The early weights and measures of mankind / by General Sir Charles Warren.

  • Charles Warren
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The early weights and measures of mankind / by General Sir Charles Warren. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    55/164 (page 31)
    Pints of 40’5 C.I. C4 to Bab. cubic foot. Early. Later. C.I. [5 C.I. 4] Original pint 1 40-5 Log, 32 4 6 243 0 194-4 36 1458'0 1166-4 72 29160 Artaba, 2332 8 The Khar 144 5832-0 4665*6 288 11664-0 9331-2 Double cubit cubed 1,728 69984-0 In the Tablet of Senkereh (eleventh century b.c.) the units of length are in the proportion 1, 6, 12, 72, 2160, and the measures of capacity run in the proportion, 6, 18, 36, 180. The Khar. Mr. F. L. Griffiths, F.S.A., in “Notes on Egyptian Weights and Measures” (Proceedings of Society Bib. Archaeology, 1892), gives the following information concerning the Khar, which he derives from various Egyptian records. He takes the Khar at (cubit)3 equal to ~ (double cubit cubed), the cubit being taken at 20-6 inches ; he therefore makes the Khar 5827*88 C.I. (the standard I have deduced being 5,832 C.I.). He states that the Khar was superseded at, or before, the Eighteenth Dynasty, by the sack of 16 Hekt (291'6 C.I.) or Ptolemaic Medimnus (4665-6 C.I.), the double Artaba. Appar- ently the Khar came into Egypt with the Hyksos. The Hekt is 10 henu or Hon. The henu was thus 29T6 C.I. At this time, then, in Egypt the Hon of 27 C.I. had been raised as 1 5 : 16 and again as 80 : 81. The Khar was, therefore, 200 of the later henu (29'l6 C.I.) or 216 Hon of 27 C.I. = 5,832 C.I. We have no record as to the period when the Hon was raised from 27 C.I. to 29-l6 C.I., but there is this significant fact. Eighty Hon of 29*16=2332-8 C.I., the Artaba of Greece (the Bath of the Babylonians), or of double cubit cubed. So that it would appear that the raising of the Hon from 27 C.I. to 29T6 was a method adopted by the Egyptians of keeping to the Binary system whilst using the principal measure of the Sextarial system. There seems to have been a constant tendency to