Ethiopian Calendar

Ethiopia gears up for millennium party
© afrol News / UNWTOafrol News, 15 January -

Ethiopia is still living in the year 1999, according to its own calendar, meaning that Ethiopians can look forward to yet another millennium party later this year. And authorities are planning a magnificent celebration for citizens and the many expected foreign visitors; launching projects worth birr 290 million (euro 26 million).

The Ethiopian calendar is unique in the world, developed by the indigenous Coptic church leaning on ancient Egyptian astronomic calculations, the Jewish calendar and the Julian calendar - adopted under Julius Caesar and the root of all Christian date calculators. Europe in 1582 shifted to the Gregorian calendar, now putting most of us in January 2007.

According to the Ethiopian calendar, we are in mid-1999. Here, "the year is divided into 12 months of 30 days each and a 13th month of 5 days and 6 days in leap year," the Ethiopian Ministry of Culture explains. The Ethiopian calendar is 7 and a half year behind the Gregorian calendar, also having 365 days in a normal year and 366 days in each leap year, so the distance remains almost constant.

According to Harvard University Professor Ephraim Isaac, most scholars that have studied Biblical times agree that the Ethiopian calendar is much closer than the Gregorian to start its calculations of time around the birth of Jesus Christ. Some put this event in the year 0 of the Ethiopian calendar, while most historians hold the founder of Christianity was born in year 3 of the same calendar - or year 5 in the Gregorian.

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