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The Elephant Clock, from a Book of the Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices

Farrukh ibn ʿAbd al-Latif (copyist), after al-Jazari, dated 1315. probably Syria or Iraq.

Thirty works are on view at a time, ten to a room. Every day at midnight UTC, the ten that have hung longest go back into storage and ten others come out, so each work hangs for three days and then rests for three. A work always returns to the same place on the same wall.

A manuscript page showing a painted elephant carrying an elaborate tower clock with a driver, figures, dragons and a bird on top, beside Arabic text. — Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0). Select it for the full size.

In 1206 the engineer al-Jazari, working in what is now southeastern Turkey, wrote a book describing marvellous machines, including water-raising devices, automata and clocks. This page, from a later copy, shows his elephant clock. A bowl inside the elephant’s body slowly fills with water and sinks, and as it does it pulls a series of strings. At set times a bird whistles, a ball drops from a dragon’s mouth and the driver on the elephant’s neck strikes a gong. Al-Jazari pointed out that his clock brought together ideas and images from many places, including India, China, Persia and Egypt. It was a machine for measuring time that was also meant to delight.

Look closely

Find the bird at the top. What does it do every half hour?
Find the dragons. Where do they lead?
Look at the elephant driver. What is he holding?

While you sit

A clock built to make people smile. Let the time pass without counting it.

Your seat in the galleries: a brass bench with small gears worked into its legs and an indigo cushion.

About the work

Title: The Elephant Clock, from a Book of the Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices
Artist: Farrukh ibn ʿAbd al-Latif (copyist), after al-Jazari
Date: dated 1315
From: probably Syria or Iraq
Medium: Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper
Size: H. 11 13/16 in. (30 cm)
Rights: Public domain
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0)
Record: The museum's page for this work

The words on this page were written for the campus, not taken from the museum's label.

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