Surveying Ancient Egyptian

 

I found it surprising that the the Egyptians would have two systems of cubits “a royal cubit” and a “short cubit”. I also question how they came to decide on 7 palms? Why would they elect to choose a prime number for counting.

 

Moreover, I interpret the relationship between Remen, cubit, and double-remens as what we use with mm, centimeters, and meters. It also seems like the calculation of root 2 is the result of the diagonal of a square. My question is whether there is some significance to this idea of diagonals it is ancient Egyptian mathematics and many structures did involve diagonals such as the pyramids. It is also quite convenient that t he remen, cubit, and double-remen all amount to a nice number of fingers with 19.5 being the most irrational of the numbers so to speak. Moreover, it seems as if the idea of fingers preceded cubits, yet when calculating the remen as half the diameter of a square with sides of a royal cubit, we once again arrive at a nice number of fingers. I question is this is truly a “coincidence” like the article says. My feeling is that this was actually calculated by the Egyptians so they could help conceptualize as the fingers length is 16 mm and that seems fairly realistic even if we look at our fingers today.

Comments

  1. Erica HuangSeptember 24, 2024 at 9:22 PM

    Thanks, Zain. Could you elaborate a bit more on points in your first short paragraph? Why did you find it surprising that there are two units? I agree that from this reading, we wouldn't know why ancient Egyptians chose 7 palms for a cubit, but if we think of it as 28 fingers as indicated in the article, the prime factor doesn't seem to be an issue.

    It's interesting that you see the relationship between remen, cubit, and double-remen similar to the base-10 metric system for length measurements. How are the two systems different though?

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  2. Zain RehmtullaOctober 12, 2024 at 8:12 PM

    Sure, so a royal cubit is approximately = to a short cubic plus 4 fingers but it is not known if that is the intention. If the short cubic was half the long (royal) cubic it would make sense to me but because they are close in nature I don't see it being all that useful and so that surprised me. Moreover, the base 10 system and cubit systems are different in that the cubit system, the remens are not multiples of one another,

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