Synchronized with Nature. Measuring time in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia: archaeological and textual evidence

What did Time mean for ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians? How did the two literate cultures of the pre-classical past define and measured time and transformed it into a powerful tool for the ruling elites of pristine states? Is it possible to unveil proto-scientific knowledge described in hieroglyphic and cuneiform texts through religious and mythic-symbolic paraphrases? Can archaeology help in this investigation gathering material evidence of time measuring to be combined or confronted with textual data? How the concept of time and its regulation in calendars and dating systems was connected, by Egyptians and Mesopotamians, to the origins of the World, that is the ideological foundation of their political and religious systems (including theogony and human/divine kingship)? Which astronomical and technological knowledge allowed time measurement? Why and how did Egyptians and Mesopotamians aim at synchronizing with Nature thus participating into cosmic order? Can replicas of ancient time measuring devices help in the evaluation of the proto-scientific knowledge reached by these cultures in the fields of mathematics, geometry, physics, and astronomy? To test such key questions – which intersect not only Egyptology, Near Eastern Archaeology, Assyriology, and History, but also Philosophy, Astrophysics and Engineering – a highly interdisciplinary team has been formed by Sapienza University of Rome, University of Catania and University of Messina. The SYN-NAT project is based on both archaeological and philological data, collected and analysed through updated scientific methodologies, keeping in mind A.L. Oppenheim’s claim: “what did such tablets or items mean for them” (Ancient Mesopotamia, Preface). With a distinguished methodology casted on the interdisciplinary topic chosen SYN-NAT will achieve its main goal: to understand how time was conceived, measured, and made congenial to the socio-economic organization of Egypt and Mesopotamia from their early stages in the Proto- and Early- Dynastic Period to the New Kingdom in Egypt, and from the Late Uruk to the Kassite period in Mesopotamia (c.3500-1150 BC). The research products will include scientific papers on international refereed journals, a Final Report, a final conference, and exhibition open to the public, all datasets and deliverables free online according to FAIR protocol. The impact of SYN-NAT Project not only lays in the intrinsic importance of time definition in the theoretical foundation of the ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures – relevant for all scholars involved in the study of these civilizations – but also in the attempt to catch the scientific knowledge acquired by Egyptians and Mesopotamians, as to understand their proto-scientific languages.