Hello GHMB,
Recently I discovered that Livio Carulo Stecchini's Metrum website had been abandoned and no longer available except via The Wayback Machine thanks to thinkitover's assistance in recovering it there. I was very alarmed at first, because this site is such a valuable study on ancient metrology, even if I don't regard many of Stecchini's theories to be correct. Be that as it may, I have been examining his finding of an ancient Egyptian Foot value being precisely 300mm., or .3 Meters in today's value of that measure of 39.37009 ins. That is as precise as I think is necessary to this new study anyhow. I would prefer it being the ancient value of 39.375 ins., but there are some very unusual circumstances that relate to it's modern definition of length and weight I wish to present. Stecchini discovered that a cubic volume water of .3 Meters is equivalent to 27,000 grams, using today's definition of that weight of a cubic centimeter gram of water at it's heaviest or densest point around 4 degrees Celsius. This can be shown in the following equation that I will convert to it's grain weight and English equivalent values.
.3 Mtr. x 39.37009 ins. = 11.811027 ins. This is the value of Stecchini's ancient Egyptian Ft., which has a cubic volume x 3 of 1647.642504 cu. ins. When multiplied by a cubic inch of water at it's densest grain weight value of 252.9 grs. per, this produces a total grain weight of 416,688.7893 grs. And when I divide this figure into 27,000 grams it produces a gram weight of 15.43291812 grains. per gram. How close is this to today's value? Very close as multiplied by 28.35 grams per Avoirdupois Ounce yields 437.532288 grains. And to make an Av. Lb. x 16 oz. = 7000.37661 grains. or slightly over 1/3 grain difference. Not bad at all really. One would be somewhat naive to assume that the AE's knew and used the modern definitions of the Metric system at first glance of this figure I'm sure. :) But there are even more interesting ways of looking at this situation I have discovered recently, that reveals more about the ancient equivalent Metric system in this case.
Best regards,
Stephen
Recently I discovered that Livio Carulo Stecchini's Metrum website had been abandoned and no longer available except via The Wayback Machine thanks to thinkitover's assistance in recovering it there. I was very alarmed at first, because this site is such a valuable study on ancient metrology, even if I don't regard many of Stecchini's theories to be correct. Be that as it may, I have been examining his finding of an ancient Egyptian Foot value being precisely 300mm., or .3 Meters in today's value of that measure of 39.37009 ins. That is as precise as I think is necessary to this new study anyhow. I would prefer it being the ancient value of 39.375 ins., but there are some very unusual circumstances that relate to it's modern definition of length and weight I wish to present. Stecchini discovered that a cubic volume water of .3 Meters is equivalent to 27,000 grams, using today's definition of that weight of a cubic centimeter gram of water at it's heaviest or densest point around 4 degrees Celsius. This can be shown in the following equation that I will convert to it's grain weight and English equivalent values.
.3 Mtr. x 39.37009 ins. = 11.811027 ins. This is the value of Stecchini's ancient Egyptian Ft., which has a cubic volume x 3 of 1647.642504 cu. ins. When multiplied by a cubic inch of water at it's densest grain weight value of 252.9 grs. per, this produces a total grain weight of 416,688.7893 grs. And when I divide this figure into 27,000 grams it produces a gram weight of 15.43291812 grains. per gram. How close is this to today's value? Very close as multiplied by 28.35 grams per Avoirdupois Ounce yields 437.532288 grains. And to make an Av. Lb. x 16 oz. = 7000.37661 grains. or slightly over 1/3 grain difference. Not bad at all really. One would be somewhat naive to assume that the AE's knew and used the modern definitions of the Metric system at first glance of this figure I'm sure. :) But there are even more interesting ways of looking at this situation I have discovered recently, that reveals more about the ancient equivalent Metric system in this case.
Best regards,
Stephen