Paroles de Soleil

Sundials are still often considered today, wrongly, as simply an artistic outdoor decoration. In fact, they are complex astronomical instruments, not only as conceived but also in actual reality. The principles applied in their construction are ruled by astronomy and cosmic laws subsuming the understanding of the movement of the sun. The science of building sundials is referred to as « gnomonics », from the ancient Greek γνωμων (gnomon) meaning the ultimately competent judge. The interpretation of mottoes and other inscriptions on sundials may facilitate the understanding of the notion of the passing of time, its possible conscious and unconscious, individual and collective interpretations, and the relationships that Mankind has established with it. France is privileged to have on its territory some very ancient sundials, consequently an analysis of the available data can reveal how those relations have changed over a period of centuries or even decades. Since 1998, a special committee of the French Society for Astronomy’s Sundial Commission (Paris, France) has been analyzing sundials and their mottoes. For the past seven years, the group has worked on a classification system founded on 12 categories based on their intrinsic meaning (for example : religious, philosophical, optimistic mottoes,...). After the analysis of approximately 3,000 mottoes, the system revealed several trends of particular meanings through time, and the results were published under the title Paroles de Soleil – Devises des cadrans solaires de France. This publication is now available to the public. It presents and explains 2,159 mottoes found on French sundials