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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. The practice is depicted in tomb paintings of the Theban Necropolis. 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, and officials as high-ranking as the Pharaoh participated in a ceremony that involved personally stretching 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 and India, where it stimulated the development of geometry and mathematics.

See also

• Gromatici
• Surveying
• Trigonometry

References

1. Brown, Curtis Maitland et al. (1994) Evidence and procedures for boundary location
2. Petrie Museum website: plumbs
3. Williams, Kim and Michael J. Ostwald (2015) Architecture and Mathematics from Antiquity to the Future vol. 1

• 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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