The royal cubit

The royal cubit is a measure of divine relativity.

Cubitglyph

In the hieroglyph above, we have three symbols that refer to papyrus, the Sun and an arm. Interpreting this, we might say that it refers to a sacred proportion within the human body. Measured from the fingertips, it’s the 1:√2 ratio of the forearm to the deltoid tuberosity:

In the artwork below, Seshat’s arm bands made of leopard claws highlight this:

In Seshat’s right hand, the marker signifies 1 unit from the bottom of the shen ring, with the vertical length of the sacred cord at √2. In her left hand, she holds the cord in the middle. These 1D ratios can also be found in 2D nested squares:

To the Egyptians the Stretching of the Cord ritual was born during the Old Kingdom. This was the archaic time of Djoser, Imhotep, Snefru, Amenhotep and Kanofer. The ceremony itself dealt with the dimensions of sacred temples and was governed by the gods of time and space. So we must somehow reconcile this with a universal measurement. “Royal” gives us a clue here because it refers to the Sun.

From this hint comes the lotus pattern below. It shows a series of nested squares that are drawn from the midpoint of their parents. This is the same as dividing each side by √2. While we have only drawn a short sequence below, in reality this pattern creates 45° spirals that regress far beyond our visual acuity.

Now imagine that the circle above is the Sun with a circumference equal to the perimeter of the outer square (a wavelength of nearly 4.4 million kilometres). The square’s sides therefore approach 1.1 million kilometres. Nesting this shape 42 times within itself we arrive at a side length of 0.5237 kilometres. This unit was called The Lotus (its hieroglyphic is below) and it was the basis of the Egyptian measuring system:

lotus-styled

For architectural convenience the royal cubit was reduced to 1/1,000th of this figure or 52.37 centimetres. This length is therefore a harmonic partial of the wavelength of the Sun. For everyday reference, it was roughly equal to the human forearm. So the dance of “time as space” was vital when we came to build temples.

But HOW did the Egyptians figure out the size of the Sun in the first place? They didn’t know that the solar disc was 400 times larger (and further away) than the lunar disc because they didn’t have modern instruments. Instead, they used the caduceus to resolve time as space which they later immortalised in the Great Pyramid at Giza:

Indeed, this blueprint implies emergence—time and space as the relative “effects” of the World Tree. While we may be aware of the physical dimensions of the Earth and Moon above, the eclipsed Sun is also implied—not just spatially but temporally, too. This was the detail that the Egyptians could measure: calendar cycles repeated every 400 years. This was written as 1: 400—mirrored in the spatial ratio of the Earth, Moon and Sun.

If time is but a reflection of space, then a temporal ratio IS a spatial ratio.

Today, our metric and imperial systems are mere abstractions. This fall from divine relativity was one of the most subtle and enduring mathematical debaucheries in our history: science remains unaware of the Rule of One to this day. The royal cubit then, remains an overtone of the fundamental frequency of our Sun.