The earliest date for which the day of the week is known. A graffito in Pompeii identifies this day as a dies Solis (Sunday). In modern reckoning, this date would have been a Wednesday. However, according to the system of astrological hours that was originally used to designate the days of the week, a day that was dies Solis according to its sunset hour would have been dies Mercurii (Wednesday) according to its sunrise hour, the convention that finally won out. Accordingly, we know that the currently used cycle of weeks has extended unbroken since at least this date.
Pompeii (, Latin: [pmpei.i]) was an ancient city located in what is now the comune of Pompei near Naples in the Campania region of Italy. Pompeii, along with Herculaneum and many villas in the surrounding area (e.g. at Boscoreale, Stabiae), was buried under 4 to 6 m (13 to 20 ft) of volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.
Largely preserved under the ash, the excavated city offered a unique snapshot of Roman life, frozen at the moment it was buried, although much of the detailed evidence of the everyday life of its inhabitants was lost in the excavations. It was a wealthy town, with a population of ca. 11,000 in AD 79, enjoying many fine public buildings and luxurious private houses with lavish decorations, furnishings and works of art which were the main attractions for the early excavators. Organic remains, including wooden objects and human bodies, were entombed in the ash. Over time, they decayed, leaving voids that archaeologists found could be used as moulds to make plaster casts of unique, and often gruesome, figures in their final moments of life. The numerous graffiti carved on the walls and inside rooms provide a wealth of examples of the largely lost Vulgar Latin spoken colloquially at the time, contrasting with the formal language of the classical writers.
Pompeii is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Italy, with approximately 2.5 million visitors annually.After many excavations prior to 1960 that had uncovered most of the city but left it in decay, further major excavations were banned and instead they were limited to targeted, prioritised areas. In 2018, these led to new discoveries in some previously unexplored areas of the city.
A week is a time unit equal to seven days. It is the standard time period used for cycles of rest days in most parts of the world, mostly alongside—although not strictly part of—the Gregorian calendar.
In many languages, the days of the week are named after classical planets or gods of a pantheon. In English, the names are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, then returning to Monday. Such a week may be called a planetary week. Occasionally, this arrangement is instead similar to a week in the New Testament in which the seven days are simply numbered with the first day being a Christian day of worship (aligned with Sunday, offset from ISO 8601 by one day) and the seventh day being a sabbath day (Saturday). This is based on the Jewish week as reflected in the Hebrew Bible (also appears as the Old Testament in the Christian Bible). The Hebrew Bible offers the explanation that God created the world in six days. The first day is then given the literal name First (in Hebrew: ראשון), the second being called Second (שני) and so forth for the first six days, with the exception of the seventh and final day, which rather than be called Seventh (שביעי), is called Shabbat (שבת) from the word לשבות (to rest). The biblical text states this is because that was the day when God rested from his work of creating the world. Shabbat (equivalent to Saturday) therefore became the day of worship and rest in Jewish tradition and the last day of the week, while the following day, Sunday, is the first one in the Hebrew week. Thousands of years later, these names are still the names of the weekdays in Hebrew, and this week construct is still the one observed in Jewish tradition.
While, for example, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Israel, Japan and other countries consider Sunday as the first day of the week, and while the week begins with Saturday in much of the Middle East, the international ISO 8601 standard and most of Europe has Monday as the first day of the week. The Geneva-based ISO standards organization uses Monday as the first day of the week in its ISO week date system.
The term "week" is sometimes expanded to refer to other time units comprising a few days, such as the nundinal cycle of the ancient Roman calendar, the "work week" or "school week" referring only to the days spent on those activities.