The Nabataean timing system

Excavations at UNESCO World Heritage Sites Petra and Hegra have uncovered evidence of the Nabataeans' sophisticated timing system, including water clocks, sundials, and ground shadow clocks. These findings, combined with linguistic analysis of Nabataean inscriptions, reveal a detailed terminology for time measurement: 'day', 'year', 'month', 'hour', 'week', 'night', and 'time'. The study also sheds light on their annual calendar, adopting a comparative historical and linguistic approach to explore how the Nabataeans structured and measured time. This research provides new insights into an ancient civilization's temporal organization, bridging archaeology and linguistics.

Alzoubi, M. (2016). The Nabataean timing system. Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 69(3), 301–309. https://doi.org/10.1556/062.2016.69.3.5