This custom and those sentences were then fashioned from the Renaissance and have survived until today.Īlthough the number of phrases that may illustrate a clock are endless, the most common ones are very few ones and I will address them because the reader may have noticed them in the current existing sundials, and even in the spheres of pendulum clocks, and even in common wrist or pocket clocks. Well, sundials were sometimes illustrated with a Latin phrase referring to the passage of time. The Greeks called the water clock clepsydra (of κλέπτειν kleptein, 'steal' ύδωρ hydor, 'water'). This index, shaft or rod is called gnomon (γνώμων: 'connoisseur, guide,' and by extension 'squad, needle, sundial'). The most basic clocks are solar clocks, in which the changing shadow of an index projected by the sun light on a surface indicates the intervals of the sun itself. The Greeks called these periods "hora", then the word was taken by the Romans, and finally it was passed on to those who speak a language derived from Latin, and to English as well (hour). In any case, at the beginning of the second millennium BC the Egyptians already had instruments to divide the day and night in 24 periods. Certainly, this duodecimal system must be related to the appearance of twelve moons along the years. Indeed, as it is indicated by the division of the day and night into twelve hours (something that still remains), it should be the Sumerians who began dividing the duration of the day in that way. A clock is an instrument that uses a standard measurement unit. Clock is a word derived from the Latin "horologium" and this, in turn, from the Greek "Horologion" (hora = hour and lego = I state). Ancient myths refer to human desire for immortality, for the denial of the destructive time.įor measuring time, clocks were invented. The Egyptian obelisks seem to be the index of a large sundial. Some prehistoric megalithic monuments are certainly related to the solar cycle. The cyclical succession of days and nights, the elapse of the light of a day itself, the perception of one's life and its end, the ephemeral existence of beings, prompted the man to measure, monitor, remember the passage of time. The people had to try to measure the time very soon, perhaps with the false illusion of catching it.
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