/sci/ - Science & Math

>>8031144

I wanted to hand-wave about 49, but I was unsatisfied with my treatment of it both because I didn't understand the units being used at-a-glance, and also because my answer of "1,000 square cubits" is clearly wrong.

Ignore wiki for the purposes of 49, and refer to pic related. For right now...

A KHET is a unit of LENGTH, equal to 100 CUBITS.

ONE SQUARE KHET, therefore, is equal to 10,000 SQUARE CUBITS, both obviously units of AREA.

There is another name for ONE SQUARE KHET, itself manifestly a unit of AREA. ONE SETAT is equal TO ONE SQUARE KHET, or 10,000 SQUARE CUBITS, as just stated.

Here is the confusion about 49, which Chace clears up, and which I misrepresented earlier. What's being counted are strips of area measuring 1 cubit by 100 cubits. For clarity, Chace dubs these "CUBIT-STRIPS", to differentiate them from the above. So let's try 49 again.

P.49 (take 2): A strip measures 10 khet by 1 khet. Express its area in terms of CUBIT-STRIPS. Ans: 1,000 CUBIT-STRIPS.

Pic related clears this up, it's basically alloting acreage or plots on a given block, or parcel, as we'd say today My confusion also seems indicitive of Egyptian confusion on concepts of length vs. area and their dimensional representations.