Document Type : Research Paper

Author

• Hasan Shamsi

Retired Professor, University of Tehran

Abstract

Most likely, the surveying has had its roots in ancient Egypt. The Great Pyramid of Kofu the second Pharaoh from the fourth dynasty of Egypt in the old city of Giza, which was built around 2700 BC, is so precisely quadrangular and fully justified according to the four main directions of compass, that it can be conceived that ancient Egyptians used surveying as a means of controlling buildings, just as it is today. From the study of the dimensions of the great pyramids of Egypt, it can be assured that the early Egyptians could carry out measurements with an extraordinarily high accuracy, and that the Ptolemaic and Roman hieroglyphs existing in the same country reveal measurements related to land maps. Furthermore, they used surveying to determine the property borders, so that the Sumerian clay bricks in 1400 BC are signs of land measurement and urban maps and of determining the area of ​​agricultural lands adjacent to them. The border stones with which they marked the corners of the real estate were kept, and in a tomb in the old town of Thebes, there’s a picture of two men carrying chains and surveying a wheat farm by a rope.