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In ancient Egypt, a rope stretcher (or harpedonaptai) was a surveyor who measured real property demarcations and foundations using knotted cords, stretched so the rope did not sag. On artefacts as ancient as the Scorpion Macehead, Egyptians documented the royal surveyors' procedure for restoring the boundaries of fields after each flood.

The commissioning of a new sacred building was a solemn occasion, and officials as high-ranking as the Pharaoh participated in a ceremony that involved personally stretching ropes to define the foundation. This ceremony is attested over 3,000 years from the early dynastic period to the Ptolemaic kingdom.

Rope stretchers used 3-4-5 triangles and the plummet, which are still in use by modern surveyors.

Rope stretching technology spread to ancient Greece and India, where it stimulated the development of geometry and mathematics.

See also

• Gromatici
• Surveying
• Trigonometry

References

1. Williams, Kim and Michael J. Ostwald (2015) Architecture and Mathematics from Antiquity to the Future vol. 1
2. Petrie Museum website: plumbs

• Alistair Macintosh Wilson, The Infinite in the Finite, Oxford University Press 1995
• 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 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"
• Sangaku and The Egyptian Triangle

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