In ancient Egypt, a rope stretcher (or harpedonaptai) was a

surveyor Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is ca ...

who measured

real property In English common law, real property, real estate, immovable property or, solely in the US and Canada, realty, is land which is the property of some person and all structures (also called improvements or fixtures) integrated with or affixe ...

demarcations and

foundations Foundation may refer to: * Foundation (nonprofit), a type of charitable organization ** Foundation (United States law), a type of charitable organization in the U.S. ** Private foundation, a charitable organization that, while serving a good cause ...

using

knotted cord A knotted cord was a primitive surveyor's tool for measuring distances. It is a length of cord with knots at regular intervals. They were eventually replaced by surveyor's chains, which being made of metal were less prone to stretching and thus w ...

s, stretched so the rope did not sag. The practice is depicted in tomb paintings of the

Theban Necropolis The Theban Necropolis is a necropolis on the west bank of the Nile, opposite Thebes (Luxor) in Upper Egypt. It was used for ritual burials for much of the Pharaonic period, especially during the New Kingdom. Mortuary temples * Deir el-Bahri ...

. Rope stretchers used 3-4-5 triangles and the plummet, which are still in use by modern surveyors. The commissioning of a new sacred building was a solemn occasion in which pharaohs and other high-ranking officials personally stretched ropes to define the foundation. This important ceremony, and therefore rope-stretching itself, are attested over 3000 years from the early dynastic period to the Ptolemaic kingdom. Rope stretching technology spread to

ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cult ...

and

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, where it stimulated the development of

geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...

and

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

References

* * ''The New Encyclopædia Britannica,'' Encyclopædia Britannica 1974 * James Henry Breasted Ancient Records of Egypt, Part Two, Chicago 1906 * Joel F. PAULSON, "Surveying in Ancient Egypt,",

FIG The fig is the edible fruit of ''Ficus carica'', a species of small tree in the flowering plant family Moraceae. Native to the Mediterranean and western Asia, it has been cultivated since ancient times and is now widely grown throughout the world ...

Working Week 2005 and GSDI-8, Cairo, Egypt April 16-21, 2005

External links

surveying instruments

proportions
"The knowledge of pleasing proportions of the rope stretchers was incorporated by the Greeks"

Ancient Egypt Ancient Egyptian technology Surveying Egyptian inventions {{AncientEgypt-stub

See also

References

External links