A recent issue of BAR contained a picture of a supposed sundial found more than 40 years ago in the excavations of Père Roland de Vaux at Qumran, the famous site near where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered (July/August 1997). The identification of the object as a sundial was based on a publication of the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, where most of the intact Dead Sea Scrolls are kept.1 Scholars described the object’s three concentric circles as a unique system for telling time: The inner circle measured daylight hours during winter, the middle circle during spring and fall, and the outer circle during summer. The hole in the center, they concluded, must have been for the gnomon, the object that casts the shadow on the dial, so they placed one there.
How this roundel could have been identified as a sundial is, frankly, difficult to understand. The identification displays a sorry failure to understand ancient science and technology, as well as the literature regarding sundials.
The sundial was, no doubt, one of the great inventions of the Hellenistic age.2 People naturally wanted to measure time in finer divisions than sunrise and sunset. The easiest way to do this was by means of the length of the shadow cast by any upright object. Sundials usually used pyramid-shaped pieces of iron or bronze fastened by poured lead to their apexes. Very few of these gnomons have survived.
In antiquity the period from sunrise to sunset was usually divided into 12 equal hours. Since the period between sunrise and sunset varies from season to season, the length of each of the 12 hourly subdivisions also varied from season to season. To add to the complexity, the length of the period from sunrise to sunset varies with location as well as season. The development of the sundial thus required considerable astronomical, geographical and mathematical knowledge.
Because sundials are location specific, even if we do not know where a sundial comes from, as is the case with many in European museums, the latitudinal and longitudinal provenance can be calculated based on the sundial’s divisions.
This is enough to tell you that the roundel found at Qumran cannot be a sundial. The lines on it are not equally spaced all the way around. There is no way that the haphazardly spaced lines within each circle on this roundel can be used to measure seasonally adjusted hours.3 Besides, shadows are shortest in summer and longest in winter; the inner and outer circle seasonal designations given by whoever identified it as a dial could not be correct.
The argument becomes clearer when we look at some of the hundreds of sundials that are known.4 Unlike the roundel from Qumran, they are all easily recognizable by their engraved network of hour lines and seasonal lines. Conical and spherical surfaces were preferred. In the words of one standard authority, “Not one 021disk-shaped model is known.”5
Most ancient sundials were quite large. They were usually set up in a square or in front of some public building. The largest known sundial was erected in Rome in 13 B.C.E. by the Emperor Augustus. The gnomon was an obelisk brought from Egypt that stood over 90 feet high. Now located in the Piazza Montecitorio, the obelisk, with an addition to its base, stands more than 110 feet high.
Several sundials have been found in Jerusalem as well as at other sites around Israel.6 A very important, small, white, limestone sundial was discovered in Jerusalem in 1972 during Benjamin Mazar’s massive excavation south of the Temple Mount. The sundial is a mere 2 inches wide and 2 inches tall. But the hour and seasonal lines on the dial are carefully computed for use in Jerusalem. I remember what pleasure it gave Mazar. During the first few days after it was found, the excavators used a matchstick for a gnomon. With the virtual avalanche of finds, however, this little sundial was laid aside and never properly published. It was pictured only once, in an article in Hebrew that devoted but a single sentence to it.7
This sundial was found in the debris from the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple—just one more little stone thrown over the side of the Temple Mount by Titus’s legionaries when they destroyed the Temple in 70 C.E. It was probably used by the priests and Levites to reckon the time for Temple rituals and prayers. That it was connected with the Temple is obvious from its findspot.
That it belonged to the Temple priests is further indicated by a seven-branched menorah engraved on its back. Before the destruction of the Temple, the menorah as a symbol was restricted almost exclusively to the Temple priests.8
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This sundial is the only archaeological discovery that can be connected to the Second Temple (Herod’s Temple), and by its nature, to the service of the priests.
Only two other ancient, stone sundials of such a small size are known.9 These small, stone sundials present a problem, however. Sundials had to be properly located in order to show the time correctly, yet these small ones were easily moved.
In the case of the small Temple Mount sundial, two square indentations on its back undoubtedly held the instrument in a fixed position when it was being used. At other times it was stored. The menorah is engraved between these two indentations.
Finally, let us return to the roundel from Qumran. If it isn’t a sundial, what is it?
The roundel appears to be a game board—perhaps for the game called mehen (which means “to coil” or “Coiled One”) or serpent (the board resembles a coiled serpent). This game is known from Egypt from as early as the Predynastic period (fourth millennium B.C.E.). It was especially popular in the Old Kingdom (third millennium B.C.E.) and again in the XXVIth Dynasty (mid-first millennium B.C.E.).10Mehen boards have been found not only in Egypt, but also in Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus, Crete and on other Aegean islands.11 They are made of everything from limestone to lapis lazuli to green schist. (We have pictured several of these mehen disks below.) They look similar to the Qumran roundel. Could our “sundial” be the first mehen board found in ancient Palestine?
Granted, it is hard to imagine the Qumran sectarians playing games when they were not praying or working. The roundel is just one more mystery that remains about these strange people and the enigmatic site they inhabited.
A recent issue of BAR contained a picture of a supposed sundial found more than 40 years ago in the excavations of Père Roland de Vaux at Qumran, the famous site near where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered (July/August 1997). The identification of the object as a sundial was based on a publication of the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, where most of the intact Dead Sea Scrolls are kept.1 Scholars described the object’s three concentric circles as a unique system for telling time: The inner circle measured daylight hours during winter, the middle circle during […]
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Adolfo Roitman, From Dawn to Dusk Among the Qumran Sectarians (Jerusalem: Shrine of the Book, 1997).
2.
The development of trigonometry enabled mathematicians to make precise calculations for the markings on the sundials. Crude sundials—basically a vertical object (even a tree or a person would suffice) are known from as early as 1500 B.C.E. in Egypt.
3.
The publication cited in endnote 1 indicates that this roundel was made and engraved on a lathe. This, too, is wrong. Lathes that could perform such tasks did not exist in the Hellenistic age. See Paul Craddock and Janet Lang, “Spinning, Turning, Polishing,” Journal of the Historical Metallurgy Society (1983) 17/2 pp. 79–81; Robert S. Woodbury, “The Origins of the Lathe,” Scientific American 208:4 (1963), p. 132, and Studies in the History of Machine Tools: History of the Lathe to 1850(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1972).
4.
Sharon Gibbs, Greek and Roman Sundials (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1976).
5.
Gibbs, Sundials, p. 4.
6.
Dov Ben Layish, “A Survey of Sundials in Israel,” Sefunim 3 (1969), pp. 70–81.
7.
Benjamin Mazar, “Excavations Near the Temple Mount,” Qadmoniot 5:3–4 (1972), p. 82 (Hebrew).
8.
L.Y. Rahmani, “Depictions of Menorot on Ossuaries,” Qadmoniot 13:3–4 (1980), pp. 51–52, 114–117 (Hebrew).
9.
One found at Naukratis, Egypt, is now in the British Museum. The other was found in the 1923–1925 excavations at the Hill of Ophel, led by J.G. Duncan and R.A.S. Macalister for the Palestine Exploration Fund. Unfortunately, this interesting and important artifact could not be located either in the Israel Antiquities Authority stores or at the Palestine Exploration Fund in London.
10.
“Jouer dans L’Antiquité,” Musées de Marseille (Paris: Reunion des Musées Nationaux, 1991), pp. 125–129 and catalog nos. 174–176; Marie-Noel Bellesort, “Le Jeu de Serpent: Jeux et Jouets dans L’Antiquité et le Moyen Age,” Dossiers D’ Archéologie (1992), pp. 8–9; École du Caire (IFAO), Un Siècle de Fouilles Française en Egypte (1981), p. 22, fig. 23.
11.
The archaeological recovery of many mehen game boards in areas outside Egypt, including widely scattered houses and tombs, lends weight to our tentative identification of the find at Qumran.
