Shadow Clock

Sticks, Stones, and Shadows

What do the pyramids of Egypt really represent? What could have driven so many to so great, and often so dangerous, an effort? Was the motivation religious or practical? Illustrated with more than 300 photographs and drawings, this book presents an original approach to the subject of pyramid building. It reveals the connection between devices that served both a practical need for survival and a spiritual belief in gods and goddesses. It examines Egyptian technologies and techniques from the origins of pyramid development to the step-by-step details of how the ground was leveled, how the site was oriented, and how the stone was raised and placed to meet at a distant point in the sky. Here the author also asks and answers questions virtually ignored for the last century. He discloses, for example, the ancient use of shadows, now denigrated to the ornamental back-yard sundial, but once an important tool for telling the height of an object, geographical directions, the seasons of the year, and the time of day. He also reinterprets the ancient "stretching of the cord" ceremony, which once was thought to have only religious significance but here is shown as the means of establishing the sides of a pyramid.

Discoveries

Ancient Egyptian Science

Marshall Clagett's three-volume study of various aspects of science of Ancient Egypt. Volume 1 concentrates on the origin and development of hieroglyphic writing, the scribal profession, and quasi-learned institutions in ancient Egypt. Professor Clagett has paid particular attention to the so-called Palermo Stone, the earliest annals composed in Egypt. Volume 2 covers calendars, clocks, and astronomical monuments. Volume 3 gives a discourse on the nature and accomplishments of Egyptian mathematics and also informs the reader as to how our knowledge of Egyptian mathematics has grown since the publication of the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus toward the end of the 19th century.