2025 Day 16: Day of Jupiter

2025-0116h-0001 Austin, TX

Day 16 of 2025 is a Thursday, from the Germanic tribes’ Thor’s Day. Thor is a thunder god similar to Jupiter and Zeus. The Babylonians associated Jupiter with their most powerful god, Marduk.

The research I have done these last few days has connected me culturally with the past. I don’t remember learning much history as a child. I was fascinated by numbers and hated memorizing the British kings and various dates of wars. Now, I have a greater appreciation for this knowledge. Here is a table summarizing the early Mesopotamian peoples and their deities tied to celestial bodies. The celestial bodies are in Chaldean order based on their apparent speed from slowest to fastest. This ordering, and the assignment of these objects to hours in the day, gave rise to the Babylonian calculation of a “ruling body”. Since 24 hours in a day, and 24/7 having a remainder of 3, then the days of the week get named for the bodies Saturn, Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus. Notice this pattern of “skip two” in the Chaldean order below.

Deities of ancient Mesopotamians

Peoples/City-States	Saturn	Jupiter	Mars	Sun	Venus	Mercury	Moon
Sumerians	Ninurta	Enlil	Nergal	Utu	Inanna	Ningishzida	Nanna
Akkadians/ Babylonians	Ninurta	Marduk	Nergal	Shamash	Ishtar	Nabû	Sin
Ugaritic	El	Baal (Hadad)	Anat (Resheph)	Shapash	Astarte	Kothar-wa-Khasis	Yarikh
Phoenicians	Baal Hammon	Baal Shamin	Resheph	Shapash	Astarte	Eshmun	Yarikh
Parthians	Zurvan	Mithra	Verethragna	Hvare-khshaeta	Anahita	Tishtrya	Mah (Maonghah)

It quite amazing to me that ancient Mesopotamian astrologers had such an influence on the calendar days of the week that the world uses today. That is quite some powerful universe surfing that someone did way back then.