posted on Dec, 27 2014 @ 04:33 PM
originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance
Maybe I'm missing something,
Something's missing, all right, but you're not the one missing it.
originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance
Edit: I also don't believe the ancient Egyptians conceptualized or used the same system of latitude/longitude that we use today, or that they had the
same system of seconds, minutes, and 24 hour days. They may have divided the circle into 360 degrees; I suspect not, but I'm not certain, so I'll
give you that one....
Most unlikely. The Egyptians measured angles by distance only, so many cubits, palms or fingers in and so many cubits, palms or fingers up. Sort of
like how we measure slope, only inverted, IIRC.
Additionally, Egyptians did divide the day into parts, 24 parts. But when the days are longer, the daytime hours were longer. Or, I should say, the
daytime had 12 parts, and the nighttime had 12 parts, and the lengths of these parts changed as the length of the day changed so that the daytime
parts were always equal to 1/12 of the time between sunrise and sunset. From this we can see that they didn't associate time with the motion of
stars across the sky and they wouldn't have come up with the 360 parts of a circle that way either.
They did know there were 365 days in a year, though.
Harte