The Remen?

Just measured the distance from the lower tendon of the biceps of my right arm to the notch between my thumb and the palm of my hand and it turned out to be 300 mm. Could the remen have been the distance from the upper arm to where one grasps something? One could probably check out that measurement on the statues of the period and compare them with values for the remen. The remen glyph shows part of the upper arm and the notch between the thumb and hand. Calling this distance a foot is a misnomer.

Cubits and Palms

The hand's breadth, a 4 fingered palm, may be more fundamental than the Egyptian bd (foot). The cubit was most likely a means of counting palms. The royal cubit was 7 palms but there was a more common cubit of 6 palms. The counting scheme seems to be based on the powers of two idea. 4 fingers = 1 palm. 16 fingers = 4 palms = 1 bd (foot). But the cubit doesn't fit in with this scheme. Neither 6 or 7 palms is a power of 2. There was a cubit rod found a Memphis which had the 7 palm royal cubit on one side and the 6 palm common cubit on the other. So the simplest explanation of the cubit is that it was a measuring stick which allowed the user to measure lengths without counting them one palm at a time. Lengths could just be read off in terms of palms and fingers.

The fingers of the royal cubit were marked as follows: 1finger, 2 fingers, 3 fingers, 4 fingered palm, five fingered palm, fist, and so on up to 8 fingers. The glyph for the remen is placed above the 15th finger on the scale. This appears to be what Wikipedia calls the bw (foot) which was 15 or 16 fingers. The term remen was also used to represent half the diagonal of a cubit square which was about 20 fingers. And a remen square would have a diagonal about equal to a cubit. The remen marked on the cubit seems to be associated with the forearm and not a foot. Perhaps this is an older usage that of the diagonal of a square came later.


It you look at the side of a royal cubit you will see that there are fingers which are subdivided into parts varying from 2 to 16. The Egyptian scribes needed all these divisions since they used unit fractions. But the scale shows that with 16 subdivisions they were capable of millimeter accuracy. One can compare the royal cubit with the modern engineer's scale or architect's scale.

The Egyptian Cubit

I have decided to continue my "researches" here where postings are less restricted.

We can compare various feet which have been used and the nsec,

1 pes (Roman foot) = 296 mm
1 pous (Ionian foot) = 296 mm
1 English foot = 305 mm
1 Egyptian bd = 300 mm

1 nsec = 300 mm

The Egyptian bd is 4 "hand breadths" of 4 fingers and there are 7 hand breadths to a cubit so the bd was 16 fingers and the cubit was 28 fingers. If the bd was the primary unit the cubit would be 7/4 of it. Is there any significance to this?

7 = 1 + 2 + 4 → 7/4 = 1 + 1/2 + 1/4

These are Eye of Horus fractions and the representation of integers as a sum of powers of 2 was used for multiplication.

The Egyptians made the conversion 2/7 → 1/4 +1/28 so 4/7 = 1/2 + 1/14 could also be easily represented and calculations involving 4/7 would not pose any difficulty.

Eye of Horus fractions would have been of greater significance to the Egyptians. 7/4 was more fundamental.

Update on Ancient Units of Measurement vs the Nanosecond

Lately, as some already know, I have been researching ancient units of measurement and their approximation of the nanosecond (nsec) as a measure of length. Some of the ancient "feet" are a little too close and we can speculate on whether or not they knew about the light foot. We will most likely end up with a reductio ad absurdum or an incredible mystery.

Recent Twitter posts

An Impression

Impression by Monet

This painting is eponymous for the Impressionist movement.

Surrogates (2009)

I saw this trailer for Surrogates (2009) starring Bruce Willis when I went to see Terminator: Salvation on Sunday. The movie is based on the graphic novel The Surrogates written by Robert Venditti, drawn by Brett Weldele and published a just few years ago. The storyline takes a stab at the question of what would happen to people if life was a day dream which they experienced through disposable bodies. Would the dream take the place of reality? It is due for release on September 25, 2009.

Terminator was good. The new robot had a lot of character. And it would seem that there is still some hope for humanity.

Eurovision Song Contest 2009 Top Five

#1 Alexander Rubak - Fairytale (Norway)



#2 Yohanna - Is It True? (Iceland)



#3 AySel & Arash - Always (Azerbaijan)



#4 Hadise - Düm Tek Tek (Turkey)



#5 Jade - It's My Time (UK)