Watches In The Antiquity
The desire of people to measure time to organize and tame it, has a long history. The basis for this desire was the astronomy. Already in the 5th Millennium before the Western era began Egyptian scholars were dealing with the problems of creating a calendar.
The start of the Mayan calendar is in the 4th Millennium BC. About 3000 years before Christ things were largely independent of another, the sky over Babylon, Egypt, India and China was systematically observed. Cheops, the Egyptian king of the 4th Dynasty, had his tomb built oriented after the stars. Excavations at Troy in the oldest layer, which dates from 2850 BC, revelaled a chiseled sun-moon-calendar ballot lid. The Babylonians divided the solar orbit in the zodiac around 1200 BC.
In the 8th century BC, astronomers had such high certitude in the determination of the movement of the heavenly bodies, that the Assyrian king Assurbanipal looked inspired to found the famous clay tablet library in Nineveh, which in the contemporary knowledge has been preserved for Astronomy. The knowledge was so precise that supposedly Thales of Miletus was able to predict the first solar eclipse in the West in 585 BC.
The sky was mysterious and both revealing, time was something divine. A special role in God's heaven was always played by the sun. Therefore it is no wonder that the sun's shade was probably the first human artifact, with the help of which they started to explore the phenomenon of time. The sun shade in the form of a shadow from obelisks or rods was observed with increasing interest and systematized over time. Sundials with shadow bar and scale were in use in the 3rd Millennium BC, even if only in the 3rd Century BC that they managed to solve the problem of the construction according to the geographical latitude.
The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the invention of the sundial was made by the Babylonians. Today, we are not sure if this invention can be determined in time and space clearly. But we know very much about the sundials of the Egyptians, for example the "Needle of Cleopatra" one of two calendar columns which dates from 1500 BC. Starting with Egypt, sundials spread over Greece in the Roman Empire. Supposedly it was Thales' pupil Anaximander, who probably built the oldest Greek sundial 546 BC. The first sundial in Rome was erected 262 BC. Nearly 250 years later, described by the Roman architect Vitruvius and chronicler in his standard work "De Architectura" were already 13 different types of sundials.
The water clocks or evan hourglasses were in many cases more accurate than their competitors and had the immense advantage of weather and daylight independence. In addition, the Chaldeans showed in the 1st Millennium BC, that they were multifunctional - they developed a closed system of measurement in the form of a water-filled cubes, time, weight and length measurements were made possible by one product. Some 900 years later, only the Greeks in Athens succeeded to unite the sun and the water meter in the form of the "Tower of the Winds". It was a student of Archimedes, a barber named Ktesibios, which applied the laws of hydraulics and mechanics on watches, in the 2nd Century BC building a water meter dial with much improved accuracy.
The Babylonians divided the year according to the structure of the magic circle still at only 360 parts or days, the Egyptians introduced in 238 BC, the solar year of 365 1 / 4 days without switching.
The start of the Mayan calendar is in the 4th Millennium BC. About 3000 years before Christ things were largely independent of another, the sky over Babylon, Egypt, India and China was systematically observed. Cheops, the Egyptian king of the 4th Dynasty, had his tomb built oriented after the stars. Excavations at Troy in the oldest layer, which dates from 2850 BC, revelaled a chiseled sun-moon-calendar ballot lid. The Babylonians divided the solar orbit in the zodiac around 1200 BC.
In the 8th century BC, astronomers had such high certitude in the determination of the movement of the heavenly bodies, that the Assyrian king Assurbanipal looked inspired to found the famous clay tablet library in Nineveh, which in the contemporary knowledge has been preserved for Astronomy. The knowledge was so precise that supposedly Thales of Miletus was able to predict the first solar eclipse in the West in 585 BC.
The sky was mysterious and both revealing, time was something divine. A special role in God's heaven was always played by the sun. Therefore it is no wonder that the sun's shade was probably the first human artifact, with the help of which they started to explore the phenomenon of time. The sun shade in the form of a shadow from obelisks or rods was observed with increasing interest and systematized over time. Sundials with shadow bar and scale were in use in the 3rd Millennium BC, even if only in the 3rd Century BC that they managed to solve the problem of the construction according to the geographical latitude.
The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the invention of the sundial was made by the Babylonians. Today, we are not sure if this invention can be determined in time and space clearly. But we know very much about the sundials of the Egyptians, for example the "Needle of Cleopatra" one of two calendar columns which dates from 1500 BC. Starting with Egypt, sundials spread over Greece in the Roman Empire. Supposedly it was Thales' pupil Anaximander, who probably built the oldest Greek sundial 546 BC. The first sundial in Rome was erected 262 BC. Nearly 250 years later, described by the Roman architect Vitruvius and chronicler in his standard work "De Architectura" were already 13 different types of sundials.
The water clocks or evan hourglasses were in many cases more accurate than their competitors and had the immense advantage of weather and daylight independence. In addition, the Chaldeans showed in the 1st Millennium BC, that they were multifunctional - they developed a closed system of measurement in the form of a water-filled cubes, time, weight and length measurements were made possible by one product. Some 900 years later, only the Greeks in Athens succeeded to unite the sun and the water meter in the form of the "Tower of the Winds". It was a student of Archimedes, a barber named Ktesibios, which applied the laws of hydraulics and mechanics on watches, in the 2nd Century BC building a water meter dial with much improved accuracy.
The Babylonians divided the year according to the structure of the magic circle still at only 360 parts or days, the Egyptians introduced in 238 BC, the solar year of 365 1 / 4 days without switching.
