1706
Gram, H., De origine geometriæ apud Aegyptios . . . in collegio Elersiano publicè propositum á Johanne Grammio, respondente . . . Petra Nicolao Möllero, die 17. Junii, anno MDCCVI, Copenhagen, [I706], 44 pp., small quarto.
This is the first of four publications in the series Cogitationum ad loca scriptorum antiqviorum specimen, I—IV, 1706-1708, and the first publication (when the author was twenty years old) of this notable Danish professor and librarian. To indicate the contents of the pamphlet perhaps I cannot do better than give a free translation of its summary made by M. C. Gertz (Dansk Biografisk Lexikon, Copenhagen, vol. 6, 1892, p. 179): "In this publication the author combats the then generally accepted opinion that Egyptian geometry first appeared in the time of Sesostris, and had its origin in the need of the redetermination of boundaries of fields after the overflow of the Nile had obliterated them; and he rightly shows that this statement by Herodotus is only a hypothesis, and that this opinion is not founded on any definite facts. In accordance with other places in ancient authors he asserts that Geometry is older, and indeed dates back to the time of the mythical Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus (Theuth or Thoth). In this manner he arrived at the peculiar conclusion, which he believed he had proved, with the aid of passages from much later Jewish and Christian writings of Greek authorship, that this Thoth must be identical with the Biblical Abraham."
1737
Newton, I., "A dissertation upon the sacred cubit of the Jews and the cubit: of the several nations; in which, from the dimensions of the greatest Egyptian pyramid, as taken by Mr. John Greaves, the antient cubit of Memphis is determined. Translated from the Latin of Sir Isaac Newton, not yet published," J. Greaves, Miscellaneous Works London,1737,voL 2,pp.405-433.
Also in C. P. Smyth, Life and Work at the Great Pyramid, Edinburgh, 1867, Vol 2,pp.341—366.
"Dissertatio de sacro Judæorum cubito et de cubito aliarum gentium. Edita Anglicè in Miscellaneis Operibus Johannis Gravii," in I. Newton, Opuscula Mathematica, Philosophica et Philologica, Lausanne and Geneva, 1744, vol. 3, pp. 491-510 + I plate.
Quotation from Borchardt (see later, under 1922), p. 36: "Es ist jedenfalls ein fast komisch zu nennender Zufall, dass Newton aus drei falschen Voraussetzungen die Länge der Eigyptischen Elle bis auf rund 3 mm. genau bestimmte."
