
Decoding the Antikythera Mechanism
An Ancient Astronomical Clock (New Readings)
Paul A. Iversen (Case Western Reserve University)
Sebastian Prignitz (Inscriptiones Graecae Project, BBAW)
This exploration project is focusing on new interpretations on the planets’ movements provided by the Antikythera Mechanism. The fascinating story of its discovery, the history of the work done on it to unravel its mysteries, and its main functions (including definitions of important ancient time-reckoning periods) puzzled the scientific community since the beginning of the 20th Century.
The Antikythera Mechanism, so named after the Greek island in whose waters it was salvaged in 1901 from a shipwreck datable to ca. 70-50 BCE (for the date of the ship’s contents, see Vlochogianni et al. 2012), is a remarkable geared device that was constructed sometime between the late 3rd and the middle of the 1st century BCE. The device continues to fascinate and excite the imagination of the public, as evinced by the fact that it is featured prominently in the new Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny film. In 2005, a group of researchers known as the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project (AMRP) examined the 82 fragments of this badly corroded and brittle device with two recent technologies called Micro-Focus X-Ray Computed Tomography (CT) and Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM, now more widely known as Reflectance Transformation Imaging).
The research of Paul Iverson, who is working on a complete new edition of all the inscriptions on the Mechanism, will focus on the so called “Front Cover Inscription”, an inscription which features the theory behind the planets’ movements displayed on the front of the Mechanism, and the “Back Cover Inscription,” which is a kind of user’s manual, providing new readings and interpretations. This project will enable a cooperation between the work of Paul Iverson and the scientific infrastructure of the corpus of Inscriptiones Graecae of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
