The Earliest Known Plotting Scale

Abstract

THE Babylonian statues recently acquired for the Louvre by the mission of M. de Sarzec are of great interest in the history of measurement. The earliest datable measuring rods hitherto known are two Egyptian masons' cubits of wood, of the reign of Hor-em-heb in the fifteenth century B.C.; but on these statues we find represented not merely a mason's rod, but a finely-divided plotting scale, and the date of these figures is placed before the fifteenth century B.C. Of course the accurate lengths of cubits can easily be recovered from the dimensions of buildings of the earliest periods; but no measures, or accurate representations of such, are preserved to us from the primitive times.