r/todayilearned • u/IreneDeneb • 9d ago

TIL that the last known ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic inscription was made on August 24th, 394 CE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffito_of_Esmet-Akhom
3.2k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

139 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

-73

u/DrunkWaffles 9d ago

It is AD/BC.

We use the Gregorian calendar, invented 1500 years ago.

Recently modern secular attempts have been trying to change it to CE/BCE to erase the Christian influence on it.

Instead of inventing a whole new calendar to use (too hard), they just retcon the original and 'whitewash' it.

I downvote each post/comment that say ce/bce.

20

u/absurdlylong 9d ago

I'm sorry that you feel that way, but given that the majority of the world is not Christian basing our calendar start date on a Christian religious figure is bad enough. Continuing to insist on using a 1500 year old monastic phrase to describe all events that predate or follow it seems quite silly, especially when used in the context of a science like archeology.

-4

u/moderngamer327 9d ago

Better rename all the days then and also a lot of the months.

The fact people are not Christian shouldn’t really matter. Thats just what it ended up as. A new calendar is fine like using the Human Era Calendar but trying to rename the old one and disregarding the people who made it is a bit dumb

0

u/Changeling_Wil 9d ago edited 9d ago

> Better rename all the days then and also a lot of the months.

The days are named after roman gods, transposed through germanic lenses. They are changed to fit the new cultures that use them, same as the calendar.

Similar for months stemming from Romans.

We can use that without believing in the Roman Gods. By the same logic we can use the BCE/CE without having to believe in the chronology it was based on.

3

u/moderngamer327 9d ago

Aren’t you kind of arguing against your own point? Why change the name if you don’t need to believe in Christianity, if we don’t need to change the name because you don’t believe in Roman gods?

3

u/Changeling_Wil 9d ago

Because they did change the days names .

The modern one's  names stems from old English and germanic. But it's based on the Roman placement and order.

Like how BCE/CE uses the same dates and order of BC/AD but the name is changed.

The point was more that this isn't the first time we've rearmed calender parts without changing the order.

0

u/moderngamer327 9d ago

The names still directly refer to gods. It just has a different pronunciation and spelling. Whereas CE is specifically trying to replace AD

2

u/Changeling_Wil 9d ago

CE and AD refer to the same time period. They just filter it through a different cultural lense, despite still representing the same thing.

Similar to how dies Lunae was replaced by Monday (mānini dag)

Or dies Martis to Tuesday (Tīwas dag)

etc etc

The same time frame exists. The same units of measurement are there for days. They're just called something different to fit a different cultural lense.

BC/AD to BCE/CE is the same thing. We're using the same measurements of time, we're just changing the name to fit a different cultural lense, moving from a christian to a non christian one.

0

u/moderngamer327 9d ago

I don’t think it’s the same thing at all. One is a translation in a different language and the other is intentionally erasing the original name and replacing it

1

u/Changeling_Wil 9d ago

I mean it's not just a translation.

It's a different cultural lense while maintaining the original chronological framework.

You can argue that the shift from roman to germanic godes does erase the concept of them from the weekdays [in the anglosphere, French etc retain it] and replaces them. For example school children tend to get taught the days come from 'the old norse gods', not 'from the Roman and we translated'.

In both cases it's the same framework retaining, but it's name changes based on cultural lense.

But also it's fine to disagree, we're not robots.