Quote

“When the ground was relatively flat and the buildings were intended to be rectangular a certain frequency of measurements tended to recur … The third element was everybody’s natural sense of proportion and harmony … The result was often a plan which looks as though it were the result of a much greater degree of premeditated planning based on a mathematical knowledge of the harmonies of natural proportion than was actually the case. It is possible to take, for example, the plan of the Middle Kingdom town of Kahun … and to analyze it to show two things: one that a module of 8 cubits, further subdivided into squares of 10 cubits, seems to govern the layout; and two, that the overall town plan and the plans of the houses reflect the conscious application of a rule of proportion based upon an isosceles triangle where the ratio of base to height is 8:5, the classic “golden” ratio … That these proportions are present at Kahun and in numerous other Egyptian buildings is easy to demonstrate. What is very doubtful indeed is that this is anything more than the consequence of combining the use of knotted ropes with an intuitive sense of harmony and proportion." (1989: 138).