Fragment of hourglass

INTRODUCTION
- Man and the stars
SECTION I
- The dawn of astronomy: Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Biblical Cosmos
SECTION II
- The cosmos becomes a sphere
SECTION III
- The geometry of the cosmos
SECTION IV
- The skies of Islam
SECTION V
- Evangelisation of the cosmos
SECTION VI
- The Renaissance of Astronomy
SECTION VII
- Galileo: the cosmos through the telescope
SECTION VIII
- From Galileo to Newton

Sarcophagus lid portraying the goddess Nut

Fragmentary roll of magical-cum-religious papyrus

Zoom

Fragment of hourglass, early Ptolemaic era
Florence, Museo Egizio, inv. 12290

On the main strip we can see a list of decans, the stars whose rising marks the hours of the night and which are linked to the 36 10-day "weeks" into which the 12 months of the ancient Egyptian civil year were divided. The god Horus, sporting a hawk's head, is thought to refer to the 12th decan, Lower Khentet.