The shadow clock found at Faijum, built under the Libyan Dynasty, between about —850 and —
720 before the present era, may help us to learn the length of the day, the inclination of the pole to the ecliptic, and the latitudes of Egypt in that historical period. A change in any of these three factors would have made the clock obsolete as an instrument for time reading, and probably all three factors did change.
We do not possess the sundial of King Ahaz, but we do have the s Ibid.
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shadow clock used in Egypt in the period before the last catastrophe of —687 and possibly before the catastrophe of —747.
The Water Clock
Besides the gnomon or sundial, the Egyptians used the water clock, which had the advantage over the former of showing time during the night as well as during the day.
A complete example was found in the Amon Temple of Karnak (Thebes), 25.5° north of the equator. This water clock dates from the time of Amenhotep III of the Eighteenth Dynasty, father of Ikhnaton. The jar has an opening through which water flows out; marks are incised on the inner surface of the jar to indicate the time. Since the Egyptian day was divided into hours which changed in length with the length of the day, the jar has different sets of markings for the various seasons of the year. Four time points are prominently important: the autumnal equinox, the winter solstice, the vernal equinox, and the summer solstice. The equinoxes have equal days and robin-bobin
nights in all latitudes. But on the solstices, when either the day or the night is the longest of the year, the length of the daylight varies with the latitude: the farther from the equator, the greater is the difference between the day and the night on the day of the solstice. This difference also depends on the inclination of the equator to the plane of the orbit or ecliptic, which is at present 23/2°. Should this inclination change, or in other words, should the polar axis change its astronomical position (direction), or should the polar axis change its geographical position with each pole shifting to another point, the length of the day and night (on any day except the equinoxes) would change, too.
The water clock of Amenhotep III presented its investigator with a very strange time scale.1
Calculating the length of the day of the winter solstice, he found that the clock was constructed for a day of 11 hours 18 minutes, whereas the day of the solstice at 25° north latitude is 10 hours 26 minutes, a difference of fifty-two minutes. Similarly, the builder of the clock reckoned the night of the winter 1 L. Borchardt, Die altagyptische Zeitrechnung (1920), pp. 6-25.
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solstice to be 12 hours 42 minutes, whereas it is 13 hours 34 minutes— fifty-two minutes too short.
On the summer solstice, the longest day, the clock anticipated a day of 12 hours 48 minutes, whereas it is 13 hours and 41 minutes, and a night of 11 hours 12 minutes, whereas it is 10 hours 19 minutes.
On the vernal and autumnal equinoxes the day is 11 hours and 56 minutes long, and the clock actually shows 11 hours and 56 minutes; the night is 12 hours 4 minutes long, and the clock shows exactly 12 hours 4 minutes.
The difference between the present values and the values of the day for which the clock is adjusted is very consistent: on the winter solstice the day of the clock is fifty-two minutes longer than the present day of the winter solstice in Karnak, and the night is fifty-two minutes shorter; on the summer solstice the day is fifty-three minutes shorter on the clock and the night fifty-three minutes longer.
The figures on the clock show a smaller difference between the length of daylight on the solstices or between the longest and the shortest days of the year than is observed at Karnak at the present time. Thus the water clock of Amenhotep III, if it was correctly built and correctly interpreted, indicates that either Thebes was closer to the equator or that the inclination of the equator toward the ecliptic was less than the present angle of 23/2°. In either case the climate of the latitudes of Egypt could not have been the same as it is in our age.
As we find from the present research, the clock of Amenhotep III became obsolete in the middle of the eighth century; and the clock that might have replaced it at that time would have been made obsolete in the catastrophes of the end of the eighth and the beginning of the seventh centuries, when once more the axis changed its direction in the sky and its position on the globe as well.
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A Hemisphere Travels Southward
"Behold the world bowing with its massive dome—earth and expanse of sea and heaven's depth!" —Virgil Eclogues iv. 50
The change in the position of the poles carried the polar ice outside the new polar circle, while other regions were brought into the polar circle. There is nothing imperative in the present position of the pole or in the direction of the polar axis. No known astronomical or geological law requires the present direction of the axis and the present position of the pole. I find a similar thought in the writings of Schiaparelli: "The permanence of the geographical poles in the very same regions of the Earth cannot yet be considered as in-contestably established by astronomical or mechanical arguments. Such permanence may be a fact today, but it remains a matter still to be proven for the preceding ages of the history of the globe." "Our problem, so important from the astronomical and mathematical standpoint, touches the foundations of geology and robin-bobin
paleontology; its solution is tied to the [problem of the] most grandiose events in the history of the Earth."x
The present pole was not always the terrestrial pole, nor did the changes occur in a slow process.
The glacial sheet was a polar cover; the ice ages terminated with catastrophic suddenness; regions of mild climate moved instantly into the polar circle; the ice sheet in America and Europe started to melt; great quantities of vapor rising from the surface of the oceans caused increased precipitation and the formation of a new ice cover. Gigantic waves that traveled across continents, more than the movement of the ice, were responsible for the drift, especially in the north, and for the boulders that were carried long distances and placed atop unrelated formations.
If we look at the distribution of the ice sheet in the Northern Hemisphere, we see that a circle, with its center somewhere near the east
1 G. V. Schiaparelli De la rotation de la terre sous I'influence des actions geologiques (St.
Petersburg, 1889), p. 31.
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shore of Greenland or in the strait between Greenland and Baffin Land near the present north magnetic pole, and a radius of about 3,600 kilometers, embraces the region of the ice sheet of the last glacial age. Northeastern Siberia is outside the circle; the valley of the Missouri down to 39°
north latitude is within the circle. The eastern part of Alaska is included, but not its western part.
Northwestern Europe is well within the circle; some distance behind the Ural Mountains, the line curves toward the north and crosses the present polar circle.
Now we reflect: Was not the North Pole at some time in the past 20° or more distant from the point it now occupies—and closer to America? In like manner, the old South Pole would have been roughly the same 20° from the present pole.2