ABSTRACT
Formal systems of keeping time developed gradually in the form of official calendars and from the start their function and meaning went beyond organizing activities and regulating public time. Calendars were intertwined with authority, economics, politics, and religion. In the Middle Ages, the Christian liturgical calendar was grafted onto the Julian one, and the computation of lunar festivals like Easter, which falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, exercised some of the best minds in Christendom. The Egyptian Calendar Scholars agree that the Egyptians made an outstanding contribution to the science of time. M. R. Salzman explored the topic of Roman time to find out the functions a Roman calendar served in society. Salzman notes that the Romans recognized early in their history the need to regulate their activities, a function that would be the first step in establishing a calendar.
