The Sun

The sun, a celestial body that has guided human perception of time, holds countless meanings across temporal, spiritual, and cultural contexts.

In English, the sun is that ball of fire that gives us light, warmth, and life. It gives us time, space, keeps the earth tethered to it's orbit, and is the central point that holds everything in place (and in time).

However, no matter what, the sun is called 'the sun'.

In Arabic, this is a different story.

The sun has different names based on where it is in the sky, which season, what time of day, it's angle, it's intensity, it's behavior, how you use it, whether it is a friend, or an enemy. So just from the name, you can infer crucial spatial, temporal, and meteorological information.

the upcoming tools are a product of the following methodology:

1. deep research into meteorological dictionaries collected from the colloquial use of nomadic arabs in barren landscapes, which is the empty desert.

2. the extraction of words, some verbs, some nouns, which referred to the sun.

3. the careful translation of these words with regards to their navigational, temporal, sometimes poetic, sometimes practical, usage.

4. the extraction of specific temporal information (which season is this sun in? what time of day?) based on the usage of the word. some of these are clearer than others, like 'the oblivious child', refers to the sun at the beginning of a summer day, when it is still young, but will mature into a more intense sun later on. some are less clear, and i relied on my personal understanding to place them at a certain part of day or season.

5. finding a parallel computational representation, so computationally legible sun path diagrams, and applying my atlas of terms to that framework.

Explore the sun tool below: