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Time to Celebrate: Ancient Sundial Made to Honor Roman Politician
By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer | November 9, 2017 03:21pm ET
About 2,000 years ago, a Roman politician celebrated his victory by commissioning a sundial and putting it on display for all to see, according to archaeologists who just discovered the ancient timekeeping device in Italy.
It's incredible the sundial and the inscriptions on it survived intact for two millennia, especially because the town was scavenged for building materials during the medieval period, the researchers said.
However, even though the sundial was found facing down in an amphitheater, archaeologists suspect the Romans had originally placed it in a more prominent spot in town — likely on top of a pillar in the nearby forum, they said. [Photos: Ancient Sundial-Moondial Discovered]
"Less than a hundred examples of this specific type of sundial have survived and of those, only a handful bear any kind of inscription at all, so this really is a special find," Alessandro Launaro, a lecturer at the Faculty of Classics at Cambridge University and a fellow at Gonville and Caius College, in the United Kingdom, said in a statement.
More:
https://www.livescience.com/60901-ancient-sundial-found-in-amphitheater.html?utm_source=notification
