Instruments · Water clock
Water clock, Egypt, 332 BCE – 30 BCE
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- 332 BCE – 30 BCE
- Historical period
- Classical Antiquity (500 BCE – 500 CE)
- Country of origin
- Egypt
- Object type
- Water clock
- Dimensions
- height 9,6 cm; width 10,1 cm; thickness 2,95 cm
- Holding institution
- Musée du Louvre, Paris
- Accession / object no.
- N 664
- Credit line
- Musée du Louvre, Département des Antiquités égyptiennes
- Catalogue title (original)
- horloge à eau (French)
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Record summary
Held and catalogued by Musée du Louvre, Paris (object number N 664), this is a water clock, made in Egypt, dated 332 BCE – 30 BCE. The Atlas places it in the Classical Antiquity period (500 BCE – 500 CE) of its Instruments collection. Recorded dimensions: height 9,6 cm; width 10,1 cm; thickness 2,95 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)
Décor : frise d'étoiles ; constellation (Orion)
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 An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.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)
Date de création/fabrication : époque ptolémaïque (attribution d'après style) (-332 - -30)
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 An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.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 : granodiorite · Couleur : noir
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 An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.
Inscriptions & marks
Écriture : ; hiéroglyphique ; Nature du texte : ; nom de naissance ; texte astronomique
Provenance
Ancienne collection Denon vendue en 1827 (n° 187 du catalogue de vente) ; achetée à cette vente par Dubois pour le compte du Louvre.
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
Water, fire and incense clocks
Before the mechanical clock, intervals and hours were measured by flow and combustion. Outflow and inflow water clocks were used in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, China and the Islamic world; Chinese and Japanese incense clocks burned powdered incense along a maze-like path; oil-lamp clocks with graduated glass reservoirs were popular in German-speaking Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
These timekeepers needed constant correction and could not keep the hour automatically for long periods, but they underpinned temple ritual, legal procedure, astronomy and the earliest monumental astronomical clocks such as Su Song's clock tower (1090s) and al-Jazari's designs (1206).
What to look for
- Graduated vessels or glass reservoirs with hour scales.
- Incense trays with stencils for laying the powder trail.
- Pewter oil-lamp clocks with a glass reservoir marked in Roman numerals.
Dating clues
- Oil-lamp clocks are mostly eighteenth century and often reproduced later.
- Incense clocks were made in China and Japan into the twentieth century.
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:Su Song's astronomical clock tower
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