hen cubits achieve a length of 1.8ft such as the Assyrian cubit they are divisible by two, instead of the
1 ½ ft division normally associated with the cubit length. Variations of this measure are distinctively known as Oscan, Italic
and Mycenaean measure.
- .9142857ft -- This is the foot of 1/3rd of the Spanish vara, which survived as the standard of Spain from prehistory
to the present.
- .96ft -- Most who are interested in metrology would consider this value to be too short as a definition of the
Roman foot, but examples survive as rulers very accurately at this length.
- Common Egyptian
- .979592ft -- One of the better-known measures, being six sevenths of the royal Egyptian foot.
- 1ft -- The English foot is one of the variations of what are accepted as Greek measure, variously called Olympian or Geographic.
- Common Greek
- 1.028571ft -- This was a very widely used module recorded throughout Europe, it survived in England at least until the reforms of Edward I in 1305. It is also the half sacred Jewish cubit upon which Newton pondered and Berriman referred to as cubit A.
- 1.05ft -- Half the Persian cubit of Darius the Great. Reported in its variations throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, survived as the Hashimi foot of the Arabian league and the pied de roi of the Franks.
- 1.071428ft -- Develops into the Drusian foot or foot of the Tungri. Detectable in many Megalithic monuments.
- 1.097142ft -- Perhaps the most widely dispersed module of all, recorded throughout Europe, Asia and North Africa, commonly known as the Saxon or Northern foot.
- Yard and full hand
- 1.111111ft -- This is the foot of the 40 inch yard widely used in mediaeval England until suppressed by statute in 1439. It is the basis of Punic measure and variables are recorded in Greek statuary from Asia Minor.
- Royal Egyptian
- 1.142857ft -- The most discussed and scrutinised historical measurement. Examples of the above length are plentiful.
- 1.166666ft -- One half of the Russian arshin, one sixth of the sadzhen. Variants at one and one half of these feet as a cubit would be the Arabic black cubit, also the Egyptian cubit of the Nilometer.
Variants and variables in the above descriptions are in no wise arbitrary regional fluctuations but follow a distinct
discipline. The extent of the variations covers a range of values that amounts to about one fortieth part. Immediately one can
see one of the prime difficulties in the identification of ancient modules, because some of the distinct foot values are
related by lesser fractions; the Roman is 48 to 49 of the common Egyptian and the common Egyptian is 49 to 50 of the
Greek/English. They therefore overlap at certain of their variations, in the course of comparisons this often results in the
lesser variation of a distinct measure -- that is essentially longer than the measure of comparison -- to be shorter in length
than the greater variations of the lesser measure. Metrologists continually confuse the Belgic, Frankish and Saxon/Sumerian,
the latter has also been appended Ptolemaic. But, the differences become distinctively identifiable at the lengths of the
pertica, chain, furlong, stadium, mile etc.
It would appear from most of the empirical evidence that the full range of the variations in a single module,
here given in terms of the variations of the Greek-English foot, (the English foot being one of the series of the Greek foot)
are as follows:
|.990916 ||.996578 ||1.002272 ||1.008 ||1.01376
The above terminology is used as descriptive in the classification of the values. It was realised from the beginning that
all of these variations were impossible to express in an ascending order. They must be tabulated in two rows, the fraction
linking each of the variations across the rows is 175:176, and each of the values in the top row is linked to the value directly
below as 440:441. "Root" prefixes the descriptive terminology from Least to Geographic in the top row and "Standard" in the
bottom row. For example, 1.008 is Standard Canonical and 1.0114612 is Root Geographic etc.
As well as thes