On Friday 15^th December, a sundial created by the sculptor Andreas Galanakis was unveiled at the entrance to the premises of the FORTH research foundation in Heraklion, in the presence of the president of FORTH, professor Netkarios Tavernarakis, and the director of its Institute of Astrophysics Vasilis Harmandaris. The sundial, which is named Alektryon, was donated to FORTH by the sculptor as part of the celebrations marking 40 years of the foundation’s existence, and will be on display at the entrance for the next 6 months.

Speaking at the unveiling the sculptor described it as “a work which tries to combine mythology, aesthetics and science”, whose construction took some time and required a knowledge of history, mathematics and astronomy.

Commenting on the importance of time in human experience, professor Harmandaris said: “The concept of time is directly connected with that of space. We cannot determine time if we do not have some observable change. This observation of change was for the first humans, the rising and setting of the sun, the movement of stars in the sky, the movements of the moon, and the changes in the phases of the moon.” It was those movements that the first solar clocks were intended to track.

On the evening of the same day, an associated event sponsored by the Hellenic Institute for Research and Innovation (ELIDEK) was organised in the Vikelia Public Library in Heraklion. With the theme “Reading the clock of the heavens”, the event, according to a press release, focussed “on the meaning of time in the different phases of human history, and more specifically on the ways in which it was approached periodically by the human mind, adducing specific examples such as sundials and the Antikythira Mechanism, which have amongst other things a special educational character.”

There were addresses on three different themes:
– “Time the all-conqueror” by Vasilis Harmandaris, professor at the University of Crete, Director of the Institute of Astrophysics and of the Skinakas Observatory.
– “The hunter of shadows and moving geometry”, with demonstration of a sundial, by Andreas Galanakis, sculptor.
– “The Antikythira Mechanism: Foreseeing the future”, by Dr Magdalini Anastasiou, Physics teacher at the Stavrakeio Gymnasio of Anogeia, with the participation of musician and amateur astronomer Aristides Voulgaris and a demonstration of a working copy of the Antikythira Mechanism.

The myth of Alektryon
Alektryon (from an Ancient Greek word meaning “rooster”) in Greek mythology, was a young soldier who was assigned by Ares, the god of war, to guard his bedroom door while the god was engaged in a love affair with the goddess Aphrodite. Alektryon, however, fell asleep on the job, allowing the Sun god Helios to see the two lovers and to alert Aphrodite’s husband Hephaestus. In his anger, Ares changed Alektryon into a rooster, forever doomed to sleep standing up and to warn of the Sun’s approach each morning. Wikipedia describes it as “an etiological myth that attempts to explain the origin of roosters and the reason why they crow each morning at dawn”. The myth is not mentioned by Homer, who first related the story of Ares and Aphrodite’s infidelity in his Odyssey, but rather it was interpolated later by various authors.

According to the sculptor, the Alektryon sundial draws on this myth: it is shaped like a cockerel, and its comb carries additional information about the position of the sun in each season, while the sight shows the position of the pole star at night.
(Haniotika Nea, NeaTV)