Why Does the Hourglass Remind Us That Life Is Short?

The hourglass is among the easiest symbols of mortality to read. You can watch the sand run down. This article looks at where it came from and how it came to stand for the shortness of life.

When did the hourglass appear?

In the Late Middle Ages in Europe. Wikipedia says there are no records of the hourglass in Europe before then. It adds that the first documented example is a depiction in the 1338 fresco Allegory of Good Government by Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Its predecessor, the water clock, existed in Babylon and Egypt as early as the 16th century BCE. The Scottish Rite adds that hourglasses became popular in the 14th century on ships, where they were more dependable than water clocks.

How did it become a symbol of death?

By being paired with other reminders of mortality. My Modern Met says symbols such as hourglasses and clocks represent the unstoppable passage of time in vanitas paintings. UNESCO’s museum catalog describes a 1698 Dutch painting with a skull at the center, an overturned hourglass, and an extinguished candle. These objects were meant to remind viewers of the fragility of life and the certainty of death. The Bowdoin College Museum of Art describes a painting in which musical instruments, a sword, and a shield stand for earthly pleasures and power. The skull and hourglass remind us of death and the passing of time. It adds that hourglasses have graced gravestones for centuries and were sometimes placed in coffins in England. The Antiquarian Horological Society, a British society for the study of timekeeping, explains in a blog post that wings remind us that time flies and will eventually run out for everyone. It shows a winged hourglass on a 1740 headstone in Scotland. It also notes that in a Lisbon cemetery the winged hourglass often appears with other symbols of death, such as Father Time’s scythe, an inverted torch, or a skull. The American Folk Art Museum says the image of Father Time appeared in North America at least as early as 1678, on a gravestone in Boston’s King’s Chapel burial ground. By convention he is a winged, bearded figure holding an hourglass and a scythe or sickle, believed to be related to classical portraits of the Titan Kronos. The museum says early New England carvers borrowed the figure from an English emblem book of 1638 because he stood for the impermanence of human life.

Is the message only frightening?

Not necessarily. A Rijksmuseum description of a related Dutch vanitas says the symbols reminded viewers to face death courageously and without fear. See Why Are Skulls a Reminder to Live? and Memento Mori: Why Remembering Death Can Make Life Better for more, and What Gravestones Say for how these symbols appear in cemeteries.