Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The ancient Egyptian royal cubit (meh niswt) is the earliest attested standard measure.Cubit rods were used for the measurement of length.A number of these rods have survived: two are known from the tomb of Maya, the treasurer of the 18th dynasty pharaoh Tutankhamun, in Saqqara; another was found in the tomb of Kha in Thebes.
The setat was the basic unit of land measure and may originally have varied in size across Egypt's nomes. [20] Later, it was equal to one square khet, where a khet measured 100 cubits. The setat could be divided into strips one khet long and ten cubit wide (a kha). [2] [6] [37] During the Old Kingdom:
The Egyptian cubit, the Indus Valley units of length referred to above, and the Mesopotamian cubit were used in the 3rd millennium BC and are the earliest known units used by ancient peoples to measure length. The units of length used in ancient India included the dhanus, or dhanush (bow), the krosa (cry, or cow-call) and the yojana (stage).
Ancient Roman units of length Roman unit English name Equal to Metric equivalent Imperial equivalent Notes digitus: finger: 1 ⁄ 16 pes 18.5 mm 0.728 in 0.0607 ft uncia pollex inch thumb 1 ⁄ 12 pes 24.6 mm 0.971 in 0.0809 ft palmus (minor) palm 1 ⁄ 4 pes 74 mm 0.243 ft palmus maior: palm length (lit."greater palm") 3 ⁄ 4 pes 222 mm
One official government standard of measurement of the archaic system was the Cubit of Nippur (2650 BCE). It is a Euboic Mana + 1 Diesis (432 grams). [ citation needed ] This standard is the main reference used by archaeologists to reconstruct the system.
Cubit-rods of wood or stone were used in Ancient Egypt. Fourteen of these were described and compared by Lepsius in 1865. [7] Flinders Petrie reported on a rod that shows a length of 520.5 mm, a few millimetres less than the Egyptian cubit. [8]
One cubit is originally the length from someone's elbow to the tip of their middle finger; it usually translates to approximately half a metre ±10%, with an ancient Roman cubit being as long as 120 cm. One cubit was equal to 6–7 palms, one palm being the width of a hand not including the thumb.
In Ancient Egypt it was the basic unit of subdivision of the cubit. [1] On surviving Ancient Egyptian cubit-rods, the royal cubit is divided into seven palms of four digits or fingers each. [3] The royal cubit measured approximately 525 mm, [4] so the length of the ancient Egyptian digit was about 19 mm.