Starting off with the surprise, I’ve always hated using the imperial system, since the conversion gets very complicated, and that using a base 10 system for measurement just makes sense. So it was eye-opening to see how practical the “imperial system” is back in Egypt, where they used cubits. It totally makes sense to see that the length of elbow to middle finger tip is a lot more useful, when they didn’t have a standardized “metre” back then. This alone makes me appreciate the imperial system more, as mentioned in class, some trades professions such as carpentry still use imperial systems because it is a lot easier to estimate with a body part than to use a ruler. And also, two remans being sqrt(2) cubits is an INSANE coincidence. Not sure if it really is just a coincidence, but I would like to believe that they knew something way ahead of us hahaha.
And well, speaking of a ruler, I wonder if normal citizens or scribes ever had excess to a simple measuring instrument like a ruler in their daily lives. Measuring rods are found in tombs and used by the king’s scribes to build structures and calculate land area for taxes, but is it a common item that laypeople would use? My second question would be them measuring angles that’s not 0 or 90 degrees. Structures such as the pyramids seemed like it required a thorough understanding of geometry and angles, yet, in the paper, they only mentioned the plumb bobs for measuring 0 and 90 degrees. So it’s very impressive to see how far the Ancient Egyptians had come!
Many of your points in this reflection resonates with me, Leon! I agree with you that after learning about the ancient Egyptians' measurement system, we likely would appreciate the imperial system a bit more, which I'm not a fan of either. I'm also fascinated by the unit of remen, and Egyptians' understanding of the irrational number √2. Interesting question about how they might have measured angles, given how they could built remarkable structures with such accuracy!
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