But if the shifting sabbath is old, the question arises whether analogous periods exist in primitive time-reckoning. Certainly they do, and they are periods of a quite definite nature,--the market-weeks. There are market-weeks of three, four, five, six, eight, and ten days: that seven does not appear in any example must therefore be an accident. The market-week is spread over the whole earth at a more advanced stage of civilisation. The market-day is a rest-day, since the people go to the market: since they rest and gather together it is therefore a festival day. So also with the Roman _nundinae_, on which no public meetings were held and the schools were closed. The dispute of Roman scholars as to whether the _nundinae_ were religious festival-days or business-days is significant[1113]. Since the market-day is a day of rest, however, it is also, as in West Africa, made a taboo day on which work is forbidden. The connexion between the market and religion is universal and appears particularly clearly in heathen Arabia[1114]. It is true that no market-day is attested for ancient Canaan, but even in pre-Israelitish times the land was already covered with towns, so that the conditions for regular markets were the same as in ancient Greece and Rome. From post-Biblical times at least three great annual markets are known; one was held at the terebinth of Hebron, which was at the same time the object of a cult. In Midrash it is allowed to visit a heathen yearly market at the half-holidays of the Passover and of the feast of Tabernacles[1115]. Since the day was a rest-day, the command for rest might gradually, through a new interpretation, be applied to the original purpose of the market, viz. trade. In Amos VIII, 5 the traders complain:--“When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? And the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat? making the ephah small,” etc., but the command for the absolute sabbath’s rest was certainly not carried out at that time, nor yet in the time of Jeremiah[1116]; after the overthrow of the Jewish monarchy the trade of the markets on the sabbath revived, if indeed it had ever perished. Nehemiah, three centuries after Amos, has to give the injunction:--“ ... and if the peoples of the land bring ware or any victuals on the sabbath day to sell, that we would not buy of them on the sabbath, or on a holy day[1117],” and the breach of this law is sternly reprimanded:--“In those days saw I in Judah some treading wine-presses on the sabbath, and bringing in sheaves, and lading asses therewith; as also wine, grapes, and figs, and all manner of burdens, which they brought into Jerusalem on the sabbath day.... There dwelt men of Tyre also therein, which brought in fish, and all manner of ware, and sold on the sabbath unto the children of Judah, and in Jerusalem.” Nehemiah reproves the nobles:--“Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us,