Why Ethiopia's Calender is seven years late?

[Navy9]

People in Ethiopia are preparing to celebrate the New Year on 12th of September

Ahmed Zakaria, professor of history at Addis Ababa University says the reason is that the Roman Church amended their calculation in 500 AD - adjusting it by seven or eight years.

"So we are seven or eight years later than the Roman calculation, so that's the difference that came in."

The recalculation of the birth of Christ was just the first of a number of changes in the rest of the world which the Ethiopian church ignored.

It is partly because the country was so remote and isolated, but also, says the current patriarch, Abuna Paulos I, because Ethiopian Christians are intensely conservative.

"People are not inclined for any reformations, especially when it comes to religion.

"They are very much loyal - to change one sentence is a betrayal as far as they are concerned.

"So because of this, they have been isolated. They have been loyal to their faith and they have maintained their own traditions."

http://nazret.com/blog/index.php/2007/0 ... even_years

[934]

Interesting.

to the ethios.

[Knight of Wisdom]

Actually, one of my friends, an Amhara told me that, the reason Ethiopia's calendar is 7 years behind is because, they deducted the Gregorian Calendar from 7 years. Those 7 years they threw out was the 7 years the Italians occupied Ethiopia as a whole.

They want to have a clean sheet of record.