SPOILERS for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
The eponymous ‘Dial of Destiny’ was based on an actual mechanical device, the name of which was used in the film – the Antikythera, or the Antikythera mechanism. While it may sound somewhat like it, ‘Antikythera’ is not a technical name for the device, but rather that of the nearest significant island to the spot in the Mediterranean Sea where the device was found – the island of Antikythera, which was known as Aegilia in antiquity, and then came to be known for its relative location to the slightly bigger island of Kythera to its north-west.
The scant details given by the film regarding the discovery of the Antikythera are largely correct, with mention of Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) tracking down “the old sponge diver who found the Dial” – this is based on the real-life captain of a crew of sponge divers from the Dodecanese island of Symi, Dimitrios Kontos, who discovered the wrecked ship in early 1900 off Glyphadia Point of Antikythera island. Over the course of the next year, the team working in concert with the Hellenic Royal Navy retrieved statues, pottery, glass, jewellery, coins and in the summer of 1901, a lump of corroded bronze and wood, which was unsurprisingly overlooked for research in favour of the more obvious finds.
When this ‘lump of corroded bronze and wood’ was finally looked at two years later, suggestions of it being the pieces of an astronomical clock or calculator were proposed; however, it was not until the 1950s that definitive research was undertaken by Derek de Solla Price, later aided by Charalampos Karakalos in presenting X-ray and gamma ray images of the fragments.
Further dives were made to the Antikythera wreck in 2012 and 2015, yielding more objects and even a second ship of unknown connection to the original. Another find, perhaps influencing the story of Dial of Destiny was a bronze disc. It had four holes in it which was proposed to connect to the Antikythera device as a cog wheel, although this has been increasingly rejected. Further diving expeditions are due to be carried out through 2025.
The screenwriters also capitalised on the lack of information regarding why the mechanism would be aboard this ship, by positing it as a Roman warship, rather than a cargo vessel, out in search of the ‘second half’ of the ‘Dial of Destiny’ with the 100 centurions (this is an unlikely statistic as it would involve striping a full legion, and another half of one, of all of its centurions…) not only protecting one half of the Antikythera but actively searching for the other half using the ‘grafikos’.
So, what is the Antikythera mechanism if it is not the ‘time fissure tracker’ that it is depicted as being in Dial of Destiny?
Gradual research and advances in high-resolution imaging found that the ‘lump of bronze and wood’ was made up of 82 separate fragments, some of which were inscribed and 37 of which were gears of varying sizes (the wood was probably a case for the mechanism). This proves that the mechanism required significant skill to make, demonstrating not only the engineering abilities of the Greeks, but also their ability to read and calculate the paths of celestial objects.
This is because these pieces made up a hand-powered orrery – a model of the Solar System – that could be used to demonstrate astronomical positions, model the irregular orbit of the Moon and predict eclipses decades in advance, as well as keep track of the four-year cycle of games like the Olympiad. It is generally referred to as the first known analogue computer, although its complexity suggests that there must have been predecessor machines.
The presence of a Saros Dial, measuring the 18-year cycle of eclipses known to the Neo-Babylonian Chaldeans, could add to the suggestion that the mechanism’s predictions and measurements used Babylonian arithmetic as its primary calculator (Iversen (2017) 141-147; Jones (2017) 93).
However, exactly when and where this mechanism was constructed has proven a little more difficult. Demonstrating just how little is known about the history of such Greek mechanisms is the range of dates attributed to its design and construction – anywhere from the last years of the third century BC to the second decade of the first century BC.
For example, a study argued for approximately 200 BC, based on one of its dials beginning shortly after the new moon of 28 April 205 BC; of course, it had to have been constructed before the shipwreck, an event dated to around 70-60BC due to the various materials and items found with it (Iversen (2017) 182-183; Jones (2017) 93, 157-160, 233-246).
Most apt for the writing of Dial of Destiny is the proposal that the mechanism originated in the colonies of Corinth due to the proposed presence of a Corinthian calendar, a proposal that was perhaps most prevalent in the years when the script of the film was being written.
The city of Syracuse was a colony of Corinth and was the home of Archimedes, implying a connection with him or his school; however, in 2017, it was demonstrated that the calendar used was specifically of a Corinthian type, and not that of Syracuse (Iversen (2017) 134-141), seemingly eliminating the city (and Archimedes or his school) as a candidate for the mechanism’s origins, although possibly too late for the script writers of Dial of Destiny to think about or want to replace it as a setting for the film, particularly given the historical events surrounding Archimedes and Syracuse.
If not Syracuse, then where else might the Antikythera have been constructed? Some of the coins discovered in the wreck in the 1970s (by Jacques Cousteau no less) originated in Pergamum, a Greek city on the north-western coast of what is now Turkey which had a vast library of art and science, presenting a possible origin of the Antikythera.
Another potential geographical origin comes from the presence of Rhodian style pottery amongst the wreck, which could suggest a link to the island of Rhodes, another centre of astronomy and mechanical engineering.
This could connect with a specific ability the Antikythera is known to have – tracking the irregular orbit of the Moon, which is a theory of motion attributed to Hipparchus of Rhodes, who was active in c.140-120BC. The calibrations of the mechanism are also within the range of the latitude of Rhodes. Indeed, the initial calibrations of the mechanism has become the focus of some research in recent years, 23 December 178BC or 204BC proposed (Ouellette (2022)).
Of course, it is important to note that all of the dates proposed for the Antikythera mechanism, either creation or calibration, are after the death of Archimedes during the siege of Syracuse in 212BC, suggesting that at the very least Archimedes himself did not calibrate it.
But even if one of the great minds of the ancient world did not calibrate, create or invent the Antikythera mechanism, it most certainly was created in the century and a half after his death. And demonstrating just how far ahead of its time it was, mechanisms of similar complexity did not appear in Europe again until the 14th century...
Bibliography
Bromley, A.G. ‘The Antikythera Mechanism: A Reconstruction’, Horological Journal 133 (1990) 28-31
Bromley, A.G. ‘The Antikythera Mechanism’, Horological Journal 132 (1990) 412-415.
Iversen, P. A. ‘The Calendar on the Antikythera Mechanism and the Corinthian Family of Calendars’, Hesperia 86 (2017) 129-203
Jones, A. ‘‘Like Opening a Pyramid and Finding an Atomic Bomb’: Derek de Solla Price and the Antikythera Mechanism’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 162 (2018) 259-294.
Jones, A. A Portable Cosmos. Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World. Oxford (2017).
Ouellette, J. ‘Calibrating an Ancient Computer: Researchers home in on possible "day zero" for Antikythera mechanism’, Ars Technica (12 April 2022).
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