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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;EWC3, post: 3887863, member: 93416&quot;]Thanks for reviving this. Prompted me to try figure out more on the Nilometers, and people’s understanding of them. The fascinating article you link to fails to fully draw out a further measurement suggestion implicit in the images, that there is some connection between the modius and the cubit, since both are sort of alluded to on the coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>The article also suggests the cubit was about 18 inches (45 cm) – which seems to be false in the case of the nilometers - which seems to use the “black cubit” of c. 21+ inches (54 cms).</p><p><br /></p><p>So I hunted about a bit more – generally the tourist sites for the Roda Island nilometer do not even bother with things like the real purpose nor measurement on the nilometer. An Islamic site does give the correct length of the cubit, but incorrectly calls it Roman.</p><p><br /></p><p>But if you go back to the travels of James Bruce around the 1770’s I judge he had the matter well pinned back then. He gives a correct sort of measure for the nilometer cubit, and then explains that it was used to set the level of tax for the year, according to the flood level. That is to say, the count of tax taken in grain (by the modius) accorded to the height of the flood, in cubits, that year. Wiki and a couple of other reports do mention the tax angle, but are still weaker on the measurement than Bruce was in the 1770’s.</p><p><br /></p><p>The best guess I have for the origins of measurement, back in the neolithic or earlier, is that it went 4 fingers to the hand, four hands to the “foot”, 6 hands to the forearm (cubit). Because this works quite well even today – except of course for the foot. Also its much the one still used for horses. Quite obviously, the nilometers deviate from this – instead making the cubit 7 hands………</p><p><br /></p><p>My hunch is that the nilometer cubit was jiggered about with as part of some forgotten tax scheme maybe as old as the pyramids. Its an idea that springs directly from the c. 1770 discussion, but somehow got lost in more modern treatments.</p><p><br /></p><p>A cynic might even feel these days we are being kept &#039;in the dark about the black cubit&#039;, and maybe the sort of thing tax men get up to in general………….</p><p><br /></p><p>Rob T[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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