3200 year old sundial guides archaeologists into the past [View all]

During the 2013 season of the Valley of the Kings Project carried out by University of Basel, Prof. Susanne Bickel’s team have found a number of exciting artefacts including what they suspect to be one of the oldest portable sundials in the area between tombs KV 29 and 61.

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Sundial discovery

However, one find that has excited the archaeologists is a small piece of limestone, engraved with a semicircle marked out by twelve divisions painted with black lines. A central hole would have served as the fixing point for a wooden or metal pin, whose shadow would have marked out the ”hours”. The entire piece is only a little over 16 cm along the horizontal baseline. Small faded black dots allowed a still finer timing in the middle of each segment.

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