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70 - SEXY GLAM MAGAZINE - JANUARY 2021
On the 1 st January of every year,
many countries around the world cel-
ebrate the beginning of a new year.
But there is nothing new about New
Year’s. In fact, festivals and celebra-
tions marking the beginning of the cal-
endar have been around for thousands
of years. While some festivities were
simply a chance to drink and be mer-
ry, many other New Year celebrations
were linked to agricultural or astronom-
ical events. In Egypt, for instance, the
year began with the annual flooding of
the Nile, which coincided with the rising
of the star Sirius. The Phoenicians and
Persians began their new year with the
spring equinox, and the Greeks cele-
brated it on the winter solstice. The
first day of the Chinese New Year,
meanwhile, occurred with the second
new moon after the winter solstice.
The Celebration of Akitu in
Babylon
The earliest recorded New Year’s fes-
tivity dates back some 4,000 years to
ancient Babylon, and was deeply inter-
twined with religion and mythol-
ogy. For the Babylonians
of ancient Mesopota-
mia, the first new
moon following
the vernal
e q u i -
n o x—
t h e
d a y
i n
late March with an equal amount of
sunlight and darkness—heralded the
start of a new year and represented
the rebirth of the natural world. They
marked the occasion with a massive
religious festival called Akitu (derived
from the Sumerian word for barley,
which was cut in the spring) that in-
volved a different ritual on each of its
11 days. During the Akitu, statues of
the gods were paraded through the
city streets, and rites were enacted to
symbolize their victory over the forc-
es of chaos. Through these rituals the
Babylonians believed the world was
symbolically cleansed and recreated
by the gods in preparation for the new
year and the return of spring.
In addition to the new year, Atiku cel-
ebrated the mythical victory of the
Babylonian sky god Marduk over the
evil sea goddess Tiamat and served
an important political purpose: it was
during this time that a new king was
crowned or that the current ruler’s di-
vine mandate was renewed. One fas-
cinating aspect of the Akitu involved
a kind of ritual
humiliation endured by the Babylonian
king. This peculiar tradition saw the
king brought before a statue of the god
Marduk, stripped of his royal regalia,
slapped and dragged by his ears in the
hope of making him cry. If royal tears
were shed, it was seen as a sign that
Marduk was satisfied and had symbol-
ically extended the king’s rule.
Ancient Roman Celebration of
Janus
The Roman New Year also originally
corresponded with the vernal equinox.
The early Roman calendar consist-
ed of 10 months and 304 days, with
each new year beginning at the vernal
equinox. According to tradition, the
calendar was created by Romulus, the
founder of Rome, in the eighth centu-
ry B.C. However, over the centuries,
the calendar fell out of sync with the
sun, and in 46 B.C. the emperor Julius
Caesar decided to solve the problem
by consulting with the most prominent
astronomers and mathematicians of
his time. He introduced the Julian cal-
endar, a solar-based calendar which
closely resembles the more modern
Gregorian calendar that most
countries around the
world use today.
As part of his
r e f o r m ,
C a e s a r
i n s t i -
tuted
Jan-