Identification
ID in this catalogue SC BM 1909,0216.10
Type Spherical
Current Location British Museum, London
Catalogue Numbers

Has two museum registration numbers: 1886,0401.1477 and 1909, 0216.10

Dialface ID 41

Gibbs 1040G 

Provenance Sanctuary of Apollo, Naukratis, Egypt. Excavated by Petrie in 1884/5 season and donated by the EEF to the BM in 1886 (museum online database) 
Date Unknown 
Dimensions W 78 mm, H 65 mm, D 50 mm (Gibbs 1976)
Material Limestone 
Markings and inscriptions

A gnomon groove 5 mm wide remains in the top surface of the dial. 

Limestone - This miniature dial has a rounded back. Twelve hour lines extend from a day curve near the gnomon to the lower edge of the spherical surface." (Gibbs 1976)

"Traces of engraved letters are visible below the spherical surface." (Gibbs 1976)

Notes

"Petrie mentioned this find in his journal (Journal 1884-85, p. 191) 'a small limestone dial was picked out of the rubbish' in the Temple of Apollo area." (museum online database, curator's notes)

"Small fragmentary limestone sundial. There are 12 grooves and a notch at the top of the piece that originally held the pointer or "Gnomon"." (museum online database)

BUT is it a sundial? "Part of limestone florette (?) resembling a sundial; an architectural feature." (museum online database) 

Literature

Petrie (1886) p. 16, pl. XVIII, no. 6

Gibbs (1976) p. 155

Kościuk (1992)

Evans and Marée (2008)

Villing et al. (2013) CG.03

Graßhoff (2015)

Images

Petrie (1886) Plate XVIII, number 6:

Petrie_1886_Plate_18_no_6.jpg

The following images from the British Museum are used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.


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 ©Trustees of the British Museum.

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©Trustees of the British Museum.

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©Trustees of the British Museum.

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©Trustees of the British Museum.