204 
These are supposed to be copies from still older Babylonian 
originals. 
Layard supposes, not without reason, that the edifices, of which 
the Birs Nimrood is a sample, and which consist of a series of 
steps or terraces, were constructed on astronomical principles.* 
When Josephus, in his “ Antiquities of the Jews,” describes the 
sun dial of Ahaz, mentioned in IT. Kings xxi. 9, he uses the words 
déxa Babwovs, or ten steps, which we translate ten degrees, and 
supposes them to be the steps which measured the hours, by the 
shadow cast upon them by the sun light falling on a gnomon, and 
St. Jerome conjectures that King Ahaz may have had a dial from 
Babylon, as he was fond of imitating foreign inventions. 
There is a Greek sun dial in the British Museum of peculiar 
form with the inscription PAIAPO ZOIAOY TAT ENOIESE, 
The lines marking the division of the day are very distinct. 
We learn from Pliny that previous to the first Punic War the 
Romans had a very simple method of ascertaining the legal mid- 
day. 
They observed the time when the sun was to be seen from the 
Curia, between the Rostra and the Greecostasis, and the suprema 
tempestas, which closed the hours of legal business, was announced 
when the sun, as observed from the Column of Menius, was 
sinking towards the prison. This could only be done in clear 
weather, and was afterwards superceded by the sun dial.t 
The Clepsydra or Water-clock was used as a measure of time 
by the Romans, and especially at the Races in the Circus 
Maximus. It is found represented on a bas-relief at the Mattei 
Palace in Rome, and an engraving from a gem in the possession of 
Mr. King, Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, is given 
in the Journal of the Archeological Institute, vol. xxi., p. 138. 
This method of measuring time was used originally by the 
* See Nineveh and Babylon, p. 498. 
+ See The Roman Forum, by F. M. Nicholls, M.A., F.S.A., p. 175-6. 
