The History of the Sundial.
CHAPTER I.
Who shall discover the age of the sundial, or fix with certainty the year in which ye horologe was first invented to record the passing of the day or perchance the hour? The archives of time will never reveal to us the first dial that was invented to aid mortal man to regulate his life and so fulfil his daily task. We can only at the best surmise what the date may have been, and record existing information for the benefit of posterity, trusting that new discoveries may throw fresh light upon this most engrossing subject.
To the student of astronomy and mathematics, it will ever appear to be a most natural event that the sundial should have been constructed to record accurately the time of day; and such might doubtless express surprise that the age of the earliest known horologe is not of greater antiquity. But it must not be forgotten that the requirements of early man were small, and time, although a most important consideration, was not of the same value that it is to-day, in the highly civilised age in which we live.
It is not my intention to give a long and detailed account of the sundial, for I must confess that I am not sufficiently versed in its chequered and varied history; but, nevertheless, I feel bound to include in my book one or more chapters that shall supply a little information upon the age, development, and construction of ye horologe.
But here I am at a loss to know where to start, for if I should deal with the Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, or Roman ages, doubtless I should be ruled out of court, for a wise critic would question the lateness of my starting point, and would prove conclusively that I ought to have begun with Adam, who could not have missed the opportunity afforded him of erecting a sundial in the Garden of Eden. Indeed, so hard is it to fix a date for the earliest introduction of the sundial in its most primitive form, that we can only allude with safety to its mention in ancient writings and its discovery in various countries through different ages.
Without doubt the Bible gives us the oldest records, and we may be sure that wherever we get even the briefest allusion to the division of time, we can assert the existence of a horologe with little hesitation.
Job (vii. 2) alludes to the monitor in the words—“as a servant earnestly desireth the shadow,” and the miracle of the sundial of Ahaz has been quoted and handed down for centuries.
Sundials exist in most countries in various forms, differing in construction according to the knowledge of the age in astronomy and mathematics, and showing clearly at different periods in the history of a race the outside influence of the greater wisdom attained to by many students in the art of horology.
If we devote considerable attention to the history of sundials we almost unconsciously find ourselves dividing them into the following groups:—Wall dials, pedestal dials, and portable dials. Without doubt it will never be surely solved as to which is the older of the first two, for who can ever know the resources of primitive man, the knowledge of the ancients, or the earliest discoveries of the wandering tribes of the East?
How little we really know of ancient China or Japan, where sundials abound. When the history of the horologe of the West still remains imperfect, who will determine that of the East? Let us solve the riddle of Avebury or Stonehenge with certainty before we can decide the age of any other likely form of horologe; let us move the sands of the desert of Egypt and dig down into every ruin of the past before we can hope to fix a date at which mortal man constructed a dial, mural or pedestal, to record the passing of the day. Although priority in the age of the first two groups of dials may remain an uncertainty, yet the third group of portable dials can be safely given a late date.