Instruments · Sundial
Sundial, Egypt, 150 BCE – 75 BCE
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- 150 BCE – 75 BCE
- Historical period
- Classical Antiquity (500 BCE – 500 CE)
- Country of origin
- Egypt
- Place
- Alexandrie
- Object type
- Sundial
- Materials / technique
- marble
- Dimensions
- height 59 cm; diameter 55 cm; depth 6 cm
- Holding institution
- Musée du Louvre, Paris
- Accession / object no.
- MND 1586
- Credit line
- Bibliothèque nationale de France, Cabinet des Médailles, Paris
- Catalogue title (original)
- cadran solaire (French)
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Record summary
Held and catalogued by Musée du Louvre, Paris (object number MND 1586), this is a sundial, made in Alexandrie, Egypt, dated 150 BCE – 75 BCE. 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 59 cm; diameter 55 cm; depth 6 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)
bouclier Etat de l'oeuvre : entier-moins partis du tenon inférieur
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 An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.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 : hellénistique · · Date de création/fabrication : 2e moitié IIe s. av. J.-C. ; 1e quart Ie s. av. J.-C. (-150 - -75)
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 An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.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, incisé = incision · Précision technique : incisions(lignes du cadran)-deux trous pour le gnomon-revers plat
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 An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.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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