section_path: Other calendars/Other calendars used by ancient Jews
section_name: Other calendars used by ancient Jews
paragraph_text: Other calendars used by ancient Jews
  
  Calendrical evidence for the postexilic Persian period is found in papyri from the Jewish colony at Elephantine, in Egypt. These documents show that the Jewish community of Elephantine used the Egyptian and Babylonian calendars.
  
  The Sardica paschal table shows that the Jewish community of some eastern city, possibly Antioch, used a calendrical scheme that kept Nisan 14 within the limits of the Julian month of March. Some of the dates in the document are clearly corrupt, but they can be emended to make the sixteen years in the table consistent with a regular intercalation scheme. Peter, the bishop of Alexandria (early 4th century CE), mentions that the Jews of his city "hold their Passover according to the course of the moon in the month of Phamenoth, or according to the intercalary month every third year in the month of Pharmuthi ", suggesting a fairly consistent intercalation scheme that kept Nisan 14 approximately between Phamenoth 10 (6 March in the 4th century CE) and Pharmuthi 10 (5 April).
  
  Jewish funerary inscriptions from Zoar (south of the Dead Sea), dated from the 3rd to the 5th century, indicate that when years were intercalated, the intercalary month was at least sometimes a repeated month of Adar. The inscriptions, however, reveal no clear pattern of regular intercalations, nor do they indicate any consistent rule for determining the start of the lunar month.