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Re: Strange Maths (was Re: Why not 13 months?)
Whittet (Whittet@shore.net)
21 Jul 1995 00:20:15 GMT
In article <DC11HI.MoJ@midway.uchicago.edu>, meron@cars3.uchicago.edu says...
>
>>
>>The thing which requires standards of measure is international trade. When yo
>u
>>order your cedars from Lebanon it would be nice if they come cut to the lengt
>h
>>you expect, The same applies to those blocks of granite you have ordered from
>
>>Nubia. The Egyptians traded all over the world.
>
>International trade at the time of ancient Egypt was not done by picking the
>phone and placing an order. Either you bought whatever some trader happened t
>o
>bring or, if you were a king or a prince, you send your own traders abroad wit
>h
>specific instructions what to bring. You could tell your chief trader "get me
>fifty cedars from Lebanon, and I want every piece to be at least 30 paces long
>.
>That still isn't a standard
>
>Mati Meron | "When you argue with a fool,
>meron@cars3.uchicago.edu | chances are he is doing just the same"
Wouldn't it be easier for a society which had invented writing to just send
a note instead of a man? You are talking about a country which had huge
international imports. Things like oil for myhr, frankincense, pearls, ingots of
metal, hard diorite, salt, dye, and mercenary troops were paid for in grain or
perhaps inlaid furniture, papyrus, linen. Some of these require units of length,
others units of volume, still others were traded by weight or per each.
Isn't it interesting that we have Egyptian rulers which show that they had
standards of measure for lengths which were related to their standards of measure
for volume as the side of a cube to the cube. Their measures for grain and beer were
divided with Horus Eye fractions (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16...) but they also used
divisions in the sextigesinal system for geographic division into degrees(1/360)
minutes(1/60 x 1/360) and seconds 1/60 x 1/60 x 1/360). Their year, for example,
was 360 days long.
Your system probably was used a few thousand years earlier.
Steve
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