We first see the documented appearance of the quinaries (by any other name) in an Egyptian myth involving a dice game between Thoth (Hermes-Mercury) and the moon goddess Khonsu. Thoth, the winner, was allotted 1/72nd of the moon’s light. This allowed him to create the five epagomenal days needed to complete the 365-day calendar. This intercalary period also allowed Nut to give birth to Osiris, Horus, Set, Isis, and Nephthys—thus completing the Enneadic pantheon. There is another early appearance of the quinaries in a 3rd century BC Babylonian text called the Salmeschiniaka (possibly “Book of Images”), where the year (~) is divided into seventy-two 5-day periods. This was likely the proto-astrological source of the doctrine as it entered astrological doctrine. Though the quinaries would not stay in the keeping of the Western astrological tradition for long. Horoscopic astrology favored segments such as the signs, bounds, and decans—the quinaries didn’t quite make it into the early Hellenistic iteration of the art. -