the point of entry into the first dull half-month con¬
tained in the dull half-year if the notation is taken to come on the second
day of the festival seems in keeping with the precision of this calendar.
The festival satisfies the condition of falling at the beginning of a dull
half on the levels of both the year and the month, and it seems that there
is something of a double start to the year in the Coligny calendar, with one
opening coming at the beginning of Samon-and the other at the beginning
of the atenoux of Samon-. The two were probably conflated in festivals
known at a later date when this refined calendar had gone out of use, but
the general sense of a start at the opening of the dull half is clear in both the
Coligny calendar and later festivals and, as noted by Duval and Pinault, the
key points that correspond to each other are *trinox Samonis and Samain.
Emily Lyle
Cosmos Project, School of Scottish Studies,
Univ. of Edinburgh, 27, George Square,
Edinburgh, EH8 9LD,
Scotland Grande-Bretagne

14. Ibid., p. 325.

15. Françoise Le Roux, Le calendrier gaulois de Coligny (Ain) et la fête irlandaise de
Samain (*Samonios), Ogam IX, 1957, 339.
16. Ibid., p. 342, n. 26.
17. John Rhys, Celtae and Galli, Proceedings of the British Academy 1905-6, pp. 95-97.