Table Of ContentDown to the Hour: Short Time in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East
Time, Astronomy, and Calendars
Texts and Studies
Editors
Charles Burnett
Sacha Stern
Editorial Board
Dáibhí Ó Cróinín
Benno van Dalen
Gad Freudenthal
Tony Grafton
Leofranc Holford Strevens
Bernard R. Goldstein
Alexander Jones
Daryn Lehoux
Jörg Rüpke
Julio Samsó
Shlomo Sela
John Steele
VOLUME 8
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/tac
Down to the Hour: Short Time
in the Ancient Mediterranean
and Near East
Edited by
Kassandra J. Miller
Sarah L. Symons
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: Original artwork by Kenneth Jackson depicting (top to bottom) Babylonian astronomical
tablets, Sol Invictus, a water clock, an ancient Egyptian lunar deity, star clocks, and Ahura Mazda, all within a
sundial’s grid. © Kenneth Jackson.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Miller, Kassandra J., editor. | Symons, Sarah L., editor.
Title: Down to the hour : short time in the ancient Mediterranean and Near
East / edited by Kassandra J. Miller, Sarah L. Symons.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2020] | Series: Time, astronomy, and
calendars 2211-632X ; volume 8 | Short time: measuring time at the
sub-day level (e.g., hours, minutes). | Includes bibliographical
references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019039734 (print) | LCCN 2019039735 (ebook) |
ISBN 9789004373471 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004416291 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Time measurements—History. | Statistical astronomy. |
Clocks and watches--History.
Classification: LCC QB213 .D77 2020 (print) | LCC QB213 (ebook) |
DDC 529/.70938—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019039734
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019039735
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
ISSN 2211-632X
ISBN 978-90-04-37347-1 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-41629-1 (e-book)
Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi,
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
List of Illustrations Viii
Notes on Editors and Contributors x
Introduction 1
1 Sun and Stars: Astronomical Timekeeping in Ancient Egypt 14
Sarah L. Symons
2 The Ancient Egyptian Water Clock between Religious Significance and
Scientific Functionality 52
Alexandra von Lieven and Anette Schomberg
3 Short Time in Mesopotamia 90
John Steele
4 Greco-Roman Sundials: Precision and Displacement 125
Alexander Jones
5 Cosmology and Ideal Society: the Division of the Day into Hours in
Plato’s Laws 158
Barbara M. Sattler
6 Diurnal Selves in Ancient Rome 184
James Ker
7 Time, Punctuality, and Chronotopes: Concepts and Attitudes Concerning
Short Time in Ancient Rome 214
Anja Wolkenhauer
8 Short Time in Greco-Roman Astrology 239
Stephan Heilen
9 Hourly Timekeeping and the Problem of Irregular Fevers 271
Kassandra Jackson Miller
Index 293
Acknowledgments
The idea for this volume first germinated in 2015 when Kassandra Jackson Miller
(then at the University of Chicago) and the late Robert Germany (Haverford)
decided to organize a panel on “Representations of Time in the Hellenistic and
Roman Worlds” at the 2016 annual meeting of the Society for Classical Studies.
This panel, which also featured papers by Alexander Jones and Barbara Sattler,
was so stimulating that the four speakers felt a follow-up conference was need-
ed, which would allow them to dig more deeply into the material and involve
more voices in the conversation. Thus, in February 2017, they reconvened at
the University of Chicago for a conference, organized by Miller, called “Down
to the Hour: Perspectives on Short Time in the Ancient Mediterranean.” The
chapters of the present volume represent revised versions of papers delivered
at this conference, as well as pieces specially commissioned from other experts.
We are grateful to the many individuals and institutions without whom this
project might never have come to fruition. The Society for Classical Studies
and the Franke Institute for the Humanities at the University of Chicago
provided us with important venues in which our ideas could be developed.
New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, as well as
University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, Fishbein Center for the History of
Science and Medicine, Center for the Study of Ancient Religion, Stevanovich
Institute for the Formation of Knowledge, and the departments of Classics and
of Near Eastern Languages & Literature contributed funding to the conference
at the University of Chicago and thereby helped us to bring participants to the
United States from Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Many thanks
are owed to Prof. Christopher Faraone (University of Chicago), who helped
to facilitate the conference and advised the editors of this volume at critical
junctures along the way, and to Giulia Moriconi, Assistant Editor of Classical
Studies for Brill, who has guided us through the publication process. We would
also like to thank the Israel Institute for Advanced Study, which hosted several
of our contributors as part of its working group on “The Day Unit in Antiquity
and the Middle Ages,” led by Profs. Sacha Stern and Jonathan Ben-Dov.
The editors wish to express their gratitude to the contributors to this vol-
ume, to the other colleagues who attended or participated in the activities out
of which this volume grew, and to our families who supported us throughout
the editorial process.
Our final thanks must be reserved for Robert Germany, who did not live to
see this volume completed. His sudden death in 2017 saddened the authorial
team deeply. His future contributions to the field must surely have enriched it,
and we dedicate this volume to his memory.
Illustrations
Tables
1.1 Twelve characteristics of timekeeping methods, divided into three groups, that
can be used to compare methodologies. 15
1.2 Concave sundials from ancient Egyptian cultural areas, including their identi-
fiers in two databases. 23
4.1 Analyses of eleven roofed spherical sundials. 150
7.1 History of time measurement in Rome according to Pliny, Naturalis Historia 7,
212–215. 219
8.1 The “Egyptian terms” of the planets. 250
8.2 Greek horoscopes containing claims to accuracy. 256
8.3 Astronomical longitudes in P. Lond. 130. 259
9.1 The pattern of paroxysms experienced by the patient within the first five days
of his illness, and Galen’s attribution of them to particular tertians. 278
9.2 The paroxysms of what Galen identifies as Tertian 1. 279
Figures
Sources for figures are in italics. If no source is given, the figure was constructed by the
chapter author.
1.1 Arrangement of six attested hieroglyph shapes. (Hieroglyphs redrawn from Dau-
mas 1995.) 18
1.2 Neugebauer and Parker’s geometric scheme for locating the “decanal belt.”
(Based on figures from Neugebauer and Parker 1960.) 31
1.3 The problem of mixed-magnitude decans. 33
2.1 Different views of the outside decoration of the oldest preserved water clock
from Karnak, bearing the names of Amenhotep III. (Neugebauer and Parker
1969, pl. 2 by kind permission of Brown University.) 59
2.2 Ceiling in the Ramesseum, showing the template of a water clock, with the
Classical Sky Picture above and the king (Ramesses II) offering to the deities of
the months below. (After Neugebauer and Parker 1969, pl. 5 by kind permission of
Brown University.) 60–61
2.3 Interior of the Karnak clock with hour scales. (Desroches-Noblecourt
1976, 141) 64
2.4 Hour scales of the Karnak clock. 75
2.5 3-D-model of the clock in the Museo Barracco in Rome. 78
Illustrations ix
4.1 Seasonal hour-boundary points of a horizontal sundial for latitude 41°, com-
puted for all solar declinations corresponding to the Sun’s entry into a
zodiacal sign. 134
4.2 The hour-boundary points of Figure 4.1 superimposed on the grid of a horizon-
tal sundial from Pompeii, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv.
2476. 134
4.3 The hour-boundary points of Figure 4.1 superimposed on the grid of a horizon-
tal sundial from Pompeii, Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di
Napoli e Pompei inv. 49725. 134
4.4 The grid of the east-facing sundial on the Tower of the Winds, Athens. 136
4.5 Grid for a roofed spherical sundial for latitude 48°, projected into the
equatorial plane. 136
4.6 The central Mediterranean, with Rome, Catania, and the fictitious Para-
Catania. (Source for map: http://d-maps.com/m/mediterranean/meditmin/medit-
min03.svg.) 139
4.7 Grid of a horizontal sundial computed for the latitude of Catania (fine black
lines) superimposed on a grid computed for Rome’s latitude (thick gray
lines). 142
4.8 Orthographic image of the BSDP digital model of the dial surface of Pompeii
Granario inv. 52789. 146
4.9 Digital model of the dial surface with planar slices removed. 146
4.10 Orthogonal image of the sliced model in a plane parallel to the slices, with con-
centric reference circles in black. 146
4.11 Orthogonal image of the sundial surface bisected along the
meridian plane. 148
4.12 The orthogonal image from Figure 4.11 with lines traced for Tests 2 and 3. 148
4.13 Orthogonal image of the dial surface in the equatorial plane. 149
4.14 The dial surface as in Figure 4.12, with ideal grid for latitude 41°
superimposed. 149
8.1 a) CIL IX.5808 (© Famiglia Leopardi Recanati). b) Graphic reconstruction
(Mommsen 1883, 556). 245
Notes on Editors and Contributors
Editor and contributing author Kassandra Jackson Miller is a Visiting Assistant
Professor of Classics at Bard College, New York. Her research is in the areas of
ancient religion, magic, and medicine, with a focus on timekeeping.
Editor and contributing author Sarah L. Symons is an Associate Professor in
the School of Interdisciplinary Science, McMaster University, Canada. Her re-
search in history of astronomy concentrates on interpreting astronomical texts
and instruments from ancient Egypt and investigating how the night sky was
perceived, explained, and depicted.
Alexandra von Lieven
is an Extracurricular Professor at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster.
Her research interests focus on ancient Egyptian religion, science, and cultural
history, particularly on Religious Astronomy.
Anette Schomberg
is part of a research group in the Topoi Excellence Cluster at the Humboldt-
Universität, Berlin, investigating the unequal armed balance in antiquity. She
is also developing a database of ancient water clocks.
John Steele
is Professor of the History of the Exact Sciences in Antiquity and Chair of the
Department of Egyptology and Assyriology at Brown University, Rhode Island.
His research focuses on the history of Babylonian astronomy and astrology and
its reception in other cultures.
Alexander Jones
is the Director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (New
York University). He studies the history and transmission of the mathemati-
cal sciences, especially astronomy, in antiquity, with particular focus on the
Greco-Roman world.
Barbara M. Sattler
is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of St Andrews, UK. The
main area of her research is metaphysics and natural philosophy in the ancient
Greek world, especially with the Presocratics, Plato, and Aristotle.
