Because of widespread misconceptions on the historicity of the early Israelite kings we endeavor here to make a comparison study to show how things fit together. Especially the very existence of King Solomon has come under criticism because of the apparent lack of corroborating evidence from excavations in Israel itself. How can we explain that? Shouldn't there be at least some evidence attributable to King Solomon or David by way of inscriptions? To be sure small items have been found, i.e. a Solomonic seal for instance, but we are looking more for larger items. Egypt's kings left inscriptions on buildings, statues, stela - why is there such a lack of the same in Israel from any king?
This is a fair question to ask and we must address this issue. On the outset we would like to say that the lack of inscriptions, carvings, ornate stone reliefs in Israel and Judah must have a definite reason and that it does we shall try to explain. Of course they were very much aware of the richness of Egyptian inscriptions and stone carvings, after all they used to live there.
The evidence for that however is very early in their experience, right after they had left Egypt. Arriving at Mt. Sinai they clamored for the same things they were used to have around them in Egypt. The Israelites wanted images to dance around and worship - something they could see. But the faith they were taught about of the very God who had led them out of slavery was directed at worshipping Him in faith and deeds rather than by representations.
Self glorification of rulers also was not in accord with their beliefs. Only God deserved veneration and being written about. If Solomon would have left inscriptions in his cities the Jewish people themselves would have defaced and done away with them not to leave any trace. This may be not good for us today who are trying to understand those times from the remains, but it is why we should not even expect such artifacts. Those who want to make comparisons to Egypt and argue because of the lack of artifacts in Israel that these kings did not really live and reign as we are told just don't seem to take into account the times they lived in and the Jewish mind. We cannot impose Egyptian conventions on the Jewish people.
However, other scholars note that there are other blank spots in Jerusalem's archaeological record during periods when the city is known to have been occupied, and they caution against reading too much into a lack of evidence. Ronny Reich, an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority, notes, for example, that excavations near the Gihon spring outside the present Old City have turned up "no pottery, nothing" from the Byzantine era–roughly A.D. 330-1450. "Does that mean there were no people in Jerusalem?" Reich asks. "Of course not. How do you explain it? You can't."[J.L. Sheler, `News from the Holy Land'] In fact the lack of such personal records carved on stone is evidence in itself that we are at the right place of Jewish habitation. But a few reminders of the early Israelite monarchy are being found often in the form of the stone masons skill to produce smooth stones, with no chisel marks for constructions. All other cultures in the ancient Near East were much closer to Egyptian conventions with respect to artifacts, the Jewish lands are quite singular on the lack of such. But we must not forget that the kinds of artifacts like idols, ushabtis, scarabs and the like found in Palestine are probably those used and on occasion hidden or kept by Israelites who employed them in trade or, in the case of idols perhaps, had become unfaithful to their God.Laws pertaining to royalty - "When you enter the land...and you say: `Let us set a king over us like the nations around us' be sure to appoint over you the king the Lord your God chooses. He must be from among your own brethren. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not an Israelite. The king...must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you, `You are not to go back that way again.' He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold." Deuteronomy 17:14-17
Critics also often doubt the existence of the early Israelite accounts of constructions and achievements because during excavations they are unable to locate any of these supposed palaces, city gates, walls or dwellings. The cities of Hazor, Gezer and Megiddo have been excavated to a great extend. A stratum containing remains of palaces, temples and fortifications was found in each of these cities but strangely enough the name of Solomon was not found but that of Pharaoh Amenhotep III was. How can that be? In conventional thinking Pharaoh Amenhotep III reigned from about 1405-1367 BC, long before Solomon. No wonder critics are baffled and discount the scriptural account of history. But let us see what happens when we apply revised chronology.
In revised view Pharaoh Amenhotep III reigned from about 878-870 as coruler with Amenhotep II, and sole from 870-843 BC, right in the middle of the El Amarna Age. That is just 60 years after the death of King Solomon. He, like Solomon, inherited a vast, glorious and rich empire with connections from the Nile to the Euphrates river. He left a wealth of evidence of his existence in his many constructions of palaces, temples, monuments, documents, art unparalleled and numerous except perhaps that of Ramses II. It was during the reign of Amenhotep III that cities like Gezer were refortified and Egyptian garrisons were set up in strategic locations. Why? Because of the many incursions into Palestine by restless rulers from Damascus, Syria, the great deserts and Assyria. For the Egyptians Palestine was a buffer zone. Stop any would-be-enemies before they reach the border of Egypt. We just need to read about the troubles involving Palestine in the days of Jehoshaphat, Ahab and their sons to understand how desperate the situation sometimes could become. So when we mentioned the palaces of Gezer, Hazor and Megiddo - we must be blind not to realize that they are the ones we had been looking for as belonging to the time of the early Israelite kings. What has been hiding their presence from us is not sand and dirt, but a false, conventional, Egyptian chronology, for Amenhotep III did not live 400 years before Solomon but 60 years after him.
It appears that Amenhotep III patterned his life after that of Solomon. But he was not hampered by religious oriented restrictions like Solomon, he could freely create idols, images of himself and vain glorious monuments to his greatness. But as the reader may recall we claim that Solomon most likely was Senenmut, the most trusted noble of Queen-Pharaoh Hatshepsut. It appears that in time Solomon, after having married an Egyptian princess, may have felt himself too restricted in his own kingdom and during the second half of his 40 year reign his gaze was directed toward Egypt. Being a cozy friend with the Egyptian king, he became the highest official and closest adviser to Hatshepsut. What he could not do in Israel he could do in Egypt - leave inscriptions, representations and monuments with his name on them. No wonder his own people would not leave any stone unturned in their homeland which would remind anyone of their wayward king.
Having said this we may get an idea about the importance of correct chronology before we go around and teach doubt and reproof of the Hebrew sources. But we realize that the majority of those who have voiced opinions on the ancient history of the Bible lands are still captivated by the rightness of conventional chronology. How can so many famous historians, scholars, archaeologists, scientists be wrong and so few, nameless new people be right? Could it be that sometimes being too close to something for too long disables us to get a clear view? Should we trust in the pronouncements of famous people just because `they must know what they are saying for they dig it out themselves and see it?' Yes, they certainly do, but still their interpretations are colored by their scholarly upbringing. What can we say? Explaining the same history in line with revised chronology will open up so many more intrinsic, grand views of enchanting history that it is well worth to try and study and think our way into it.
This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.
"This is not my day job," begins Michel Barsoum as he recounts his foray into the mysteries of the Great Pyramids of Egypt. As a well respected researcher in the field of ceramics, Barsoum never expected his career to take him down a path of history, archaeology, and "political" science, with materials research mixed in.
As a distinguished professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University, his daily routine consists mainly of teaching students about ceramics, or performing research on a new class of materials, the so-called MAX Phases, that he and his colleagues discovered in the 1990s. These modern ceramics are machinable, thermal-shock resistant, and are better conductors of heat and electricity than many metals — making them potential candidates for use in nuclear power plants, the automotive industry, jet engines, and a range of other high-demand systems.
Then Barsoum received an unexpected phone call from Michael Carrell, a friend of a retired colleague of Barsoum, who called to chat with the Egyptian-born Barsoum about how much he knew of the mysteries surrounding the building of the Great Pyramids of Giza, the only remaining of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
The widely accepted theory — that the pyramids were crafted of carved-out giant limestone blocks that workers carried up ramps — had not only not been embraced by everyone, but as important had quite a number of holes.
Burst out laughing
According to the caller, the mysteries had actually been solved by Joseph Davidovits, Director of the Geopolymer Institute in St. Quentin, France, more than two decades ago. Davidovits claimed that the stones of the pyramids were actually made of a very early form of concrete created using a mixture of limestone, clay, lime, and water.
"It was at this point in the conversation that I burst out laughing," Barsoum said. If the pyramids were indeed cast, he said, someone should have proven it beyond a doubt by now, in this day and age, with just a few hours of electron microscopy.
It turned out that nobody had completely proven the theory … yet.
"What started as a two-hour project turned into a five-year odyssey that I undertook with one of my graduate students, Adrish Ganguly, and a colleague in France, Gilles Hug," Barsoum said.
A year and a half later, after extensive scanning electron microscope observations and other testing, Barsoum and his research group finally began to draw some conclusions about the pyramids. They found that the tiniest structures within the inner and outer casing stones were indeed consistent with a reconstituted limestone. The cement binding the limestone aggregate was either silicon dioxide (the building block of quartz) or a calcium and magnesium-rich silicate mineral.
The stones also had a high water content — unusual for the normally dry, natural limestone found on the Giza plateau — and the cementing phases, in both the inner and outer casing stones, were amorphous, in other words, their atoms were not arranged in a regular and periodic array. Sedimentary rocks such as limestone are seldom, if ever, amorphous.
The sample chemistries the researchers found do not exist anywhere in nature. "Therefore," Barsoum said, "it's very improbable that the outer and inner casing stones that we examined were chiseled from a natural limestone block."
More startlingly, Barsoum and another of his graduate students, Aaron Sakulich, recently discovered the presence of silicon dioxide nanoscale spheres (with diameters only billionths of a meter across) in one of the samples. This discovery further confirms that these blocks are not natural limestone.
Generations misled
At the end of their most recent paper reporting these findings, the researchers reflect that it is "ironic, sublime and truly humbling" that this 4,500-year-old limestone is so true to the original that it has misled generations of Egyptologists and geologists and, "because the ancient Egyptians were the original — albeit unknowing — nanotechnologists."
As if the scientific evidence isn't enough, Barsoum has pointed out a number of common sense reasons why the pyramids were not likely constructed entirely of chiseled limestone blocks.
Egyptologists are consistently confronted by unanswered questions: How is it possible that some of the blocks are so perfectly matched that not even a human hair can be inserted between them? Why, despite the existence of millions of tons of stone, carved presumably with copper chisels, has not one copper chisel ever been found on the Giza Plateau?
Although Barsoum's research has not answered all of these questions, his work provides insight into some of the key questions. For example, it is now more likely than not that the tops of the pyramids are cast, as it would have been increasingly difficult to drag the stones to the summit.
Also, casting would explain why some of the stones fit so closely together. Still, as with all great mysteries, not every aspect of the pyramids can be explained. How the Egyptians hoisted 70-ton granite slabs halfway up the great pyramid remains as mysterious as ever.
Why do the results of Barsoum's research matter most today? Two words: earth cements.
"How energy intensive and/or complicated can a 4,500 year old technology really be? The answer to both questions is not very," Barsoum explains. "The basic raw materials used for this early form of concrete — limestone, lime, and diatomaceous earth — can be found virtually anywhere in the world," he adds. "Replicating this method of construction would be cost effective, long lasting, and much more environmentally friendly than the current building material of choice: Portland cement that alone pumps roughly 6 billion tons of CO2 annually into the atmosphere when it's manufactured."
"Ironically," Barsoum said, "this study of 4,500 year old rocks is not about the past, but about the future."
Editor's Note:This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the federal agency charged with funding basic research and education across all fields of science and engineering.
For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same My name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto My name, and a pure offering: for My name shall be great among the heathen, saith the LORD of hosts.Although little or nothing is known of the personal life of Malachi the prophet, nonetheless he has given us one of the most interesting books in the Bible. Not only is this the last book of the Old Testament, it is also the last stern rebuke of the people of God, the last call for them to repent, and the last promise of future blessing for Israel.In Malachi's day the people had become increasingly indifferent to spiritual matters. Religion had lost its glow and many of the people had become skeptical, even cynical. The priests were unscrupulous, corrupt, and immoral. The people refused to pay their tithes and offerings to the Lord and their worship degenerated into empty formalism. While the people had strong male lambs in their flocks, they were bringing blind and lame animals to be offered on the altars of Jehovah. Malachi was commissioned by God to lash out against the laxity of the people of God.This prophecy is unique for it is a continuous discourse. In fact, Malachi has been called "the Hebrew Socrates" because he uses a style which later rhetoricians call dialectic. The whole of this prophecy is a dialogue between God and the people in which the faithfulness of God is seen in contrast to the unfaithfulness of God's people. Thus Malachi is argumentative in style and unusually bold in his attacks on the priesthood, which had become corrupt.
The most blistering attack in the entire book comes in Jehovah's dispute with His priests. If anyone should have known better than to fall to idolatry and corruption, it ought to have been those who served at the Temple of God. Still, the priests had again and again polluted the bread of the altar of God; they had sacrificed spotted animals on that altar and thus had made the table of the Lord contemptible. In addition to this, the priests were involved in empty formalism. They went about their duties day after day in dull drudgery rather than in faith. This was not pleasing to Him and Jehovah told them so.
In contrast, Jehovah declared the kind of worship that is acceptable: "For from the rising of the sun even to the going down of the same My name shall be great among the Gentiles" (Malachi 1:11). It is obvious this was not true in the days of Malachi, for the Gentiles had not yet come to praise the name of Jehovah. Nonetheless, Malachi is speaking prophetically and the day will come, the great millennial day, when all the nations of the earth will flock to the Temple in Jerusalem and there they will worship in sincerity the God of Israel. This worship will be carried on from the rising of the earliest sun to its setting hours later. All day long, service in that day will not be dull drudgery but will be a delightful duty.
What a contrast there is between the conclusion of the Old Testament and the conclusion of the New Testament. The Old Testament concludes with an invective against dead formalism in the church. The New Testament concludes with the bright and morning Star in the midst of the church. Thank God that prophecy does not end with the Old Testament but continues until the day that Jesus Christ will usher in an eternity with Him in Heaven. But let's not wait until then. Let's rise with the sun today and begin a day filled with praise to our God.
MORNING HYMN O worship the King, all glorious above, And gratefully sing His pow'r and His love; Our Shield and Defender, the Ancient of Days, Pavilioned in splendor and girded with praise.
Since the 1960's Western society, hitherto Christian in foundation, has come under the influence of a school of moral theology known as Consequentialism. Conseqгentialism, essentially denies objective truth and leads to moral relativism. Ultimately it leads to a culture of death that today sanctions everything from contraception to abortion, homosexual activity, sex outside of marriage, divorce, sterilization, in-vitro fertilization, pornography, embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia and even false notions of a just war.
Consequentialism claims to draw the criteria of the rightness of a given way of acting solely from a calculation of foreseeable consequences deriving from a given choice. Consequentialism acknowledges moral values but maintains that it is never possible to formulate an absolute prohibition of particular kinds of behaviour which would be in conflict, in every circumstance and in every culture, with those values. In his book ‘Orthodoxy” G.K. Chesterton maintains that this is a false theory of progress. “We often hear it said, for instance , ‘What is right in one age is wrong in another’. This is quite reasonable, if it means that there is a fixed aim, and that certain methods attain at certain times and not at other times...[However] if the standard changes , how can there be improvement , which implies a standard?
The so-called goal of Consequentialism is to maximize the good of humanity. It operates on the Utilitarian principle that “the ends justify the means”. As a result human beings are often treated in an impersonal way i.e. not for their own sake but for the utility that can be derived from them.
Moral philosopher Bernard Williams criticized Conseqentialism on the grounds that the central idea of Consequentialism is that the only kind of thing that has intrinsic value is “states of affairs’. For the consequentialist human acts have no value in and of themselves but only insofar as they produce the best states of affairs. The right act is the act, of those available to choose from, that brings about the best consequences while supposedly maximizing the overall good of everyone’s self interest.
Williams also objected to the doctrine of “negative responsibility” that follows from Consequentialism’s assigning ultimate value to states of affair. This doctrine holds that one is just as responsible for the things that he allows to happen or fails to prevent as he is for the things he brings about. Consequentialism, then, does not take seriously the distinctiveness of persons but rather treats them impartially. It totally subordinates the individual to the collectivity. This deprives persons of their identity and integrity.
Consequentialism is a dehumanizing formula for it reduces human beings to material objects which can be exploited and to commodities that can be bought and sold. It reduces them to beings whose free will has effectively been abrogated - beings upon whom a judgment of moral good or evil cannot validly be passed. Such a philosophy ends up poisoning the social structures and human relations it purports to strengthen - defeating, in turn, its own purpose.
Some like Peter Railton advanced Consequentialism to a stage that supposedly allows the individual person the freedom to pursue personal goals of happiness while remaining, at the same time, subject to the collectivity. This “sophisticated consequentialist” is not always bound to consequentialist calculating, to rules or to “directly” seeking the goal of maximizing the good. Instead, he may at times find it more advantageous to “indirectly” maximize the good by cultivating certain, necessary areas of personal interest such as human relationships - relationships whose intimacy and friendship are not subject to suffer the “loss” and “alienation” that often comes with direct consequentialism. This would mean that on an act to act basis the sophisticated consequentialist will sometimes do the wrong thing according to his criterion of right in order to achieve the overall good. Here we have the clear justification for claiming that the ends justify the means. We also have the foundation for moral relativism.
This theory necessarily entails the cultivation of certain dispositions or character traits that are the product of moral, emotional, sociological and psychological inconsistency. These include a certain weakness of will, indecisiveness, rationalization and guilt. More precisely it involves a certain form of self-deception that enables the consequentialist to live a double life.
At the level of morality however, the conscience, being one and indivisible, does not permit the acting out of parallel lives. Scripture has it that "no man can serve two masters" (Matt. 6: 24). Railton’s sophisticated consequentialist serves as a psychological artifice to disguise this fact in order to allow the consequentialist the opportunity to live comfortably in a fictitious world of his own choosing.
How often do we see this charade being played out in the real world with our politicians?
Politicians, in order to get elected will first compartmentalize and separate their private life from their public life - claiming, in effect that one can lead an authentic Christian life while sustaining two different realities of existence. They will claim, for example, that one can privately oppose abortion, in unison with his or her religious faith while politically supporting, at the same time, a woman's right to choose. The longer this facade is upheld and sustained the more the conscience is degraded at its most core level to that of a mechanism producing excuses for one’s conduct.
Incrementally, one begins to construct a wall of resistence to anyone who might oppose this parallel existence. As one’s guilt is pushed beneath the level of the specific judgement pronounced by conscience to that level of “neglect of one’s own being”, one becomes dulled to the voice of truth and eventually incapable of any longer hearing the voice of conscience. This explains how our politicians can publically, and out of a hardened conviction, confuse the reality of objective truth.
Ultimately, Consequentialism is something morally and psychologically debilitating. It eventually ends up poisoning all of society for when its’ gravely immoral policies make their way into law, they begin to incrementally, surreptitiously, almost invisibly, impose themselves on society by both coercion and force - marginalizing in the process both religion and those of religious faith.
Consequentialist - utilitarian ideology, which purports to bring about the greatest good for the greatest number of people, is insufficient for it operates from within a narrow landscape of particular instances and doesn’t consider - nor can it - how different situations are ultimately connected to each other in time or how they are understood in relation to the persons that help bring them about. In other words it functions on appeal only to consequences the totality of which cannot be known but which are necessary - according to its own standard in the absence of absolute truth - to arrive at a truthful decision. What may at first appear to be clearly the best thing in a particular situation may in the long run turn out to be the worst thing and vice versa.
Albeit calculated, every decision becomes little more than a shot in the dark. Consequentialism thus pretends to achieve the harmony of oneself with the cosmic “whole”, the overcoming of all separations - including the distance that separates creature from Creator. In this context, responsibility, evil, goodness and moral judgement become something collective without a clear concept or manageable moral definition. In fact Immoral acts, such as lying, dishonesty, cheating, stealing, killing, are often falsely elevated to the status of moral virtues under the description of the “right act” - that being the act required to bring about the “perceived” greater good. This is especially evident in the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century that have been largely motivated by consequentialist ideologies. Ultimately, Consequentialism fails as an adequate moral theory worthy of human pursuit. It succeeds only in advancing a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.
New research published in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage suggests that an ancient Aboriginal love story written in the sky reveals knowledge of variability in the star Betelgeuse, the ninth brightest star in the night sky and second brightest in the constellation of Orion.
Betelgeuse, also known as Alpha Orionis, is a variable star whose magnitude varies between 0.2 and 1.2. This means that the star brightens and fades over a period of about 400 days. The variation in Betelgeuse's brightness was believed to have been observed with a telescope in 1836 by Sir John Herschel, when he published his observations in Outlines of Astronomy. However, the latest study suggests the Australian Aboriginals knew of its variability long before this time, according to a report in ABC Science.
Early last century, famous anthropologist Daisy Bates spent 16 years living among the Aboriginal people of South Australia’s Great Victoria Desert, recording their daily lives, lore, and oral traditions. Among her archived notes are stories regarding the Aboriginal astronomical traditions of this region.
One story, now referred to as “The Orion Story” involves the stars making up the constellations of Orion and Taurus. According to the legend, the story tells how the constellation Orion (called ‘Nyeeruna’), which is often portrayed as a male hunter, chases after the Pleiades star cluster, usually portrayed as a group of seven sisters (‘Yugarila’). Standing between Nyeeruna (Orion) and Yugarilya (Pleiades cluster), is their eldest sister Kambugudha, represented by the Hyades star cluster. Kambugudha taunts Nyeeruna by standing before him. The club in Nyeeruna's right hand, which is the star Betelgeuse, fills with 'fire magic' ready to throw at Kambugudha. However, she defensively lifts her foot, which is the star Aldebaran and also full of fire magic, causing Nyeeruna great humiliation and putting out his fire.
The Australian Aboriginals have been recording astronomical phenomena in their oral histories for thousands of years. Photo credit: Paul Curnow and Gail Glasper
A detailed analysis of the complete story has led researchers from the University of New South Wales to suggest that the reference to the ‘fire magic’ of Betelgeuse is an observation of the star in its bright phase, while reference to ‘putting out his fire’ is an observation of the fading of Betelgeuse.
"This is very interesting because this ancient story accurately describes the variability of Betelgeuse, which brightens and fades over a period of about 400 days," said one of the study authors, Dr Duane Hamacher.
Hamacher explains that other parts of the Orion Story refer to sparks coming from Nyeeruna's body, when he's filled with lust for the seven sisters. "The sparks coming from Nyeeruna, match the radiant of the annual Orionids meteor shower produced by Earth's passage through the debris trail of the comet Halley, which typically peaks over the last two weeks of October," said Hamacher.
Hamacher, and co-author Trevor Leaman, suggest that the Orion story is similar to myths and legends found in many other cultures around the world, including Greek mythology and legends from cultures across Asia, South America, and Africa.
In the Greek myth of the Pleiades, a group of seven sisters were transformed into a cluster of stars, and were chased by a man seen in the Orion stars. Photo source: Wikipedia.
"There's always a debate about why these stories are so similar from different places around the world," says Hamacher. "It could be contamination from one culture to another, but I think it's simply that as humans we perceive natural phenomena in certain similar ways”.
This article will present the cases for and against Archimedes as the original inventor of the most striking and famous device attributed to him, the water screw. It takes the form of a case study that focuses as much on the context and motives for the invention as on the possible inventor himself. In brief, an Archimedean water screw consists of a cylinder containing several continuous helical walls that, when the entire cylinder is rotated on its longitudinal axis, scoop up water at the open lower end and dump it out the upper end. Both Aage Drachmann and John Oleson have summarized the literary and archaeological evidence from the classical world suggesting that Archimedes (287-212 B.C.) was the first person to design and construct a mechanical water-raising screw, and they accept him as the inventor. 1 Stephanie Dalley, on the other hand, reinterpreting a passage of cuneiform Akkadian and a statement by Strabo, has proposed that the water screw was [End Page 1] already known during the reign of the Assyrian king Sennacherib (704-681 B.C.) and that the design was put to use in spectacular fashion to water his palace garden at Nineveh. 2 The precise identification of the inventor of a device or procedure is problematic, since nearly every technological advance is the result of long accumulation of human experience. As any modern patent lawyer can attest, it is difficult to document the originality of even a complicated or specialized technique or device. This problem is compounded for ancient technological innovations because firsthand documentary records are rare, and historical texts, where they exist, can be unclear, mistaken, or tendentious. 3 The frequent lists of "inventors" in Pliny's Natural History (especially 7.191-215) are an example of the doubtful attribution in the mid-first century of particular devices and techniques to individuals. Ancient authors occasionally preserve a story of invention that sounds convincing and fits into the known contemporary cultural and technological context—for example, Vitruvius's charming depiction (On Architecture 9.8.2-4) of the youthful inventions of the Alexandrian Ctesibius (third century B.C.), who provided helpful gadgets for his father's barber shop. 4 Memorable and entertaining as such stories are, there is no method by which modern scholars can distinguish genuine biographical detail from an etiological fiction containing plausible details added to increase the immediacy. Fortunately, identification of a specific individual inventor is far less important or interesting than an understanding of the historical and cultural context that spawned the invention and fostered its reception. The precocious Ctesibius sounds like the young Thomas Edison, enlivening his modest surroundings with innovative gadgets, setting the stage for his later accomplishments through induction, invention from the bottom up. Occasionally we hear of the motives and procedures of a royal patron in the classical world, of top-down innovation. The historian Diodorus Siculus (Diodorus of Sicily), for example, writing in the mid-first century B.C., describes a sort of think tank set up by the ambitious King Dionysius I of Syracuse [End Page 2] (430-367 B.C.) to solve a particular problem of military technology (History 14.41.3-4, 42.1). The high wages, performance bonuses, and focused work groups would not be out of place in a modern computer company:
Dionysius, therefore, immediately assembled technicians, commanding them to come from the cities he ruled, and luring them from Italy and Greece—and even from Carthaginian territory—with high wages. For he intended to manufacture weapons in great numbers and projectiles of every sort. . . . After assembling a great number of technicians, he divided them into work-groups according to each one's own talents. . . .
In fact, the catapult was invented [euJrevqh] in Syracuse on this occasion, since the most able technicians were gathered together from all over into one place. The high wages stimulated their enthusiasm, along with the numerous prizes offered to those judged the best.
Sennacherib ruled a vast area that stretched from Tarsus, in what is now southern Turkey, to the eastern border of Egypt, and from Armenia to Bahrain (fig. 1). It was the duty of a successful Assyrian king not only to enrich the nation through conquest but also to display power through fine buildings, the patronage of great art, and engineering works to manage the supply of water to his great cities. Provided that the technology was available, he had the manpower and the raw materials to achieve whatever he wanted, regardless of time, expense, or detriment to the health of his workmen. 10 Numerous long inscriptions survive that suggest Sennacherib had a direct personal interest in engineering, beyond what his position required, and the material remains of spectacular canals, tunnels and an aqueduct prove the veracity of the texts. 11 He channeled water from several mountain streams east of Nineveh across varied terrain, making eighteen different channels, beginning at Bavian, 50 kilometers away to the northeast. The [End Page 5] flow crossed a wide valley on an aqueduct more than 280 meters long and 22 meters wide, built up on freestanding stone arches, and entered Nineveh at just the right height to irrigate the lower portions of the garden built outside Sennacherib's palace. Some of the water was diverted to irrigate orchards and fields to the north of Nineveh. 12 To accommodate surges in the water flow, Sennacherib constructed an artificial marshland, an excellent solution that municipal engineers have recently reinvented; such marshes absorb and delay flow, filter the water, and attract wildlife. He was particularly pleased to have designed an automatic sluice that "opens by itself, without using a spade or a shovel, and allows the waters of prosperity to flow. Its gate is not opened by any action of men's hands." 13 At Arbela, Sennacherib built an underground tunnel to bring high-quality water into the city, constructing it like a qanat (an underground aqueduct with shafts to the surface at intervals), and recorded his deed on an inscription (badly eroded) at the entrance. 14 Works such as these show how completely the Assyrians had mastered the principles of hydraulic engineering. [End Page 6]
Water Screws in Sennacherib's Palace Gardens at Nineveh?
In an Akkadian inscription written on a clay prism, Sennacherib describes at great length his main achievements in improving Nineveh with a palace, a palace garden, and various measures for water control. His southwest palace, known as "the Palace without a Rival," and the gardens that were raised up beside it are described together and termed "a Wonder for All Peoples." The text touches on both of the topics important to a discussion of the water screw before Archimedes: bronze casting and water control. 15 One passage mentions large bronzes of various shapes for a variety of purposes, cast using a new method, and the installation of some of them for the purpose of raising water:
Whereas in former times the kings my forefathers had created copper statues imitating real forms, to put on display inside temples, and in their method of work they had exhausted all the craftsmen for lack of skill and failure to understand principles [?]; they needed so much oil, wax and tallow [or lanolin] for the work that they caused a shortage in their own lands—I, Sennacherib, . . . knowledgeable in all kinds of work, took much advice and deep thought over making that work: great pillars of copper, colossal striding lions, such as no previous king had ever constructed before me, with the technical skill that [the god] Ninshiku brought to perfection in me, and . . . I invented a technique for copper and did it skillfully. I created clay molds as if by divine intelligence for great cylinders and alamittu palms, tree of riches; twelve fierce lion-colossi together with twelve mighty bull-colossi which were perfect castings; twenty-two cow-colossi invested with joyous allure, plentifully endowed with sexual attraction; and I poured copper into them over and over again; I made the castings of them as perfectly as if they had only weighed half a shekel each. . . .
In order to draw water up all day long I had ropes, bronze wires and bronze chains made, and instead of shadufs [makâte] I set up the great cylinders [gismahhu] and alamittu palms over cisterns. I made those royal lodges look just right. I raised the height of the surroundings of the palace to be a Wonder for all Peoples. I gave it the name: "Incomparable Palace." A park imitating the Amanus mountains I laid out next to it, with all kinds of aromatic plants, orchard fruit trees. . . 16[End Page 7]
Some of the bronze castings were architectural items in the form of animals, probably used as column bases. It has been calculated that they weighed up to 43 tons, an enormous mass made possible by new casting methods. 17 The items used to raise water are described as a "great tree trunk" (gismahhu), which is the word used for a cylinder (for example, in mathematical problem texts), and as an alamittu palm tree. In fact, it is the molds that are described as being these two, separate items, not the casting itself, which Dalley interprets as a bronze water screw. The weight of such a bronze screw cannot be calculated with any accuracy, since length, diameter and thickness of metal are all unknown, but if we assume dimensions similar to those of wooden Roman water screws or the BBC reproductions (3 meters long, with a diameter of 0.45 meters), they would have weighed 2 or 3 tons. 18 Dalley has proposed the hypothesis that the term alamittu was used metaphorically to indicate the spiraling helix of such a water screw. 19 The spiral form itself had been familiar to engineers in both northern and southern Mesopotamia since the Middle Bronze Age, and was used in mud-brick columns constructed of trapezoidal bricks laid in a decorative spiral pattern (fig. 2), some of them still visible in Sennacherib's day. 20 In addition, some stone and terra-cotta sculptures show palms with a spiral-patterned trunk. 21 The difficulty of finding an appropriate technical term in the languages of preindustrial cultures is well illustrated by the Assyrian usage of gismahhu, "great tree-trunk," for a hollow cylinder, and by the Greek use of kocliva~, "snail," for a spiral or helix. Nevertheless, the recognition that a helical form hidden inside a cylinder could be used to raise water is a significant conceptual leap. [End Page 8] Sennacherib's new water-lifting device for his palace garden was cast in bronze, and thus combined his metallurgical and hydraulic interests. His father, Sargon II, was also personally interested in the techniques of mining, smelting, and alloying. 22 To show such a detailed interest in technical matters, to be enthusiastic about innovative technology, is unusual in the writings of Mesopotamian kings. At the time when Sennacherib recorded his achievements, the craft of the bronzeworker was steadily being displaced by the new craft of the ironworker. The process of change was a slow one, partly for reasons of social status. The bronzeworker had a high standing in society and was attached to the palaces and temples from which his patronage came. The ironworker, on the other hand, came as a tinker, a refugee, a displaced foreigner, and his material, iron ore, was common. Worked iron could not be reused as easily as bronze and decayed more readily, which made it unsuitable for storing as treasure or using as currency. 23 In these circumstances, bronze production grew specialized, drawing upon its royal [End Page 9] patronage to create works of art and interesting devices. Sennacherib, like his father, was an ideal patron because he took a personal interest in the processes involved and described them in his royal inscriptions. Hollow casting is attested in Mesopotamia as early as the dynasty of Agade (circa 2334-2279 B.C.) by the bronze head of Sargon found at Nineveh. 24 The outer layer of an object was hollow cast by a typical lost-wax technique, but using a copper alloy containing only 1 percent tin along with some lead, iron, silver, nickel, bismuth, and cobalt. The object was then filled with a different copper alloy, composed of 11 percent tin and significantly less of the other added metals, the core thus having a much lower melting point and so not melting the outer layer. 25 Concentric casting with different alloys was practiced in Elam on the border of Babylonia in the fourteenth century B.C., as attested by the statue of Napirasu, which even in its present truncated state is 1.29 meters tall and weighs 1,750 kilograms. 26 The solid bulls and lions cast by Sennacherib were presumably made by a similar method, except that Sennacherib claims to have dispensed with the wax and tallow used in the first stage of the casting in order to produce even larger objects than were previously possible. Two hollow bronze cylinders from Susa that date to the twelfth century indicate clearly the technological heritage Sennacherib could draw upon in casting his cylindrical water-lifting devices. 27 The one on display in the Louvre is 4.36 meters long, 0.18 meters in diameter, its irregular walls around 1.5 centimeters thick—more or less the same length as the water screws proposed for Nineveh, but smaller in diameter. The estimated weight is 125-30 kilograms. 28 Although the casting of a helix inside a cylinder is a more complex task, it is clear Sennacherib had at his disposal the metallurgical skills needed to produce large bronze water screws. As part of the BBC program, and in an attempt to reconstruct Assyrian casting procedures, Andrew Lacey cast a small-scale water screw, using 60 kilograms of bronze. The furnace was constructed simply and in the open [End Page 10] air, and the casting accomplished largely with tools and materials appropriate to an early Iron Age culture. Lacey fashioned a wood-and-rope model for the helix, coated with clay and suspended inside a separate cylinder of baked clay that encased the whole. The molds for the helix and the cylinder were separate, and the casting they produced was a unitary bronze screw with a hollow center, the helix and the surrounding cylinder cast as a single piece. A separate bronze rod was then inserted as the axle. No wax was used, since Sennacherib implies that wax was not needed for his new method of casting, or at least not in such huge quantities as previously. The shape is ideal for casting, since there are no awkward angles where air might be trapped and the metal flows smoothly through the mold. There do not appear to be any technical obstacles to the casting of a large water screw as a single unit, other than the difficulties inherent in any large casting project. Dalley has argued that two passages in classical literature also imply the existence of water screws in Sennacherib's garden at Nineveh: Strabo Geography 16.1.5 and the later Philo of Byzantium, better known as Philo the Paradoxographer, On the Seven Wonders of the World 1.4. 29 Both passages describe the method of raising water for the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Dalley has made a good case that these gardens never existed in Babylon [End Page 11] proper, but that later authors knew Nineveh under the name Babylon and were describing Sennacherib's garden in Nineveh. 30 If she is correct, Strabo's description of Babylon in the later first century B.C. may be derived from some earlier source, even though his description of the Near East seems to be based in part on personal travel. Quintus Curtius Rufus also records that the gardens (like the other world wonders) were still flourishing in his own day (first century A.D.?). 31 The apparent transfer of the Hanging Gardens from Nineveh, later known as "Old Babylon," on the Tigris, to Babylon on the Euphrates was permanent. Many travelers confused the two rivers because of numerous branching streams and canals connecting them. Strabo wrote (Geography 16.1.5): "The topmost story is approached by a stairway that has water screws [kocliva~] installed alongside, by means of which those assigned to the task used to raise water up continuously into the gardens from the Euphrates." The arrangement makes technological sense. A series of water screw installations was constructed from the river to the top of the garden structure, parallel to stairs providing access presumably both to the individuals rotating the water screws and to other service personnel, as well as to those seeking pleasure. Strabo says the screws were set alongside steps that led to the top of the terraced garden, possibly a stepped corridor protected from the sun by a mud-brick barrel vault or leafy arbors. There is a similar passage in a description of the same "Gardens of Babylon" by his contemporary Diodorus Siculus (History 2.10.6): "There was one [gallery] with shafts from the highest level and water-lifting machines [o[rgana] by means of which a quantity of water was drawn up from the river, although no one outside could see the activity." There is no way to determine what sort of water-lifting device Diodorus thought was in use here, although the mention of "shafts" [diatomav~] might imply a vertical lift by means of ropes, rather than a hidden, sloping corridor for water screws. In this case, the animal-operated bucket and pulley (the cerd) may be considered an option, and it was known in Mesopotamia by at least the fourth century B.C. 32 Neither Strabo nor Diodorus, [End Page 12] however, refer to animals, and the long walkway needed for a cerd is likely to have been visible to onlookers. The account of the "Hanging Gardens of Babylon" in the handbook to the Seven Wonders of the World written by Philo the Paradoxographer in the fourth century A.D. is derived from unknown sources, and rendered in typically florid Byzantine Greek. Philo describes the associated irrigation system as follows (1.4): "Streams of water issuing from springs higher up flow partly downward in a direct course, partly are forced upwards through bends and spirals to gush out higher up, being pushed through the twists of these devices by mechanical forces. So, brought together in frequent and commodious sources at a high level, these waters irrigate the whole garden. . . ." 33 The mention of bends, spirals, and twists make it clear that the water-lifting device intended could only be a water screw. The supply system is mixed, however, since the author also mentions the provision of some of the water by gravity flow, presumably to the lower portion of the gardens. There is no other evidence in Assyrian inscriptions for knowledge of the water screw, and no illustrations of water screws in surviving Assyrian relief sculptures. The absence of representations, however, is hardly surprising, given the low survival rate for these reliefs. The one relief sculpture that may illustrate the garden itself is a badly damaged panel only 35 percent complete (fig. 3). It was set up at Nineveh during the reign of Ashurbanipal, Sennacherib's grandson, who was unfortunately the last king to use such bas-reliefs. 34 Ever since its discovery, attempts have been made to compare details of the garden relief with the descriptions of the Hanging Gardens by Strabo and Diodorus Siculus: an aqueduct brings water into the garden halfway up the slope, and artificial terraces thick with plants are built up on stone vaults. One of the drawings made of a now missing fragment has recently been recognized as providing further details of the gardens: at the top of a steep slope is a pillared walkway supporting trees growing on the thick roof. This detail is found in the depiction of the gardens by Philo the Paradoxographer, who describes stout columns with beams set on top supporting soil and trees. 35 No water-lifting devices, however, are visible in the surviving portion of the relief. Of the known ancient water-lifting devices, the water screw best fits the words of Sennacherib's inscription as interpreted by Dalley, but neither the [End Page 13] inscription nor the visual evidence prove the existence of the water screw in the seventh century B.C. Only the passage in Strabo is early enough and clear enough to carry some authority, and yet there is no guarantee that the water screws he mentions appeared in his source or that the source itself predates Archimedes. The water screws might even have been retrofitted at the gardens after their invention by Archimedes, to replace some other, less efficient method of irrigation. 36 None of these passages mentions the method of turning the devices. In her 1992 article, Dalley suggested that the screws she reconstructs were turned with a crank mounted on the upper end of the axle. 37 This approach, however, is almost certainly wrong, since it seems that the principle of the true crank was not discovered until the second century B.C., when it appears in rudimentary form on rotary querns, and it was apparently not put to use in ancient machinery. 38 The inertia of such heavy bronze water [End Page 14] screws and the friction of their bearings would have made it impossible to drive them by means of humans treading the top of the barrel, as shown in Roman illustrations of wooden screws. Any method that requires cogs may be discounted, since the cog also seems to have been unknown before the Hellenistic period. 39 The mention of ropes, wires, and chains in connection with the water-lifting device of Sennacherib's inscription suggests to Dalley that the screws she restored at Nineveh were driven by a system of chains wound around the barrels and hauled from below. The hinge sockets that took the weight of the enormous doors at some Near Eastern palaces provide a possible parallel for the bearings. These doors were strapped to a vertical, cylindrical beam, which was set into a copper-lined stone socket and rotated to open the door leaf. 40 Lard and other oils were supplied to doorkeepers, some presumably for lubrication. 41 The wooden double doors with bands of bronze found at Balawat near Nineveh weighed at least 1,120 kilograms. 42 They date to about two hundred years earlier than Sennacherib and were provided with sockets made of a very hard, dense, black stone. 43 The bearings for the screws might have been similar, the shaft bedded in journal or thrust bearings lined with copper or bronze and kept well oiled. The splashing water lifted by the screws would also have served to lubricate the bearings. Lack of evidence prohibits precise calculation of how much water had to be raised from one terrace to another in the gardens at Nineveh. The height of the terraces above the aqueduct is not known, nor do we know how many trees or which species were grown there. Diodorus Siculus describes the size of the garden as "like a Greek theater, 4 plethra on each side" (roughly 120 meters). 44 The BBC water screws lifted approximately 150 liters per minute (9,000 liters per hour) for short periods of time over a height of about 1.5 meters. 45 This discharge is equivalent to 162 cubic [End Page 15] meters of water in an eighteen-hour day. Such a high rate of discharge suggests that just one or two series of water screws would have been sufficient to irrigate the gardens, perhaps working only a few hours each day. In addition, not all the water would have had to be lifted to the highest terrace. Two series of screws might have been used to lift water as high as the midpoint of the total lift, with irrigation water being drawn off from the sumps on each terrace, while only one series continued on to the higher terraces. It is also possible that the aqueduct illustrated in the British Museum's Nineveh relief and alluded to by Philo the Paradoxographer brought water in high enough that only the top few terraces had to be irrigated by lifted water. Given the absence of specific details about the gardens, however, it is impossible to provide detailed statistics of need or potential discharge. It should be emphasized that if the object cast by Sennacherib was a water screw, it could not have represented the first use of that mechanism for raising water. There must have been working examples in wood that inspired or were copied for the bronze casting, since nobody would cast such a device full-scale in bronze unless he already knew it would work. Just as the sophistication of the Antikythera cog mechanism (by far the earliest material evidence for gearing) was part of a long period of technical evolution largely hidden from us, so the manufacture of Sennacherib's screw in expensive and intractable bronze was presumably the result of considerable previous experience and practical use. 46 Since wood rarely survives in Mesopotamia, we are unlikely ever to find wooden water screws there. In summary, the details of the Palace without a Rival inscription as reinterpreted by Dalley remain the principal pre-Hellenistic evidence for the existence of the water screw. This interpretation is supported by Strabo's description of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon only if one attributes the gardens to Sennacherib at Nineveh rather than to another king in Babylon and accepts the antiquity of Strabo's sources. The same provisos affect interpretation of the passage in Philo the Paradoxographer. If the screw was invented or adopted by the Assyrians in the seventh century B.C., they would likely have introduced it into Egypt when they took control of the Nile Valley in the mid-seventh century, where Archimedes might have seen it at work four centuries later. A passage in Deuteronomy (11:10), probably dating to the seventh century B.C., mentions that in Egypt, unlike Palestine, men watered their gardens "with their feet." The phrase may refer to the shovel work necessary for impounding and [End Page 16] channeling irrigation water in the Nile Valley, or it may simply be a metaphor for hard labor. But if the phrase is to be interpreted literally, the only appropriate irrigation devices would be the water screw or the wheel with compartmented rim, and for the latter there is no evidence earlier than the third century B.C. 47 One might expect Egyptian paintings to show screws in action in the Nile Delta during the Persian or early Ptolemaic periods if they existed then, but by that time the vogue for landscape art, so popular in the Late Bronze Age period of the New Kingdom, had passed. 48 One can only hope that more evidence will come to light in the future.
Did Archimedes Invent the Water Screw?
Is the case for Archimedes as the inventor—or even the reinventor—of the water screw any stronger than that for Sennacherib? Without doubt Archimedes wrote a mathematical treatise on spirals, for which the main application known at that time was the water-lifting screw. The question is, was he responsible also for the mechanical invention? 49 And even if we cannot verify that he invented (or reinvented) the device, what was the context that spawned the innovation? The design of the everyday Greek and Roman water screw, in contrast to the heavy bronze device of Sennacherib, with its problematic drive chains, has a powerful simplicity. A double or triple helix was built of wood strips (or occasionally bronze sheeting) around a heavy wooden pole. A cylinder was built around the helices using long, narrow boards fastened to their periphery and waterproofed with pitch, and treading [End Page 17] cleats were fastened around the outside of the barrel, toward the center (figs. 4 and 5). Screws of this type, which might be 2 meters to 3 meters long, turned on simple metal pivots at each end of the axle. All surviving representations of the water screw in action show a single individual standing on the treads to work the screw, which is set at a low angle, and the literary texts describe only treading. The treader balanced and partly supported himself on a pole stuck in the earth nearby or on a horizontal beam supported by a thatched sun shelter, and moved the treads with his feet. There is a fresco representation of an agricultural water screw in the House of Menander at Pompeii (fig. 4), and Philo Judaeus provides a clear description of such a water screw action in the first century A.D. (De confusione linguarum 38):
Compare the screw, the water-lifting device. There are some treads around the middle on which the husbandman steps whenever he wants to irrigate his fields, but naturally he keeps slipping off. To keep from continually falling, he grasps something sturdy nearby with his hands and clings to it, suspending his whole body from it. In this way he uses his hands as feet and his feet as hands, for he supports himself [End Page 18] with his hands, which are generally used for working, and he works with his feet, which customarily serve as supports.
For a high angle of installation, such as might be needed for draining deep mines or lifting water up a steep slope, a different method of rotation may have been used, but no descriptions or representations of a screw at such an angle exist to show how this might have been done. All the surviving archaeological evidence for the water screw dates to the first century A.D. or later, and the few possible papyrological references belong to the first and second centuries A.D. Greek literary sources, however, begin in the second half of the third century B.C. Vitruvius (On Architecture 10.6.1-4) provides the best ancient description of the water screw, and complete instructions on how to construct it. After adapting the design to reduce the number of helices to two, the procedures outlined by Vitruvius were followed without difficulty during design and construction of two full-size water screws for the BBC television production (fig. 5). Diodorus of Sicily associates the water screw with Archimedes in a passage concerned with irrigation in the Nile Delta (History 1.34.2): "[T]he Nile . . . in its annual inundation always deposits new mud, and the inhabitants easily irrigate the whole region by means of a certain device which Archimedes the Syracusan invented [ejpenovhse], called the screw [kocliva~] on account of its design." 50 Here we meet a crux of interpretation which is [End Page 19] applicable also to other passages discussed below. Common meanings of the verb ejpinoei'n include to think about, to think of, contrive, purpose, observe, invent. It can be seen that one might substitute "observed" or "found" for "invented" without disturbing the narrative or the syntax significantly. A second passage in Diodorus (History 5.37.3-4), probably quoted from the first-century B.C. author Posidonius, contains two cruxes. 51 Not only can the verb euJrivskw be ambiguous, allowing the meanings to find, find out, discover, invent, get, gain, and earn, but tecnivth~, "craftsman," might be either a direct reference to Archimedes or a generic term for the inventive human being. The passage describes the working of mines in Spain:
At a depth they sometimes break in on rivers flowing beneath the surface whose strength they overcome by diverting their welling tributaries off to the side in channels. Since they are driven by the well-founded anticipation of gain, they carry out their enterprises to the end, and—most incredible of all—they draw off the streams of water with the so-called Egyptian screw [Aijguptiakoi; koclivai], which Archimedes the Syracusan invented [eu|ren] when he visited Egypt. By means of these devices, set up in an unbroken series up to the mouth of the mine, they dry up the mining area and provide a suitable environment for carrying out their work. Since this device is quite ingenious, a prodigious amount of water is discharged with only a small amount of labor, and the whole torrent is easily discharged from the depths into the light of day. One might reasonably marvel at the inventiveness of the craftsman [Archimedes?] not only in this, but also in many other even greater inventions celebrated throughout the whole world, each of which we shall discuss carefully in turn when we come to the age of Archimedes.
The translation of eu|ren as "invented" in this passage finds support in the use by Diodorus of the same verb to record the invention of siege engines by Dionysius of Syracuse's think tank, in a passage quoted above. It is also possible to find support in the famous story of Archimedes' discovery of the principle of specific gravity while floating in a basin at a public bath in Syracuse (Plutarch Moralia 1094C): He leaped out of the tub in his excitement, crying eu|rhka (also from euJrivskw), "I've found it!" (the solution to the problem confronting him, that is), and ran home naked through the streets. 52 But should account be taken of the essential difference [End Page 20] between discovering a preexisting law and inventing a new mechanical device? Archimedes cannot be said literally to have invented the principle of displacement. Thus the verb in Plutarch may mean to come across, discover, rather than to devise first, to originate (in the sense known to patent law), and some scholars interpret it in this way. 53 According to this interpretation, preexistence of the water screw would also explain why Posidonius (in Diodorus Siculus) calls them "Egyptian screws" here and in a similar fragment quoted in Strabo Geography 3.2.9. On the other hand, one also can interpret eu|ren in the passage from Posidonius to indicate that—as with the discovery of specific gravity—Archimedes observed the principles of spirals and helices in nature and applied his analysis of natural phenomena to the solution of a human engineering problem. This seems to have been Vitruvius's understanding, since in his version of the story Archimedes "cried out in a loud voice that he had found what he was seeking" (On Architecture 9, preface 9-10, "significabat clara voce invenisse, quod quaereret"). Vitruvius lists Archimedes among the superior innovators who based their practical inventions on mathematics and natural laws (On Architecture 1.1.17): "Archimedes and Scopinas of Syracuse. They have left to posterity many treatises on machinery and timekeeping devices in which mathematics and natural law are used to make discoveries and explain them." Unfortunately, the verb is too common and the contexts in which it is used are too fluid to allow the modern reader precise semantic distinctions. Finally, mention must be made of Plutarch's description (Marcellus 14.4-9) of how mechanics was a subject entirely distinct from geometry, and how King Hiero of Syracuse had trouble persuading Archimedes "to turn his art somewhat from abstract notions to material things." This comment is unique and probably represents rhetorical posturing, but it is interesting to note that Plutarch reports Hiero's motivation to have been "prestige," like that of the contemporary Ptolemies, who subsidized applied research in Alexandria. 54 In this context he calls Archimedes dhmiourgov~ (14.9), a term for "craftsman" with more mythical overtones than that used by Posidonius. Another passage which can be interpreted to show that Archimedes invented the water screw is quoted by Athenaeus (Philosophers at Dinner 5.207-208) from Moschion's Treatise on the Great Ship of Hiero of Syracuse, [End Page 21] written sometime soon after 241 B.C. 55 "And the bilge, although of a remarkable depth, was pumped out by a single man operating a water screw [dia; koclivou], which Archimedes invented [ejxeurovnto~]." The verb used here, ejxeurivskein, has a range of meaning: invent, discover, find out. 56 Although the water screw is not well adapted to bilge pumping and was soon replaced for this purpose by chain pumps and force pumps, Moschion may have had information either that Archimedes invented the water screw and then put it to use in this highly experimental ship, or that Archimedes found the screw in Egypt and introduced it to the people of Syracuse, inventing a new use for it. 57 According to the long, detailed text quoted in Athenaeus, Archimedes was the technical overseer (gewmevtrh~ ejpovpth~) of the whole project (Philosophers at Dinner 5.206d). 58 Oleson believes that the fragments of Moschion, Agatharchides, and Posidonius (as quoted in Athenaeus and Diodorus Siculus) can be interpreted to indicate either that Archimedes invented the water screw or that during or soon after his lifetime and in the course of the second century B.C. individuals familiar with his life and work believed that he had invented a new device called the water screw. In either case, the chronology suggests that the device was invented around the time of Archimedes, in the particularly fertile climate of practical innovation associated with the Museion, the Museum at Alexandria. 59 Dalley interprets the evidence to show that he was associated with the screw only because of his treatise on spirals, his observation of preexisting screws in use in Egypt, and his adaptation of the device for Hiero's ships. 60 Dijksterhuis is another scholar who believes that Archimedes found the water screw already in use when he visited Egypt, arguing that "neither Strabo, nor Philo of Byzantium [sic], nor Vitruvius, who all three mention or describe [the water screw], associate it with the name of Archimedes." 61 These objections are groundless, since it is clear [End Page 22] from the context that by "Philo of Byzantium" Dijksterhuis intended Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, whose description of a screw in action (quoted above) in fact does not mention Archimedes. 62 The absence of Archimedes' name from some of the texts that mention the water screw is certainly not conclusive. For comparison, Ctesibius's works have been lost, but descriptions of gadgets and hydraulic devices specifically attributed to him have been preserved in the works of Philo of Byzantium, Vitruvius, and Hero of Alexandria. Ctesibius's name is associated in particular with the piston-operated force pump, called Ctesibica machina by Vitruvius (On Architecture 10.7.1). In the mid-first century A.D., however, Hero describes the same force pump in detail but calls it only a sivfwn, omitting any reference to the inventor. A parallel could be drawn with instances where Archimedes' water screw is termed only "Egyptian screw" or simply "screw." In the passages of his Geography which mention the water screw, Strabo is concerned with the design of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (16.1.5), the location of the Roman fort at Old Cairo (17.1.3), and the means of watering the many islands in the Nile river (17.1.52). There is no reason to mention Archimedes in any of these contexts. Whether the screw was introduced into the Nile Delta by Archimedes on behalf of Ptolemy II or arrived four centuries earlier under Assyrian occupation, the device was ideally suited to that environment. The water screw is particularly effective for low lifts, such as irrigation along the low-lying banks of the Nile Delta. In addition, the device is essentially self-purging and can lift water that is thick with silt and vegetable matter. There are no small intake holes or compartments to clog, the water simply flows unrestricted over smooth-walled surfaces. 63 A passage in Strabo (Geography 17.1.52) describes this situation: "There are a great many islands scattered along the course of the Nile. Some are completely covered during the flood, others only in part, and the particularly high spots are irrigated with water screws [koclivai~]." The water screw remained a typical image of the Egyptian landscape in literature and art through the Roman period. 64 Numerous terra-cotta reliefs and one fresco representing water-screw installations at work have survived from the Roman imperial period, along with one model. 65 None [End Page 23] of this evidence coincides with the period of Archimedes and his immediate successors, showing the incompleteness of the pictorial record. 66 There are, of course, no representations of water screws that predate Archimedes. One possible explanation for the absence of any evidence of the existence of the water screw between the examples Dalley reconstructs for Sennacherib's garden and those embedded in the literary sources for Archimedes' career is that the device fell out of use, was forgotten, and was reinvented by Archimedes or a near contemporary. Although the water screw has in fact never fallen out of use since Archimedes, it has allegedly been reinvented several times. The sixteenth-century Italian polymath Girolamo Cardano says he had heard of a blacksmith in Milan who thought he was the first to invent this device and went insane from joy. The nineteenth-century engineer Thomas Ewbank reports that he, too, as a boy heard of a shoemaker who had suffered the same delusion. 67 If these stories are true, it may be significant that both these individuals were workmen who—in addition to never having been exposed to a water screw in operation—presumably did not have access to the classical authors or the numerous books on applied technology already available in the sixteenth century. 68 Whether true or not, the stories arose in environments not dissimilar to that of Hellenistic Alexandria.
Conclusions
What can we conclude from all this? The chronology of the first discovery of the water screw is still clouded in uncertainty. Sennacherib was interested in the problems of water supply, and he constructed some sort of clever or spectacular device to assist the irrigation of his gardens at Nineveh. The Palace without a Rival inscription applies metaphorical terminology that an Assyriologist with a knowledge of the water screw can argue refers to that device. We know that the water screw existed by at least the mid-third century B.C., since literary sources describe it in explicit terms. It seems likely that Archimedes invented (or reinvented) the device in Egypt at the request of one of the Ptolemies to solve irrigation problems in the Nile Delta, but this conclusion is not certain. The design of the water screw can be interpreted as either an offshoot of Archimedes' research into the mathematics of [End Page 24] spirals or the very inspiration for that research. 69 If the water screw did, in fact, exist in Mesopotamia early in the seventh century B.C., what is particularly interesting is the observation that it seems either to have fallen out of use completely or to have been so completely divorced from the realities of urban society in Mesopotamia and Egypt that Archimedes could be awarded credit for its invention or rediscovery almost five hundred years later. If the water screw had such a negligible impact on the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean before the time of Archimedes, the actual date of its original invention is of little importance. But the similarity of the conditions in seventh-century Nineveh and third-century Alexandria that might have led to its discovery is striking. Both cultures depended completely on exogenous river systems to supply water for irrigating their rich, alluvial soils, and on technologies and regulations that facilitated irrigation agriculture. Both were ruled by royal houses interested as much in broadcasting the prestige and imagery of technological success, the tangible evidence of human triumph over the forces of nature, as in the practical results. Sennacherib conquered the river, forcing it to serve humankind, and commemorated the results in public reliefs and inscriptions. He also constructed his show garden for his queen, to heal her homesick memories for the verdant mountain slopes of her native land, and he irrigated the artificial mountainside conspicuously with conduits and some water-lifting device, commemorating it in the same manner as what seem to us his more practical accomplishments. The pharaohs boasted of their control of the Nile in a similar manner. Their technological heirs, the Ptolemies, made astute practical use of the water screws, catapults, and giant ships designed by their court scientists, but they delighted as well in the banquet table gadgetry designed by Ctesibius and in automated parade floats that paraded such cleverness to the public. 70 One significant difference, however, sets the Ptolemaic response apart. In the premodern period, specific, individual, nonmythical inventors are only rarely given credit for their efforts and insight, but at Alexandria and (to a lesser extent) Syracuse in the mid-third century there was a brief historical moment in which individual genius was recorded. If one of Sennacherib's engineers found the water screw in use along an irrigation canal, or dreamed up the device on the basis of an understanding of natural and man-made spiraling forms, the credit belonged to his absolute ruler. Archimedes, in contrast, was given personal credit for the water screw, which grew out of his personal intellectual interests, and for many other devices constructed for his patrons there and in Syracuse. Before him in Alexandria, [End Page 25] Ctesibius and Philo of Byzantium benefited from the same sort of celebrity. In contrast, the members of the think tank that worked for Dionysius of Syracuse 150 years previously remain anonymous, as do nearly all the innovative engineers and architects who transformed the Mediterranean world during the Roman empire. 71 The question of why individual technicians remained associated with their innovations in mid-third century B.C. Alexandria and Syracuse cannot be answered here, but the presence of the Museion, a well-funded, more or less independent research institute in Alexandria, undoubtedly played an important part, along with the well- documented rivalry of King Hiero II of Syracuse with Ptolemy II, Ptolemy III, and Ptolemy IV. 72 The very fact of the potential recognition of individual effort and accomplishment may also have been a trigger for innovation. But this florescence was brief, and the attitudes and structures typical of the ancient world had to fall away before an individual such as Leonardo da Vinci could once again derive personal fame from his inventions. Dr. Dalley is Shillito Research Fellow in Assyriology at the Oriental Institute and Somerville College, University of Oxford. She has published primary editions of cuneiform texts from excavations in Iraq and Syria and from museums in Britain, as well as specialized studies and more general books. She has translated all the Assyrian texts used in this article. Dr. Oleson is professor of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. His areas of fieldwork and research include ancient hydraulic technology, Roman harbors and their construction, and the Roman Near East. He has published widely in all these areas. Except where otherwise noted, he has translated all the Greek and Latin texts cited in the article. The authors are grateful to a number of scholars for their assistance with this article, including Richard Dight, Peter Kingsley, David Oates, Simon Raikes, and the Technology and Culture referees.
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