See CROWN.
DIAL is not mentioned in Scripture before the reign of Ahaz.
Interpreters differ concerning the form of the dial of Ahaz, 2 Kings xx.
The generality of expositors think that it was a staircase so disposed,
that the sun showed the hours upon it by the shadow. Others suppose that
it was a pillar erected in the middle of a very level and smooth
pavement, on which the hours were engraven. According to these authors,
the lines marked in this pavement are what the Scripture calls degrees.
Grotius describes it as follows: “It was a concave hemisphere, and in
the midst was a globe, the shadow of which fell on the different lines
engraven in the concavity of the hemisphere; these lines were
twenty-eight in number.” This description answers pretty nearly to that
kind of dial, which the Greeks called _scapha_, a boat or hemisphere,
the invention (rather introduction) of which, Vitruvius ascribes to
Berosus the Chaldean. It would seem, indeed, that the most ancient sun
dial known is in the form of a half circle, hollowed into the stone, and
the stone cut down to an angle. This kind of dial was invented in
Babylon, and was very probably the same as that of Ahaz.
DIAL is not mentioned in Scripture before the reign of Ahaz.
Interpreters differ concerning the form of the dial of Ahaz, 2 Kings xx.
The generality of expositors think that it was a staircase so disposed,
that the sun showed the hours upon it by the shadow. Others suppose that
it was a pillar erected in the middle of a very level and smooth
pavement, on which the hours were engraven. According to these authors,
the lines marked in this pavement are what the Scripture calls degrees.
Grotius describes it as follows: “It was a concave hemisphere, and in
the midst was a globe, the shadow of which fell on the different lines
engraven in the concavity of the hemisphere; these lines were
twenty-eight in number.” This description answers pretty nearly to that
kind of dial, which the Greeks called _scapha_, a boat or hemisphere,
the invention (rather introduction) of which, Vitruvius ascribes to
Berosus the Chaldean. It would seem, indeed, that the most ancient sun
dial known is in the form of a half circle, hollowed into the stone, and
the stone cut down to an angle. This kind of dial was invented in
Babylon, and was very probably the same as that of Ahaz.