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History of Sundials

Why the Sun Dial keeps time

Developing and Making Sundials

Sundial Materials

Sundial Hour Lines Lay out

Sundial "Furniture"

Declination Lines of Sundials

Portable Sundials

Interesting Sundials of the World

DEVELOPMENT OF THE SUNDIAL - PAGE 5

The period of production is our only clue to the age of Egyptian sundials? Their makers are unknown. A con-temporary device?the clepsydra or water clock?made it possible to tell time at night or when the sun did not shine, by measuring or indicating the height of water in some receptacle from which the flow could be regulated. We must now retrace our steps a few centuries to pick up the threads of a lost sequence. Those who are familiar with their bibles will remember Ahaz was the King of Judah about 742-727 B.C. Perhaps you will even recall the "sundial of Ahaz", attributed to one of his Babylonian astronomers, which is mentioned twice in the scriptures:

In II Kings XX: 9-rr "And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord; and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the sundial of Ahaz." and in

Isaiah XXXVIII:8 "Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sundial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward. So the sun re-turned ten degrees, by which it had gone down?'

This phenomenal movement of the shadow on the sundial of Ahaz has given rise to as much discussion as the squaring of, the circle and the trisecting of any angle. For years, it has puzzled layman and scientist alike. The form of the sundial remains a matter of conjecture. More than a century after the reign of Ahaz we learn of a sundial erected, about 56o B.C., by Anaximander of Miletus (611.547 B.C.), a Grecian astronomer. This was probably a vertical rod or gnomon erected in the public square, similar to, but more carefully constructed than the upright stick of the caveman, because more information about the movement of celestial bodies was at hand as evidenced by the work of the Egyptians. The Chaldeans had made substantial progress in mathematics and astronomy. By constant observation of the heavens they became familiar with the constellations and saw in them the likenesses of human beings and animals; they divided that band in the sky called the "Zodiac", in which the sun and planets move, into twelve parts or signs each containing a configuration, named and referred to as the Zodiacal constellations.

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