MJ Thomas Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Anthony Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Warwick L Nixon Wrote:
> >
> --------------------------------------------------

> Place your elbow on the table and hold your
> forearm vertically with fingers fully extended.
"> Measure from elbow/tabletop to tip of middle
> extended finger.
> Divide measure by 6
> Compare result to width of your four fingers at
> their base.
> The natural ratio is obvious.
> Width of palm (four fingers/digits) = 1/6 elbow to
> tip of middle finger.
> As I have mentioned before, I have tested this on
> a number of people, male and female, young and
> old.


MJ

There are two ways to look at this and the first is:

If you deal with human finger widths the palm of four only offers you handwidth over 4. This is not the same as 4 equal finger widths. Why deal with averages if you already have real finger widths available for the count. I am sure you will see how many handwidths gives a different result to multiples of real finger widths. IOW we have three "more or less equal" finger widths on our hands and a fourth which is roughly 2/3rds the width of the others.


The second is laying out the arm's length.

What are you going to gauge it with, palms/4 or real finger widths?

The latter gives you 22, the former 24.

(I wish everyone was conversant with imperial measure and the significance of its structure).

Now ... do you want to deal with average finger widths of real finger widths?

If you only use the three "more or less equal" finger widths of the human hand then in the absents of the word "palm" in biblical history we might imagine the "hand breadth" as something quite different to a palm or a hand width, especially when we encounter multiples of three at the end of most Egyptian measuring rods:

Three finger breadths ... the difference between cubits - HERODOTUS

Biblical measure

" - and in the man's hand a measuring reed of six cubits long by the cubit and an hand breadth."
Ezekiel 40. 5.

"And these are the measures of the alter after the cubits; The cubit is a cubit and an hand breadth."
Ezekiel 43. 13.

I think fours are out and threes in ... and probably have been for a long long time.

Graham Oaten

The great amount of labour involved in quarrying and transporting such a mass of masonry as even the casing, has always been a cause of astonishment - Sir Flinders Petrie.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2007 01:32AM by fmetrol.