Instruments · Sundial
Sundial, Anatolia (Asia Minor), 100 CE – 200 CE
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- 100 CE – 200 CE
- Historical period
- Classical Antiquity (500 BCE – 500 CE)
- Country of origin
- Anatolia (Asia Minor)
- Place
- Pergame = Bergama
- Object type
- Sundial
- Materials / technique
- marble
- Dimensions
- height 55,5 cm; width 19,7 cm; thickness 18 cm
- Holding institution
- Musée du Louvre, Paris
- Accession / object no.
- ED 2721
- Credit line
- Musée du Louvre, Département des Antiquités grecques, étrusques et romaines
- Catalogue title (original)
- cadran solaire (French)
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Record summary
Held and catalogued by Musée du Louvre, Paris (object number ED 2721), this is a sundial, made in Pergame = Bergama, Anatolia (Asia Minor), dated 100 CE – 200 CE. The Atlas places it in the Classical Antiquity period (500 BCE – 500 CE) of its Instruments collection. Materials and techniques recorded by the source: marble. Recorded dimensions: height 55,5 cm; width 19,7 cm; thickness 18 cm. The record is illustrated with 2 photographs.
Assembled from the source record's structured fields. Dates and attributions are given as the source states them; where a field is missing the Atlas leaves it blank rather than estimating.
Catalogue description
Catalogue description — Musée du Louvre (French)
support (2, en forme de) ; griffon (patte) Décor : sur côté (2) ; cadre (incluant, rinceau, surmonté de) ; palmette ; devant ; fleuron sur base (devant) ; bouclier (?) Etat de l'oeuvre : entier. Éclats sur les pointes du cadran. Restes du gnomon en bronze.
Shown in the original language of the source catalogue. An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.
Dating and period as catalogued (French)
Epoque / période : romain impérial · · Date de création/fabrication : IIe s. ap. J.-C. (100 - 200)
Shown in the original language of the source catalogue. An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.
Materials and techniques as catalogued (French)
Matériau : marbre · Technique : taillé, haut-relief (sculpture) (les pattes sont exécutées en haut-relief), bas-relief (sculpture) (les rinceaux, les palmettes, le bouclier sont exécutées en bas-relief), incisé = incision (les lignes du cadran sont incisées)
Shown in the original language of the source catalogue. An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.
Historical context
Classical Antiquity (500 BCE – 500 CE)
Greek and Roman engineers refine the clepsydra; Ctesibius adds float regulation; the Antikythera mechanism models the heavens.
Greek astronomy produced the theory behind sundials and the astrolabe; the Antikythera mechanism (second or first century BCE) shows the sophistication of Hellenistic geared astronomical models.
Read the period in the timelineMore instruments from this periodEarlier: Ancient Civilizations
Atlas type guide
Sundials and solar time-finders
A sundial tells time from the position of a shadow cast by a gnomon or style. Because the sun's apparent motion depends on latitude, every fixed dial is laid out for a particular latitude, and portable dials either carry a latitude scale or are made for one region. Sundials show local apparent solar time, which drifts against mean (clock) time by up to about sixteen minutes over the year — the equation of time.
Portable dials were the pocket instruments of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Nuremberg and Augsburg workshops produced folding ivory diptych dials with inset compasses; English and French makers sold brass horizontal dials, ring dials and the Butterfield type; Japanese and Chinese makers had their own traditions of compass dials. After mechanical watches became reliable, dials remained in use for setting them, and nineteenth-century heliochronometers were built to correct directly for the equation of time.
What to look for
- The latitude engraved on the dial plate or a latitude arc on the gnomon — it shows where the dial was meant to be used.
- The type of hour lines: equal (equinoctial) hours, Italian or Babylonian hours counted from sunset or sunrise, or unequal temporal hours on early and Islamic instruments.
- An inset magnetic compass and whether a magnetic-declination mark is drawn on its card — a useful dating clue because declination changes over time.
- Maker's signatures and town marks: Nuremberg compass-makers (Kompassmacher) often struck a personal mark and the town's punch.
- Additional scales such as lunar volvelles, wind roses, perpetual calendars or lists of cities with their latitudes.
Dating clues
- Ivory diptych dials are characteristic of Nuremberg between about 1500 and 1700.
- Butterfield-type dials with a bird-shaped adjustable gnomon point to Paris workshops from the late seventeenth century onward.
- Equation-of-time tables engraved on the plate became common after the mid-seventeenth century, once pendulum clocks made the difference between solar and mean time obvious.
General guidance written by the Atlas editors about this kind of object. It is not a statement about this particular piece; for that, rely on the source record above and on physical examination.
Read next:The history timeline
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