The ancient Egyptians were one of the first cultures to widely divide days into generally agreed-upon equal parts, using early timekeeping devices such as sundials, shadow clocks, and merkhets (plumb-lines used by early astronomers).

The ancient Egypt technology that kept them most organized was definitely their Egyptian clocks. By casting a shadow from a point standing in the path of the sun, the sundial was the original timekeeper in the world.

Feb 1, 2017 · Beginning in the New Kingdom (ca. 1500 B.C.), there is evidence that sundials, shadow clocks ( ) were used to measure the passing of the hours. There is no evidence that the Egyptians tracked minutes or seconds, although there are general terms for time segments shorter than an hour.

The earliest known sundial still preserved is an Egyptian shadow clock of green schist dating at least from this period. The shadow clock consists of a straight base with a raised crosspiece at one end.

Egyptian shadow clocks divided the night into fifty parts, with an additional two twilight hours—one in the evening and one in the morning—allowing for a more detailed breakdown of nighttime hours. These clocks were used in various settings, including religious ceremonies and temple rituals. They were also used by Egyptian priests and ...

Around 3,500 BCE (a long, long time ago), the Egyptians used the shadows the giant stone obelisks cast on the ground to tell the time of day. Each obelisk was built to tell a story. But they worked very well as shadow clocks. Later on, the ancient …

A portable Egyptian sundial, or “shadow clock,” that survives from the time of Thutmose III (c. 1500 B.C.) is a horizontal bar about a foot long with a T-shaped structure at one end that casts a shadow on marks on the horizontal bar.

One of a handful of portable timepieces known from ancient Egypt, this fragment is from the type that told time by measuring the length of the sun's shadow. Preserved here is the block with a sloping face with a series of parallel and oblique lines engraved on its face to mark off the time.

Egyptian sundial. In sundial. The shadow clock consists of a straight base with a raised crosspiece at one end. The base, on which is inscribed a scale of six time divisions, is placed in an east-west direction with the crosspiece at the east end in the morning and at the… Read More

Later, they invented for the first time a portable timepiece: shadow clock. This light weighed device gave the nearly exact time in a day. To ancient Egyptians, time served specific & subjective social functions. That was the reason for what they did not count time in annual units.