Ahoy GHMB,
It's been a good while since I hosted a topic lately, but all this discussion of Remens on Jim Alison's topic got me pushing those calculator buttons once more, as well as doing some digging into some quaint and forgotten volumes of lore, like EA Poe once wrote: Quoth the Raven, Nevermore! It was that pesky Roman Ft. unit in particular that was prompting this inquiry so I found his original book on the subject called The Origin and Antiquity of English Measures found here:
[archive.org]
Now everyone seems to know about what he described as the Ft. measure of the monument of Statilius during his expedition to Rome and later Egypt to take some measurements of those big rock piles among other things. And the value he derived of that unit with his very precise graduated rule of 2000 parts to the English Ft. That measurement came to 1944 lines of this rule or .972 of the Ft. usually stated as 11.664 ins. Well and good work I'm sure all will agree, but is it not also possible and likely probable that the sculptor of that monument might have had a bad shave day when he carved that measure into his monument and missed the mark by the fine hairline of 1/4375th part. Being also smaller than John Greaves' rule would allow to detect even if the sculptor had nailed the exact intended measure. OK, so now it's hair splitting time once again in this field of ancient metrologic units, which can get comical to say the least.:) What he wrote has been proclaimed as gospel ever since and nobody has made a whimper otherwise to my knowledge. However, what everybody seems to have overlooked, or never bothered to do the math calculations properly, is that later in this same volume he did give the correct value of this Roman Ft. stated as being equivalent to 700 English inches divided into 60 of those Roman Ft. giving it's proper value of 11.6666 ins.!!! Well now, my faith has been restored once more on this matter at least. But what really got my attention is his mentioning of an "Antient Cubit" (love that antique English spelling) of a measure said to be 32 parts to those 700 Ins., which comes to 21.875 ins. Hmm, anyone ever seen anything like this in their metrologic research? That would be an English Septenary Cubit of 21 ins extended by the 25/24 ratio so commonly found in relationships between Greek and Roman units. But it is also the cubit of the Remen I mentioned to Jim Alison when divided into 2/3 = 14.58333 ins. which is the remen of the Egyptian Cubit of 20.625 ins. using the sq. rt. ratio 99/70 Hmm! But of course this isn't the full matter of this topic yet.
Best regards to all of you tryptophaned turkey heads like me LOL
Stephen
It's been a good while since I hosted a topic lately, but all this discussion of Remens on Jim Alison's topic got me pushing those calculator buttons once more, as well as doing some digging into some quaint and forgotten volumes of lore, like EA Poe once wrote: Quoth the Raven, Nevermore! It was that pesky Roman Ft. unit in particular that was prompting this inquiry so I found his original book on the subject called The Origin and Antiquity of English Measures found here:
[archive.org]
Now everyone seems to know about what he described as the Ft. measure of the monument of Statilius during his expedition to Rome and later Egypt to take some measurements of those big rock piles among other things. And the value he derived of that unit with his very precise graduated rule of 2000 parts to the English Ft. That measurement came to 1944 lines of this rule or .972 of the Ft. usually stated as 11.664 ins. Well and good work I'm sure all will agree, but is it not also possible and likely probable that the sculptor of that monument might have had a bad shave day when he carved that measure into his monument and missed the mark by the fine hairline of 1/4375th part. Being also smaller than John Greaves' rule would allow to detect even if the sculptor had nailed the exact intended measure. OK, so now it's hair splitting time once again in this field of ancient metrologic units, which can get comical to say the least.:) What he wrote has been proclaimed as gospel ever since and nobody has made a whimper otherwise to my knowledge. However, what everybody seems to have overlooked, or never bothered to do the math calculations properly, is that later in this same volume he did give the correct value of this Roman Ft. stated as being equivalent to 700 English inches divided into 60 of those Roman Ft. giving it's proper value of 11.6666 ins.!!! Well now, my faith has been restored once more on this matter at least. But what really got my attention is his mentioning of an "Antient Cubit" (love that antique English spelling) of a measure said to be 32 parts to those 700 Ins., which comes to 21.875 ins. Hmm, anyone ever seen anything like this in their metrologic research? That would be an English Septenary Cubit of 21 ins extended by the 25/24 ratio so commonly found in relationships between Greek and Roman units. But it is also the cubit of the Remen I mentioned to Jim Alison when divided into 2/3 = 14.58333 ins. which is the remen of the Egyptian Cubit of 20.625 ins. using the sq. rt. ratio 99/70 Hmm! But of course this isn't the full matter of this topic yet.
Best regards to all of you tryptophaned turkey heads like me LOL
Stephen