WEEK, the space of seven days; the space from one Sunday, Monday, etc., to another; the most obvious and con venient division of the natural or lunar month. The division of time into weeks did not exist among the aborigines of America when the New World was dis covered, nor did it exist among the Poly nesians, the Japanese, or, it is now be lieved, the Chinese. It is nearly univer sal in India, and was found thoroughly rooted when the first Christians went to that country. So has it been from a period of high antiquity in Scandinavia, the names of the several days being con nected with identically the same planets in the two regions; so that, if at noon on Sunday in Sweden one could be trans ported in a moment to India, he would find it Aditwar (=Sunday) there, and so of any other day in the week. The He brews, and it is thought the other Sem ites, bad the institution of weeks, the days apparently being simply numbered first, second, third, etc. During the early centuries of their history the Greeks and the Romans had not the institution of weeks, there having been ancient forgery in connection with Homer's oft-quoted passages on the subject. Dion Cassius,
in the 2d century after Christ, consid ered that the week with the planetary names of the days had been introduced into Rome only recently, and from Egypt. The establishment of Christian ity under Constantine confirmed the change, and thence the septenary division of time spread to the whole Christian world. The Mohammedans borrowed the week from the Jews, and like them num ber the days, as do also the Greeks, Slays, Finns, and as did the French revolutionists, instead of naming them like the Latins, Teutons, and Celts. One school of theologians attributes the wide prevalence of septenary in stitutions to the Sabbath having been divinely instituted at the Creation; an other school again regards the week as a fourth part of a lunar month. Also ap plied to the week days as opposed to Sundays.