Alexandr Korol

How symbolic this is, considering that we are now in the period leading up to Halloween. “In Ancient Egypt, a day was counted from sunrise to sunrise. Also, nighttime is considered a continuation of the previous day in modern Russia and the USA; for example, in Russian, the expressions ‘Friday night’ and ‘the night before Saturday’ are considered equivalent.” Next, an interesting section on the “Division of the Day.” “The number of parts into which a day was divided, or separately night and day, depended on the level of development of a given people and gradually increased as humanity progressed. Most peoples of the New World divided the day into only four parts, corresponding to sunrise, the highest point of the sun’s daily path, sunset, and finally, midnight. According to the traveler Gorréboe, who described Iceland in the mid-18th century, Icelanders divided the day into 10 parts. Arabs distinguished only sunrise, the sun’s ascent and descent, sunset, twilight, night, the first crowing of the rooster, and dawn. However, among some previously uncivilized peoples, relatively precise divisions of the day could be found, such as the natives of the Society Islands, who, during Cook’s time, had a division of the day into 18 parts, though their lengths were unequal; the shortest intervals corresponded to morning and evening, while the longest corresponded to midnight and noon.” “Division into 24 main parts” – “This type of division (though with different hour lengths) first appeared in Ancient Egypt around 2100 BCE, where it was used by Egyptian priests to orient themselves in time. In this system, the 24 hours included one hour of morning twilight, ten daylight hours, one hour of evening twilight, and twelve nighttime hours. Around 1300 BCE, the daily timekeeping system was reformed: daylight and nighttime were each divided into 12 parts, resulting in the duration of ‘daytime’ and ‘nighttime’ hours varying by season. In Ancient Rome, daytime hours were grouped into four equal time segments, while nighttime hours were divided into four ‘watches’ (guard shifts), each lasting three hours: two before midnight and two after. In China, from the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE), the tradition of dividing the day into 12 equal parts began, based on the twelve astrological animals. This tradition later spread to Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Each astrological animal was assigned a time period, which was conventionally called an ‘hour,’ for example: ‘Hour of the Rat’ (midnight) or ‘Hour of the Horse’ (noon).” Well, according to the Chinese schedule, the Hour of the Horse is from 11 AM to 1 PM, that’s the period. I was born in the Year of the Horse, by the way. Then there are also mentions of division into 30 main parts, 22 main parts, and 10 main parts, but I won’t spend time on that.