TIME-KEEPING IN GREECE AND ROME. 381 



it from E^ypt i.s a g:iiess only, based on the supposed earlier growth of 

 Egyptian science. To such a guess might be opposed the fiict that in 

 all the Egyptian monuments yet explored there is no hint of such an 

 instrument. 



The Assyrian monuments are equally silent; and the same specula- 

 tion which attempts to account for the absence of all representation of 

 a sun dial in the sculptures which have revealed to us so much of the 

 domestic life of the Assyrian people applies to Egypt also. We may 

 believe that it was not a device generally known or commonly used. 

 Very likely the knowledge of it was confined to the priests and magi, 

 who were not only ministers of the religion of each country, but the 

 masters of its science. This device constituted a part of their mystery 

 and was religiously kept from the public knowledge. In support of this 

 conjecture it may be said that the Phtenicians, who penetrated every 

 land, dealt in every merchantable commodity, and from their active com- 

 mercial habits were the very persons who would have found the use of 

 a time-piece most valuable, do not appear to have known of any such 

 instrumentality; but the inner temples of Thebes and Babylon were not 

 opeu to those hardy mariners, and the exhumations of Cyprus reveal 

 no more to us than those of Nimroud and Memphis. 



It is scarcely profitable to grope in the darkness for the origin of the 

 sun-dial; but certain facts are apparent and may be briefly indicated. 

 In Egypt and Assyria observation of the heavenly bodies was a part of 

 the religious cult. The regulation of the calendar belonged to the min- 

 isters of religion. For the regulation of the calendar, which of course 

 involved the determination of the length of the year, the recurrence of 

 the solstices must be noted ; and these could only be noted by observa- 

 tion of the day when the shadow cast by the sun at noon was at its 

 maximum or minimum. The observation of shadows for the determi- 

 nation of noon led (it could scarcely be avoided) to their further ob- 

 servation during the entire ])eriod of the sun above the horizon, and, at 

 last, to marking the surface on which the shadow was cast by perma- 

 nent lines dividing the day into some kind of regular parts. All this 

 might be done as a matter of scientific observation without conscious 

 need of a time-piece. 



The sun-dial took many forms, and more than one of these may have 

 been known to the Babylonians. The art of dialing involved mathe- 

 matical problems of considerable (;omi)lexity, and the study of this art 

 very likely contributed to the knowledge of mathematics that the world 

 possesse<l at that early period. The consideration of these forms is not . 

 germane to my present purpose, which is for the moment only to show 

 that long before the api)earance of the sun-dial in (xreece the instru- 

 ment had been apparently perfected by the wise men of the East. 



Historians have agreed in fixing the period of the introduction of the 

 sun-dial intodreece in the latter part of the sixth century u. c. Herod- 

 otus says it was derived from the Babylonians, from whom he also 



