Down to the hour : : short time in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East / / edited by Kassandra J. Miller, Sarah L. Symons.

• Superior document: Time, astronomy, and calendars ; Volume 8
• TeilnehmendeR: Miller, Kassandra J.,; Symons, Sarah L.,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : Brill,, 2020.
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Series: Time, astronomy, and calendars ; Volume 8.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource.
• Notes: Short time: measuring time at the sub-day level (e.g., hours, minutes).

Clock time, with all its benefits and anxieties, is often viewed as a "modern" phenomenon, but ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures also had tools for marking and measuring time within the day and wrestled with challenges of daily time management. This book brings together for the first time perspectives on the interplay between short-term timekeeping technologies and their social contexts in ancient Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and Rome. Its contributions denaturalize modern-day concepts of clocks, hours, and temporal frameworks; describe some of the timekeeping solutions used in antiquity; and illuminate the diverse factors that affected how individuals and communities structured their time.

Table of Contents

Sun and stars : astronomical timekeeping in ancient Egypt / Sarah L. Symons -- The ancient Egyptian water clock between religious significance and scientific functionality / Alexandra von Lieven and Anette Schomberg -- Short time in Mesopotamia / John Steele -- Greco-Roman sundials : precision and displacement / Alexander Jones -- Cosmology and ideal society : the division of the day into hours in Plato's Laws / Barbara M. Sattler -- Diurnal selves in ancient Rome / James Ker -- time, punctuality, and chronotopes : concepts and attitudes concerning short time in ancient Rome / Anja Wolkenhauer -- Short time in Greco-Roman astrology / Stephan Heilen -- Hourly timekeeping and the problem of irregular fevers / Kassandra Jackson Miller