Merkhet (Egyptian stellar sighting instrument)
Merjet (instrumento egipcio de observación estelar)
- Date
- c. 600 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Nile Valley, Egypt
- Credited to
- Egyptian priest-astronomers
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
A plumb line on a bar with a sight which, together with the 'bay' (a palm-rib with a slit), aligned a star with the meridian. It was used to orient temples and to measure the night hours by the passage of stars across the line.
The surviving examples (a pair in Berlin, of the Late Period) are dated to about the 6th century BC; the stretching of the cord and stellar alignment is much older and the device may have had earlier forms.
What it led to
- precise orientation of temples and pyramids
- stellar clocks for the Egyptian night
- a tradition of astronomical alignment instruments