Creations El Sol Inc.

Website Links

Description

SUNDIAL HISTORY The sundial was humanity's first technology for precisely marking the passage of time. Not only have sundials achieved this practical goal, but their replication of the heavens has also provided aesthetic and even spiritual satisfaction. This is not easy to comprehend nowadays, since most sundials have become little more than garden ornaments and are not usually very accurate -- even though it is relatively easy to construct an accurate sundial. Before the first sundials were built, the sun itself was used as a clock. This method would be of little use in today's world for getting to your dental appointment at just the right time. In the ancient world, however, it was good enough. The history of sundials begins with simple sticks stuck in the ground. The resulting shadow was used as a rough but reliable means to tell the time. There is no way to know how long this method might have been employed, but it certainly stretches back into the very distant past. Whether this crude technology really deserves to be called a sundial is open to interpretation. THE ANCIENT WORLD The real history of sundials begins with the Egyptians, for whom the sun was central to life itself. It's not surprising that the same civilization that invented the solar calendar would also give us the sundial. Cities and trade had been firmly established, so the need for more precision in telling time had arrived. A piece of a sundial that calibrated the location of the gnomon's shadow is dated to about 1500 B.C., during the reign of Thutmose III. In order to differentiate between the morning hours and afternoon hours, the position of this T-shaped sundial had to be reversed 180 degrees at noon. A big step in sundial design was taken when the first round sundials that more closely resemble ours appeared in Egypt in about 1300 B.C. The Babylonians, who were renowned astronomers, built and used sundials soon after the Egyptians, so the sundial of Ahaz may have been of either Egyptian or Babylonian design. Their treatises on sundials were the definitive statements on the subject for over a millennium, right up until the Christian era. The sundial of Ahaz is mentioned in the Old Testament (Isaiah 38:8) and dates from around 730 B.C. This is the oldest known written reference to a sundial. THE GREEKS AND ROMANS The Greeks and Romans also used sundials extensively. The indicator on the sundial that casts the shadow is still known by the Greek word "gnomon," which means pointer. The use of towers and obelisks as gnomons to cast shadows indicating the hours of the day was very evident in ancient Greece and Rome. Sundials were found in houses, tombs, temples, baths and other public places. Not everyone was happy about the prevalence of sundials in ancient Greece, as the following quote shows: "The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish hours. Confound him, too! Who in this place set up a sundial to cut and hack my days so wretchedly Into small pieces! When I was a boy, my belly was my sundial - one more sure, truer, and more exact than any of them. This dial told me when 'twas proper time to go to dinner, when I had ought to eat.

Products & services