Has the grand Roman Pantheon been keeping a secret for nearly 2000 years? An expert in ancient timekeeping thinks so, arguing that it acts as a colossal sundial. The imposing temple in Rome, completed in AD 128, is one of the most impressive buildings that survives from antiquity. It consists of a cylindrical chamber topped by a domed roof with an oculus in the top which lets through a dramatic shaft of sunlight. It boasts a colonnaded courtyard at the front.When Robert Hannah of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, visited the Pantheon in 2005, researching for a book, he realised that the Pantheon may have been more than just atemple.During the six months of winter, the light of the noon sun traces a path across the inside of the domed roof.
During summer, with the sun higher in the sky, the shaft shines onto the lower walls and floor. At the two equinoxes, in March and September, the sunlight coming in through the hole strikes the junction between the roof and wall, above the Pantheon's grand northern doorway.
A grille
above the door allows a sliver of light through to the front courtyard
- the only moment in the year that it sees sunlight if its main doors
are closed.
Hannah reckons this is no
coincidence. A hollowed-out hemisphere with a hole in the top was a
type of sundial used in Roman times, albeit on a much smaller scale, to
show the time of year. While the Pantheon's dome is quite flat on the
outside, it forms a perfect hemisphere inside. "This is quitea
deliberate design feature," says Hannah.
Pantheon means "all of the
gods" and the building's roof represented the dome of the sky, where
Romans believed the gods resided. At equinox, the sun is on the
celestial equator - where Earth's equator would lie if projected into
space - which was seen as the most stable part of the sky, a perfect
eternal home for the gods. Hannah thinks that by marking the equinoxes,
the Pantheon was intended to elevate emperors who worshipped there into
the realm of the gods.
James Evans, a historian of
astronomy at the University of Puget Sound in Washington state, is
intrigued: "The architect of the Pantheon would certainly have been
aware of the symbolic connections between the cosmos and the empire,
and between the sun and the emperor." He doesn't believe the case is
proven, however, as no markingssurvive in......
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Ancient indian spaceport discovered?
What is the Antikythera mechanism ?
Did an Ancient Language of Universal Symbols Exist?
Ancient Nuclear Weapons!
Ancient Egyptian Alchemy
Ancient technology
High-Tech Wars Described in Ancient Texts!
Skeleton Shows Ancient Brain Surgery
An Ancient Greek 'Computer'
