How the Ancient Egyptians had Calculated the Earth’s

Circumference between 3750-1500 BC: a revision of the

method used by Eratosthenes.

1.1 – Introduction
Eratosthenes (276-194 BC) is credited as "the first" person to have measured the circumference
of the Earth in our modern history books, but a serious study of the circumstances shows that
Eratosthenes did not actually measure anything, and that he simply copied an earlier method of the
Egyptians. Eratosthenes was a Greco-Egyptian director of the Library of Alexandria at the time, and he
had access to the ancient records of science collected during the Alexandrian era which contained not
only Egyptian but Mesopotamian and Persian knowledge of a variety of kinds. Among these documents
was one from which Eratosthenes copied a method of deriving the Earth’s circumference, but the
method itself (as we will see) shows that the actual experiment and record of this in Egypt occurred as
early as 3750 BC, making “the first” to actually
measure a portion of the Earth’s
circumference and calculating were most
probably Predynastic Egyptians living up to
3500 years before Eratosthenes’ time.
Here is the story repeated ad
verbatum in our modern days about
Eratosthenes: advertised as the "first” to
measure the circumference of the Earth, the
hypothetical experiment carried off by
Eratosthenes around 200 BC in order to
discover the size of the Earth is rather simple,
but it requires some illustrations of
astronomical and geodesic phenomena, so
here is how the ancient method works.
It is said that Eratosthenes compared
the shadows of two sun dials on the day of
North Solstice in order to calculate the
circumference of the Earth. On the day of
north solstice, precisely at midday, it is well
known that the Sun will pass directly overhead
a person who is posed right under the
northern tropic latitude.1 In other words, if
one observes a sundial on the day of solstice
at midday, and the dial is located at the same
latitude as the tropic, the dial will cast no
shadow at that precise moment since the light
of the Sun is exactly vertical above it. But if

1
Latitude is the north-south location departed from the equator of the Earth, while longitude is the east-west
coordinate.

1
another sundial is located further north (or south) than the latitude of the tropic, at the same moment
of midday but in a more northern latitude, the sundial will cast a shadow as the sun is not precisely
overhead. The angle of that difference will be equal to the displacement north (or south) over the
Earth’s surface.
This is the basic science behind the method. It is quite simple to understand, but its learning
actually requires some knowledge of astronomy and geometry.
In the stories we hear of Eratosthenes as “the first” to discover this, it is said that one sun dial
was located in Alexandria, while the other sundial was at Syene, the latter city being on the north tropic
latitude. On comparing the difference in the angles these shadows gave on the sundials, at midday, on
the day of north solstice, Eratosthenes was supposedly able to calculate that Alexandria was some
7°12' north of Syene. It is also said that Eratosthenes gave a measurement of some 5000 stades for this
length of 7°12' which is 1/50th of 360°, and hence 1/50th of the Earth's polar or meridian
circumference. Therefore, he gave the measure for the polar circumference of the Earth at 252,000
stades.2
Now, the reader might be wondering how much a stade is, and that is actually one of the main
problems of this story because one would like to know how good the estimation of Eratosthenes was.
However, we will attend this later because this problem of the measure of the stade of Eratosthenes is
actually secondary to real problem of this relation repeated so often in our modern days. The first
problem is much more interesting and revealing, although it is rarely mentioned at all in our history
books dealing with the history of science and especially with geography and geodesy as well as
astronomy.
First of all, we would like to note that we say "it is said" in reference to Eratosthenes, because
the actual historical references we have of Eratosthenes' methods and measures do not come from
Eratosthenes himself. The accounts of this method come to us from Strabo (64 BC-24 AD), Pliny the
Elder (23-79 AD), and especially from Cleomedes who is believed to have lived between 200-100 BC,
although he could have lived as recent as 300 AD. This lack of a direct testimony from Eratosthenes is
another fact that is rarely mentioned when it comes to advertising him as "the first" to measure the
circumference of the Earth. The reality is that all sources on the matter are second hand accounts.

1.2 - The Accounts of Pliny and Cleomedes

As we stated, the references to Eratosthenes comes mainly from Strabo, Pliny, and Cleomedes,
and here we will firstly repeat those testaments of Pliny and Cleomedes so that the reader has the
information at hand, and then we will proceed to examine this story in order to show why it is in reality
false that Eratosthenes was the first to know this method of calculating the Earth’s circumference, and
that it is also false to say that he conducted an experiment based on the method itself. As we will see,
the astronomical calculation itself shows that according to Eratosthenes’ information (copied from
Cleomedes and Strabo) it is impossible that he carried out an actual scientific experiment according to
the method described, and we will also see that the original experiment must have been conducted by
Egyptians who lived thousands of years before Eratosthenes himself.
So, we begin then with Pliny the Elder who, living in the days of the Roman Empire, states:

The above is all that I consider worth relating about the length and the
breadth of the earth. But Eratosthenes, a man who was peculiarly well skilled in all
the more subtle parts of learning, and in this above everything else, and a person
whom I perceive to be approved by everyone, has stated the whole of this circuit to

2
Strabo, Geography, Book 2, Chapter 5.7.

2
 be 252,000 stadia, which, according to the Roman estimate, makes 31,500 miles. The
attempt is presumptuous, but it is supported by such subtle arguments that we
cannot refuse our assent. Hipparchus, whom we must admire, both for the ability
with which he controverts Eratosthenes, as well as for his diligence in everything
else, has added to the above number not much less than 25,000 stadia.3

How much the calculation is in our modern units is a matter we will attend at the end of this
review, because there is a more important astronomical and geodesic fact that speaks of the antiquity of
this estimate. All that Pliny says is that Eratosthenes estimated the circumference of the Earth at
252,000 stades, so Pliny does not give a description of the method used.
We can see that the name of Hipparchus appears who is another hypothetical "first" to have
known about the precession of the equinoxes according to the inventors of the Greek miracle. In his
Geography, Strabo continuously mentions that Hipparchus was very critical of Eratosthenes' own works
which are now lost to us. However, both Strabo and Pliny have Eratosthenes in the highest esteem, and
it is clear that his works were the best in matters of geography.
It is to be remembered here that official maps of the Old-World empires were crucial in military
and political tactics. We cannot accept that the Greeks and Romans were the first to use maps and make
specific geographical measures with geodesic knowledge. For example, are we to believe that Pharaoh
Sneferu around 2600 BC had no map of Egypt or the Old World in general? Ramses II around 1200 BC
had not a map of Egypt or the Old World either? Are we to believe that Minoans and Phoenicians sailing
the Egean and Mediterranean knew not their actual latitude and the true shape and dimensions of the
Earth? Should we believe that Anaximander, a Greek living around 500 BC was “the first” to draw maps?
No, in reality this is a modern fiction which is historically ridiculous, but it is taken serious by many
inventors of the Greek miracle.
Now, the other author we mentioned that does illustrates the method related by Eratosthenes is
Cleomedes, and it is from this author that we have the greatest detail of the method itself and its logic.
It is in fact this report by Cleomedes which we hear repeated in modern times ad verbatum.
So here is what Cleomedes says in chapter 10 of his On the Circular Motions of the Celestial
Bodies:

Anyone who has grasped these facts will have no difficulty in understanding
the method of Eratosthenes, which is this. Syene and Alexandria lie, he says, under
the same meridian circle. Since meridian circles are great circles in the universe, the
circles of the Earth which lie under them are necessarily also great circles. Thus, of
whatever size this method shows the circle on the earth passing through Syene and
Alexandria to be, this will be the greater size of the great circle of the earth. Now
Eratosthenes asserts, and it is the fact, that Syene lies under the summer tropic.
Whenever, therefore, the sun, being in Cancer at the summer solstice, is exactly in
the middle of the heaven, the gnomons (pointers) of sundials necessarily throw no
shadows, the position of the sun above them being exactly vertical; and it is said that
this is true throughout a space three hundred stades in diameter. But in Alexandria,
at the same hour, the pointers of sundials throw shadows, because Alexandria lies
further to the north than Syene. The two cities lying under the same meridian great
circle, if we draw an arc form the extremity of the shadow to the base of the pointer
of the sundial in Alexandria, the arc will be a segment of a great circle in the
(hemispherical) bowl of the sundial, since the bowl of the sundial lies under the great

3
Pliny, Natural History 2.112

3
 circle (of the meridian). If we now conceive straight lines produced from each of the
pointers through the earth, they will meet at the center of the earth. Since then the
sundial at Syene is vertically under the sun, if we conceive a straight line coming from
the sun to the top of the pointer of the sundial, the line reaching from the sun to the
center of the earth will be on straight line. If we now conceive another straight line
drawn upwards from the extremity of the shadow of the pointer of the sundial in
Alexandria, through the top of the pointer to the sun, this straight line and the
aforesaid straight line will be parallel, since they are straight lines coming through
from different parts of the sun to different parts of the earth. On these straight lines,
therefore, which are parallel, there falls the straight line drawn from the center of
the earth to the pointer at Alexandria and the straight line drawn from the extremity
of its shadow to the sun through the point (the top) where it meets the pointer. Now
on this latter angle stands the arc carried round from the extremity of the shadow of
the pointer to its base, while on the angle at the center of the earth stands the arc
reaching from Syene to Alexandria. But the arcs are similar, since they stand on equal
angles. Whatever ratio, therefore, the arc in the bowl of the sundial has to its proper
circle, the arc reaching from Syene to Alexandria has that ratio to its proper circle.
But the arc in the bowl is found to be one-fiftieth of its proper circle. Therefore the
distance from Syene to Alexandria must necessarily be one-fiftieth part of the great
circle of the earth. And the said distance is 5000 stades; therefore the complete
great circle measures 250,000 stades. Such is Eratosthenes‘ method.4

This testimony by Cleomedes is the one taken today as the geometric method of Eratosthenes
for calculating the circumference of the Earth. Cleomedes, however, is never mentioned at all in our
modern accounts, although it is his testimony which we have just read that gives the clearest (and only
available) account of the method used by Eratosthenes to calculate the Earth's circumference around
200 BC.

1.3 – The Dates according to the Obliquity of the Ecliptic

It is worth noticing here that if Cleomedes' account is taken seriously, it becomes clear that
Eratosthenes never actually carried out any kind of experimental measurement at all. Why so? Because
the only time when Cleomedes directly quotes Eratosthenes is when he says that Alexandria and Syene
are on the same longitude (east-west coordinate), when in fact they are not. Alexandria and Syene are
not on the same meridian, but departed from one another by 3° of longitude. Cleomedes tells us that
Eratosthenes did not know that Alexandria and Syene (the very locations in his relation of the
method) were on different longitudes and thus not on the same meridian.
In reality, the fact that both Eratosthenes and Cleomedes think that Syene and Alexandria need
to be on the same longitude (under the same meridian line) for the calculation to work demonstrates
that they did not even understand the geodesic and astronomical principles of this calculation in the first
place. In order to carry out this measurement which concerns the projection of shadows on the day of
north solstice, there is no need for the two gnomons or sundials to be on the same meridian. This speaks
of the ignorance on behalf of both Cleomedes and Eratosthenes about the procedures involved in the

4
Cleomedes, On the Orbits of the Heavenly Bodies, 1.10, trans. T.L. Heath, in Morris R. Cohen and I.E. Drabjin, A
Source Book in Greek Science (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1948), pp. 151-53. This version is found in Schwaller de
Lubicz, R.A., The Temple of Man, Vol.1, pp.303-4. Another version with the original Greek text is found translated
to Spanish in 2011 by C. R. Varela and H.L. Neira, Cleomedes, La Procesión Circular de los Cuerpos Celestes.

4
actual experiment of the method. Another problem of this story is that the distance between Alexandria
and Syene is not exactly 7°12' (1/50th o the Earth's Circumference): it is actually 7°8'. Indeed, it is a
minute mistake, but we are pointing out some of the problems from the relation by Cleomedes. 5
But even more important than this minute mistake is the most important problem of all: Syene,
which is the ancient Egyptian city of Swenett, the modern Aswan, is at a latitude of 24°05' N. So why
is this a problem? Well, it is a very important problem because the tropic latitude at the time of
Eratosthenes, around 200 BC, was at a latitude of 23°45' N not 24°05'. This apparently insignificant
difference of 0°20' of latitude means 25.23 Miles (40.61 Km) of error on the surface of the Earth and it
is in fact a very significant difference.
If Eratosthenes had actually experimented and calculated this himself, he would have noticed
that Syene was about 40.6 Km north of the real location where a gnomon truly projected no shadow at
midday on summer solstice. However, Eratosthenes seems to make no mention of this fact, that is, that
in his time there was a significant difference between the latitude of Syene and the latitude of the north
tropic where a sundial or gnomon would cast no shadow. But of course, one is forced to ask a simple
question: is the 0°20' of degree of difference between the real latitude of the tropic in Eratosthenes’
time and the latitude of Syene just a simple inaccuracy of the ancients? Could anyone even notice this
difference? One is well in considering it, because the answer is most definitely yes.
Cleomedes says: “the gnomons (pointers)
of sundials necessarily throw no shadows, the
position of the sun above them being exactly
vertical; and it is said that this is true
throughout a space three hundred stades in
diameter.” Here Cleomedes is saying that there
is a margin of uncertainty for the true latitude of
the tropic according to the original estimate,
because he affirms that in a radius of 150 stades
sundials cast no shadow (or at least one cannot
notice a shadow).
Even when the exact length of the stade
is not given, it occurs that it is 1/16.6th part of the
distance between Alexandria and Syene, so this
translates into a radius of 24 kilometers or 0°13’
of arc, 0°7’ less than the 0°20’ of difference that
would have been observed in the time of
Eratosthenes. In other words, if Eratosthenes
would have actually measured the tropical
shadow at Syene he would have noticed that
Syene at 24°05’ N was no longer the tropical
latitude, and the reason is that in his days there
was a greater displacement from Syene than
the very margin of uncertainty quoted from his
text.
In the image we can appreciate the
differences between latitudes. Syene or
Elephantine is located on latitude 24°5’ N and a

5
We note that it is a difference which does significantly alter the calculation for the Earth's circumference as well
as the estimation for the distance between the parallels of Syene and Alexandria, as we will later see.

5
dotted circle is extended to show the zone of uncertainty where Cleomedes says that no shadow would
be observed in a radius of 150 stades (24 kilometers). We can see very clearly that in the time of
Eratosthenes, taken to be 246 BC (when he was 30 years of age), the tropical latitude is well beyond
this boundary of uncertainty at 23°43’ N. This shows very clearly that Eratosthenes never performed an
observation but simply copied an earlier text from the Egyptians in the Great Library of Alexandria.
The moment when the tropic was over Syene at latitude 24°5’ N was c.3750 BC, while the
southern limit of the uncertainty radius at 23°52’ gives a date of c.1500 BC, the time of the great 18th
dynasty rulers like Tutmoses I, Tutmoses II, Tutmoses III and the greatest woman pharaoh Hatshepsut.
This is a long, long time before the Greeks and about 1300 years before Eratosthenes’ days… The most
reliable source we have of Eratosthenes contradicts the idea that Eratosthenes actually carried out the
scientific experiment itself.
It is important to notice here is
that this displacement of the tropical
latitude has to do with an astronomical
movement: the variation in the obliquity
of the ecliptic.6 The Earth's tilt with
respect to the ecliptic (its plane of orbit
around the Sun), is today at 23°26’, and
this means that one encounters the tropic
latitudes (both north and south) at a
longitude of 23°26’.
The Earth’s “tilt” changes very
slowly throughout the ages ranging
between 22.5° and 24.5°, and this shift
changes the latitude of the tropic where
one will encounter the sun directly above
at midday on the day of solstice so that a
sundial will project no shadow like the
method suggests. It is the Earth’s tilt that
defines the tropical latitude, and this
latitude shifts along the ages. Today the tropic latitude occurs at 23°26’ N (and south), many kilometers
below Syene, and the result is that a sundial located at Syene (latitude 24°05’ N), one will encounter a
shadow according to an angle of about 0°39’ which is the difference between Syene and the actual
longitude of the tropic. According to the shift in the obliquity of the ecliptic, Syene was the tropical
latitude in 3750 BC, 3500 years before Eratosthenes’ time.
In the time of Eratosthenes, around 200 BC, the obliquity of the ecliptic had displaced the tropic
latitude so it was not at 24°5' where Syene or Elephantine is located, but 25 miles or 41 Kilometers
south of that location, at a latitude of 23°43' N. In this case, a sundial at Syene on the day of north
solstice and at midday would have shown a shadow according to an angle of 0°22’. Whether or not such
a shadow would have been appreciable is discussed in section 1.5 of this work.
A very evident truth is revealed once a serious analysis of this story about Eratosthenes is
carried out. The truth is that Eratosthenes did not measure anything himself, and he was not “the first”
to calculate the circumference of the Earth. What Eratosthenes was actually doing is exactly what we do
today when we speak of Eratosthenes: he was providing a demonstration of how to measure the
circumference of the Earth according to certain data related to astronomy, geometry and geodesy, but

6
Two online calculators for the obliquity of the ecliptic are available to test this: 1)
http://www.neoprogrammics.com/obliquity_of_the_ecliptic/, and 2) http://www.celnav.de/longterm.htm.

6
it was certainly not an experiment carried off by him at his time around 200 BC. In reality, if we wish to
know when the experiment was actually carried out, we need to calculate at what time in history the
tropic latitude was at the latitude of Elephantine or Syene, that is, at 24°5' N, or at least within the
margin of uncertainty offered by Cleomedes. So the answer to this question of when the inhabitants of
the Nile estimated the dimensions of the Earth with this method comes by calculating the shift in the
obliquity of the ecliptic, and this calculation gives us a date of about 3750 BC for the moment when the
north tropic matched the latitude of Syene. If we take the true moment when the obliquity of the
ecliptic was at 24°5' latitude, then we must grant that this experiment was actually performed in pre-
dynastic Egypt, about 600 years before the commencement of the Dynastic era in 3150 BC. On the other
hand, if we take the limit of uncertainty given by Cleomedes, then the latest date in which the
experiment was carried off was 1500 BC, during the early years of the 18th dynasty of the New Kingdom.

1.4 – More Conflicting Data

The above information is enough to show that the actual experiment of observing shadows from
sundials in order to extract geodesic information in Egypt was carried off in antiquity and well beyond
the time of the Greeks; it was done by the Egyptians themselves in their own land long before a word of
Greek was uttered in the world. Eratosthenes was copying and relating a method from an ancient
Egyptian source in the Library of Alexandria which was based on an actual experiment carried off as
early as 3750 BC or as late as 1500 BC, but nowhere near 200 BC in the time of Eratosthenes.
We would like to notice, for example, that the earlier mentioned mistake of Alexandria and
Syene not being 7°12' but 7°7' distant according to their parallels probably comes from the fact that this
measurement was never taken from Alexandria in the first place. Alexandria was a Greek colony city in
Egypt inaugurated by Alexander the Great, but as we have just shown, the actual experiment was
performed as early as 3750 BC or as late as 1500 BC, and certainly not during the time of the
Alexandrian Era of the Greeks. The original northern sundial measurement was clearly taken from an
ancient Egyptian location in the Nile Delta around latitude of 31°17' N, but certainly not from Alexandria
because this city did not exist until Alexander the Great founded it in 331 BC.
Perhaps the original sundial was located at the predynastic settlement of Buto or Pe: an ancient
Egyptian city of the north with a latitude of 31°12' N (which still has 0°5' error), but all we can do is
guess. Nevertheless it is most probable that there were many sundials established all over Egypt (like
obelisks) in order to register a more precise record of this sort across the whole of the Egyptian
landscape. This is a logical and reasonable supposition: that on the day of summer solstice the ancient
Egyptians registered the shadows of many obelisks or sundials scattered across the Nile in many
different latitudes so as to have more precise readings of distances and shifts in shadows from city to
city. Originally, more than just two sundials must have been used, and the observers of the different
shadows at various locations would have later compared their measurements and the distances
between their cities in order to stipulate very precise estimations for the Earth’s dimensions and
especially for the dimensions of Egypt itself. The calculation of many sundials like Egyptian obelisks
would have not only allowed for the estimation of the circumference of the globe, but also for the
distances between important cities along the Nile, and this, in turn, would have allowed the ancients to
map the Egyptian landscape with great precision. The value of such records for military strategies, for
example, is quite significant.
Now, the method itself, as we have seen, is simple, and one only needs a basic astronomical
knowledge, a number of vertical posts or objects projecting shadows, and a system of units to measure
the shadows and distances between sundials. The Egyptians possessed all these requisites, and even
prehistoric cultures could have possessed a notion of the Earth’s dimensions since it requires no
sophisticated technology of any kind. To suppose that nobody in ancient Egypt was capable of realizing

7
the experiments in question until the time of Eratosthenes is plain and simple nonsense: an
unacceptable proposition that is usually stipulated without any clear knowledge of the sources available
on the issue, of the method itself, or the scientific capabilities of the ancient Egyptians: the tutors of the
Greeks in all their sciences.
This type of experiment and observation was no doubt carried off thousands of years before
Eratosthenes and the Greeks, and we have every reason to believe this since there are 3500 years of
history wherein the Egyptians inhabited the land of the Nile and developed a high science of astronomy
and geometry well before the Greek colonization by Alexander the Great. To suppose that the Greeks
were the first to use the very landmarks of the Egyptians in order to discover and be the "first to"
accomplish these scientific notions is simply false. If it were a simple historical matter it would be no
problem, but when the science itself is bogus, then that is quite another thing…

Once again, just as in the case of Thales and his supposed eclipse prediction, we find that the
Greeks are congratulated as the "first-to" not only by themselves but also by the modernists when in
fact the actual scientific data, when it is carefully studied and interpreted without the common prejudice
and bias, clearly demonstrates the fallacy of the Greek miracle in the history of scientific thought. 7

7
For the fallacy of Thales as “the first” to predict an eclipse, see: Thomas Worthen, Electronic Antiquity Vol. 3
Issue 7 - May 1997 edited by Peter Toohey and Ian Worthington antiquity-editor@classics.utas.edu.au ISSN 1320-
3606. https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ElAnt/V3N7/worthen.html

8
 It is worth remembering that Eratosthenes had a wealthy collection of very ancient documents
at his disposal in the Library of Alexandria, and everything indicates that he drew the method itself from
original ancient Egyptian sources. For example, Strabo, on commenting about the measurements
offered by Eratosthenes in his Geography states:

These things Eratosthenes advances on the testimony of men who had been
on the spot, and from the study of those numerous memoirs which he had for
reference in that noble library which Hipparchus himself acknowledges to be
gigantic.8

That gigantic collection of documents in the Library of Alexandria was the wealthiest record of
the ancient sciences of the Egyptians and other truly ancient cultures of antiquity, but such documents
are all lost today because of the subsequent barbarism and vandalism which obliterated those records.
We should acknowledge, however, that the Pharaonic culture was, at the time of Eratosthenes, already
2900 years old. The ancient Egyptians taught the Greeks their astronomy, geometry, mathematics, etc.,
but among the Greeks, it seems that only Plato was honest enough to relate the truth about this in his
dialogue Timaeus.
Pythagoras, for example, is credited as the “father of geometry” among the Greeks but he
studied for over 20 years in Egypt, while Plato, the greatest of Greek philosophers, also spent a number
of years being tutored by the Egyptian sages. Solon and Lycurgus, two of the most famous politicians or
legislators of Greece are known to have learned in Egypt as well. Sure enough, we speak of a
"pythagorean theorem" whereby it is easy to overlook that Pythagoras learned this theorem in
Pharaonic Egypt: a culture that had already performed calculations in trigonometry for 2000 years
before Pythagoras in order to design and erect the most impressive megalithic structures of the planet.
But returning to what Cleomedes states in his account of the measurements given by
Eratosthenes, we noticed before that Cleomedes makes a mistake in affirming that Alexandria and
Syene are on the same longitude because he says these cities are on the same meridian, when they are
not. Here is proof that the Greeks like Cleomedes and Eratosthenes did not understand the basics of
geodesy needed to comprehend what was related in the texts from which Eratosthenes himself copied
in the Library of Alexandria. It is curious that Cleomedes actually quotes Eratosthenes on mentioning
that Syene and Alexandria are on the same meridian which means that Eratosthenes didn't understand
the geodesics involved and certainly didn’t carry out any sort of experiment in order to measure the
distance between these latitudes. One does not need to be on the same longitude to take a measure like
this one which Eratosthenes speaks about related to the shadows of sundials.
Let us suppose that the actual experiment was carried off in 3750 BC when the tropic latitude
was at 24°5' N and matching the latitude of Syene. A person at Syene in 3750 BC could have had another
person taking a measure of the sundial's shadow at 31°17' N very far away, in Sumeria for example, in
the same latitude as the ancient city of Larsa. Although Larsa in Sumeria was located on a very different
longitude (about 13° to the East of Syene and Egypt in general), the 31°17' N latitude of Larsa would
have been exceptionally accurate for a measure of 7°12' (1/50th the Earth's circumference) that
Eratosthenes mentions. Of course Larsa is believed to have been settled a bit later on than 3750 BC, but
we are simply illustrating the idea that longitude is irrelevant for the case of determining a distance
between parallels of latitude like the method itself speaks about. Eratosthenes and Cleomedes did not
understand this, and this is especially important in relation to the idea that Eratosthenes actually
measured the distance between the cities or performed an actual experiment in observing the shadows
of sundials. The truth is that he did neither of the two.

8
Strabo, Geography, Book 2, Chapter 1.5.

9
 If we can take Cleomedes' account as a word for word relation of what Eratosthenes wrote
himself (as modern scholars do), it would definitely prove that Eratosthenes never performed the
experiment that he is supposed to have preformed, and it would indicate that he simply copied an
earlier record from the Library of Alexandria; an original document of Egyptian origin which described a
technique used as early as 3750 BC by prehistoric peoples, or perhaps in the Old Kingdom or New
Kingdom of Pharaonic history. Prehistoric human beings who are supposed to be "howling barbarians"
according to the mainstream theories paraded in the 20th century concerning our human ancestors
could have easily carried out these measurements as they require no sort of sophisticated technology.
What is required is knowledge of astronomy, and that is something that prehistoric humans were
indeed acquainted with. Human beings could have calculated the size of the Earth at any time in
prehistory as long as they had a basic knowledge of astronomy which is not at all complicated.
It is also worth noticing here that Strabo (64 BC - 24 AD) living some 200 years after
Eratosthenes also uses a tropic latitude of 24°05’ N at Syene which shows us that no Greek or Roman
geographer ever actually experimented with a sundial or polo in order to achieve the measures for
the many discussions they had about geography and the dimensions and distances of the Old World.
In his Geography, Strabo, says: "It is evident that Syene is under the tropic, from the fact that during the
summer solstice the gnomon at mid-day casts no shadow there. "9 We will observe that by the time of
Strabo, in the year 1 AD, the obliquity of the ecliptic was at 23°41' from the Equator, meaning that it
was 0°24' south of the latitude of Syene, and yet Strabo still believes that Syene is at the latitude of
the tropic... This shows that no Alexandrian or Greco-Roman geographer took care to actually
measure the shadow of a sundial in Syene, and it offers even further confirmation that authors were
simply copying from more ancient Egyptian sources.
Again, Strabo –like Eratosthenes– was merely repeating what an ancient Egyptian measurement
had shown a very, very long time before the Greeks: that the tropic was at a latitude of 24°5' N. This was
true in 3750 BC, and might have been observed with less precision later on in the Old Kingdom of
ancient Egypt, or even later during the New Kingdom, but it was certainly not observed or recorded with
any precision by the Greeks in their days nor in the time of the Roman empire when Strabo was still
writing that the tropical latitude was at Syene.

1.5 - The Question of Precision in the Observation of Shadows

One might ask (as we have) whether that difference between the latitude of Syene at 24°05' N
and that of the tropic at the time of Eratosthenes, calculated at 23°43' is actually important or
noticeable at all with a sundial or polos. After all, we are speaking of a mere 0°20' which is a third of a
degree, so the first thing that comes to mind if we are skeptical is that the ancients would not have
noticed such a minute difference at all. It is a good question to ask: would an observer have noticed a
mere third of a degree of the shadow of a sundial or polos?
Well, the answer we would give is that whoever calculated the difference between the shadows
at 31°17' N and 24°'05' N so as to come up with a difference of 7°12'was evidently capable of perceiving
very minute differences well below that of 1° of arc. By the testimony of Cleomedes, the shadow
projected at Alexandria is 1/50th of a circle, so if a polos was used, the people who actually carried out
the experiment needed to divide the half-sphere of a polos in at least 25 fractions in order to appreciate
a 1/50th fraction of a circle. This does not seem so complicated, but there is one factor that is very
important in considering the precision of the measurement, and that is the height of the sundial itself.
The question of the minute variations of longitude and the shadow that can be observed is
greatly dependant on the height of the object projecting the shadow. A simple trigonometry shows us

9
Strabo, Geography, Book 2, Chapter 5.7.

10
that a large vertical (like an obelisk) allows for a greater precision in observation and register than a
short gnomon or sundial.

Here we see the simple geometry of a sundial. The vertical h is shown for two examples: a 6ft
(183cm) post and the height of two obelisks of the Luxor Temple erected by Queen Pharaoh Hatshepsut
c. 1478 - 1458 B.C. The 0°22’ of the angle a is the difference between 24°5’ and 23°43’ which is the
difference between the latitude of tropic for Eratosthenes’ time in 240 BC and the location of Syene.
There was a difference of 22’ of arc, and we are wondering if there would be an appreciable shadow in
such a small angle in the days of Eratosthenes. The answer is clearly yes.
If Eratosthenes would have used a 183 cm staff or post to measure a shadow, he would have
noticed a 1.17 cm shadow on the northern side of the hypothetical sundial. It is not a minor difference
nor one that would pass unnoticed if one was looking for the latitude of the tropic where there was no
shadow at midday on summer solstice. A shadow of 1 cm is clearly visible and so are shadows smaller
than this. We are using a small 6ft object for a sundial that someone could carry in the hand as a staff to
illustrate how someone in practice would have noted in Eratosthenes’ time that there was a rather
significant shift of the tropical latitude from Syene by 240 BC. These observations and calculations would
be made by anyone wanting to take an accurate measure of a distance between the sundials and then a
calculation for the Earth’s circumference. This shows that Eratosthenes never actually measured the
shadow at Syene in his days: he was simply copying a source from the Library of Alexandria.
Now, one of the most obvious questions in this matter becomes the height of the sundial: the
higher the vertical, the more accurate the measurement that can be taken. Obelisks like those of
Queen Hatshepsut allowed for much greater precision in astronomical records than our hypothetical
183 cm shadow, and thus these monumental monoliths, apart from their architectural function would

11
have served as excellent instruments for recording variations in the sun’s shadow across the ages. Such
precise calculations would provide, in turn, a greater accuracy for enterprises in geography and geodesy,
including the manufacture of maps and the calculation of the Earth’s true dimensions. Those superb
granite obelisks erected by Queen Hatshepsut around 1500 BC were placed in the entrance to the Luxor
temple: a temple with a most ancient solstice alignment.10
Whatever the case may be, the 0°22’ deviation of the tropical latitude from Syene in
Eratosthenes’ days cannot be easily overlooked at all, and one can certainly not dismiss the issue as an
insignificant difference that would have been unnoticeable. On the contrary, the difference could have
been easily observed in an experiment. The only rational conclusion is that Eratosthenes never
measured the shadow of the tropical sun at Syene at noon on the day of summer solstice, and if he did,
he used a very small instrument that did not allow for precise measurements as would allow for a good
estimation of the Earth’s circumference or an estimation of the distance between Alexandria and Syene
being 1/50th of the Earth’s circumference. Even when we concede that Eratosthenes did measure the
shadow of a sundial at Syene, it is difficult to see how a person engaged in this kind of experiment would
not have noticed the importance of using large sundials for achieving a greater precision from the
trigonometry.
As we have just seen, one of the most obvious things in Eratosthenes’ method is the size of
sundials, and hearing from Strabo and Pliny that Eratosthenes was a very learned man in geography and
the methods of astronomy related to this science, it is highly unlikely that he would have used small
sundials to extrapolate a measure of the Earth’s circumference. In reality, the ancient Egyptians
discovered the circumference of the Earth thousands of years before Eratosthenes, and as a senior of
the Library of Alexandria, he communicated the method of the ancients to an Alexandrian audience.

1.6 - How precise were angular measurements in ancient Egypt?

Just in case the reader is thinking that the ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom would have
been incapable of measuring this minute difference of 0°20', we would like to refer to the well known
fact that they aligned the Great Pyramid of Giza with a minute deviation of 0°3' from the cardinal
directions and this is well known as an accomplishment in engineering that is unexplained. These
observations have been recorded by Sir William Flinders Petrie and confirmed by the later Cole survey of
1925. In both modern surveys the accuracy of the Great Pyramid’s alignments according to the cardinal
directions was registered using theodolites: modern instruments which reveal microscopic differences
or variations. Such a degree of precision as the one achieved by the Egyptians 4500 years ago with the
Great Pyramid is not only very rare even today in the 21st century with modern buildings, but a degree
of precision that was never even possible to measure until the 1800's AD. It was only with the invention
of theodolites that we could measure this minute difference present in the pyramids' alignments and it
strongly suggests the use of sophisticated instruments in early antiquity. Even now, a deviation of only
0°3' for a building is a degree of precision for an alignment that is very rare. The edifices erected by the
ancient Egyptians show that they were indeed capable of measuring extremely minute differences of
minutes (if not seconds) of arc.

10
See, for example, Belmonte & Shaltout, On the Orientation of Ancient Egyptian Temples , and also Furlong,
David, Egyptian Temple Orientation: Astronomical Alignments in the Temples of Egypt (2007) or the web pages by
Furlong http://www.davidfurlong.co.uk/egyptarticle_temple_orient2.html#karnaktemple. The main axis of the
Karnak temple has an azimuth of 296°45’ and it is thus built on a solstice line that matches the winter solstice
sunrise and summer solstice sunsets. The latter is not visible because of the mountains of the west, and it is
suspected that the original alignment was taken from the winter solstice sunrise. This was first recognized in
modern days by Sir Norman Lockyer in The Dawn of Astronomy (1894).

12
 Another interesting fact is that the island of Elephantine has a very famous nilometer located on
its southernmost tip. The nilometer was used to measure the rising of the Nile in ancient Egypt before
the construction of the modern Aswan Dam which rendered them obsolete. These artificial wells could
have also been used to measure very precise shifts in the obliquity of the ecliptic if the position of the
sun on the day of north solstice was marked at the bottom of the well or pit. This nilometer, which could
have been used to measure the light of the sun in a vertical position is located exactly on latitude
24°05’00” N. Again, this is a precision of seconds of arc and it is quite perfect.

1.7 - Inventing the Greek Miracle

Now, one final problem to this question of Eratosthenes and the measure of the Earth's
circumference is related to the value given for the distance between Alexandria and Syene: 5000
stades. We will recall that Cleomedes settles a number of a priori suppositions, before he begins to
speak of the method related by Eratosthenes. Among these suppositions which are mostly related to
geometry, was the supposition that Alexandria and Syene were at a distance of 5000 stades, and it was a
reference to a straight north-south direction of meridian. So, how did Eratosthenes know this distance in
the first place? After all, we are told that his estimation for the length of the Earth's circumference
comes by a simple multiplication by 50 of the distance between Syene and Alexandria… But where did
he get the information of 5000 stades matching 7°12' of latitude in the first place?
It is here with this question that one comes by the clearest example of just how biased and truly
shameless the propositions of the modern inventors of the Greek miracle are. One of the most famous
Greek miracle proponents of our days has been Carl Sagan, the famous 20th century physicist who
wrote the book Cosmos and featured in a television program by the same name convincing an entire
generation that modern physics, inherited by the miraculous rationale of the Ionians and Greeks, is the
scientific enterprise capable of answering all our human questions about the universe. Carl Sagan
appears in that famous television program Cosmos explaining this very question of Eratosthenes in the
typical biased way that most of our modern books on the history of science do, but it is especially
interesting to see how Sagan addresses this problem of how Eratosthenes knew that the difference
between Alexandria and Syene was 5000 stades. Let us go over his very words.
First Sagan admits that Eratosthenes, being the director of the Library of Alexandria, read about
Syene being the location for the north tropic where there is no shadow cast on midday on the day of
north solstice. In other words, Sagan states that Eratosthenes was learning the latitude of the tropic
from earlier sources by reading about this in the Great Library of Alexandria...
But next comes the part where one will observe the typical bias on behalf of the modern
sophists like Sagan who attentively preach to the masses the blind faith in scientism and physics.
He says:

It was an observation that someone else might easily have ignored, sticks,
shadows, reflections in wells, the position of the sun: simple everyday matters, so of
what possible importance might they be? But Eratosthenes was a scientist, and his
contemplation of these homely matters changed the world... in a way, made the
world. Because Eratosthenes had the presence of mind to experiment to actually ask
whether back here, near Alexandria, a stick cast a shadow near noon on June 21st,
and it turns out sticks do.

I would encourage the reader to search for this very short 6 minute relation by Sagan in order to
see how very biased his account is. You see, Eratosthenes was "a scientist": one of those people (like
Sagan of course) who actually notice the important things in life that "change the world": those things

13
that normal people miss because they are just not “scientific” enough in their mentality. And also, you
see, as Eratosthenes was a "scientist" he also had that irresistible urge to experiment, to actually ask
questions and prove certain things he might read on an old papyrus, right?... Well, as we have seen, the
answer is clearly no, but Sagan will never bother in explaining the reality of the facts as he attempts to
promote Eratosthenes as “a scientist”.
This is how one is introduced into the matter by Sagan, but no mention is made whatsoever to
the actual sources we have on Eratosthenes. No, instead we get that Eratosthenes was a "scientist", a
person who needed to experiment and who would change the world because of this cognitive urge to
prove theoretical assumptions. However, as we have seen, a scientific assessment of the evidence
strongly suggests that Eratosthenes never experimented at all.
Sagan, the prophet of scientism, continues his biased relation of the events stating:

The overly skeptical person might have said that the report from Syene was
an error, but it's an absolutely straightforward observation: why would anyone lie on
such a trivial matter? Eratosthenes asked himself how it could be that at the same
moment a stick in Syene cast no shadow, and a stick in Alexandria, 800 kilometers to
the north would cast a very definite shadow.

Just in case the reader missed it, Sagan says here that the report from the Library of Alexandria
telling of no shadow cast at midday at Syene was an "absolutely straightforward observation" and one
which demands no sort of skepticism… In fact he suggests that to question this account of Syene being
on the tropic latitude would be the thinking of an “overly skeptical person”... Sagan has just leaped over
the fact that a scientist would like to corroborate this claim, not to take it for granted, but more
importantly, Sagan has just obviated the most important contradiction of the Greek miracle story,
namely, that Syene in the days of Eratosthenes was nowhere near the tropical latitude...
As we have already seen thanks to our “overly skeptical personality”, Syene was not at the
tropical latitude and not even in the range of uncertainty related by Cleomedes, but this shows how
lightly Sagan passes right over the fact that Syene was not at the latitude of the tropic in the time of
Eratosthenes because it proves Eratosthenes never actually measured anything. "Why would someone
lie on such a trivial matter?" –he asks. Is it not better to ask why Mr. Sagan makes no mention to the fact
that the obliquity of the ecliptic stipulates an "absolutely straightforward observation" in 3750 BC,
3500+ years before Eratosthenes time? Do 3500 years seem like a “trivial matter”? Is it really “overly
skeptic” to try to corroborate that Syene was at the tropical latitude? On the contrary, if Eratothenes
would have actually measured the shadow, he would have been introduced to the reality of the shifting
tropics by the obliquity of the ecliptic.
We will also notice here how Sagan also speaks of what Eratosthenes "asked himself": Mr.
Sagan, it seems, is a mind reader, a psychic as well as a physicist, but the “poetic” accounts of the Greek
miracles are so common that it seems normal. The viewer is induced the idea that Eratosthenes
recorded his thoughts and questions somewhere, because after all, he was a "scientist" like Sagan, and
great physicists like Sagan don’t lie about “trivial matters” right? Lets see.
In the video Sagan continues to show a map of Egypt with two obelisks placed at the locations of
Alexandria and Syene and he explains the method to the audience according to Cleomedes. He shows
how the differences in shadows point to the fact that the Earth is curved and not flat, a beautiful
illustration indeed, but keeping the honesty and transparency together, a very biased relation which
then goes on to suggest that Eratosthenes discovered that the Earth was not flat, and which ends with
the level of fallacy being quite unbearable to any seriously scientific mentality. He continues to say:

14
 But how could it be, Eratosthenes asked, that at the same instant there was
no shadow at Syene, and a very substantial shadow at Alexandria? The only answer
was that the surface of the Earth was curved. [Magic music begins in the
background] Not only that, but the greater the curvature, the bigger the difference in
the lengths of the shadows. The Sun is so far away that it's rays are parallel when
they reach the Earth; sticks at different angles to the sun's rays will cast shadows of
different lengths. For the observed difference in the shadow lengths, [is] the distance
between Alexandria and Syene, [which] had to be about 7° along the surface of the
Earth. By that I mean, that if you imagine these sticks extending all the way down to
the center of the Earth, they would then intersect at an angle of about 7°. Well, 7° is
something like a fiftieth of the full circumference of the Earth, 360°.

Here Sagan, as we know, is repeating the geometric principles Cleomedes relates in his account
of the method used by Eratosthenes, but here is when he simply makes up a shameless story and fits it
right in as if it were a fact, lying in the face of the viewer:

Eratosthenes knew the distance between Alexandria and Syene... he knew it

was 800 kilometers. Why? Because he hired a man to pace out the entire distance so
that he could perform the calculation I am talking about.

What?! Eratosthenes hired a man to "pace" the distance between Alexandria and Syene?
Really?! According to who Mr. Sagan? Well, according to Sagan's imagination my dear readers:
according to the fictions which sophists like these present to the general public in order to champion
their propaganda for the cult of scientism and its false basis on the Greek miracle story. Eratosthenes
paid someone to pace 800 km? Does that sound like the serious assessment of a “scientist”?
In all the regurgitations of this story of Eratosthenes there is no single claim quite as grotesque
and ridiculous as this one made by Carl Sagan. This shameless statement, that Eratosthenes paid
someone to pace 800 kilometers passes quite unnoticed for the dumb masses who are continuously
indoctrinated in the blind faith for scientism and its preachers who settle the Ionian physicists and the
Greeks in general as “the first”, but for the ones who think and reason, those “overly skeptical” people,
such a claim cannot be taken seriously and needs to be dismissed as ridiculous.
Unfortunately, and based on personal experiences with this dilemma, it is a fact that most
people seem to reason different. Most people we have come to discuss this issue follow this line of
reasoning: namely, that if Carl Sagan says it, it must be true. This claim that Eratosthenes paid someone
to pace out 800 Km is even quoted as a serious reference in Wikipedia on the page which deals with
Eratosthenes, but not a single reference appears to Pliny, Cleomedes, or Strabo, for example. No
mention is made to the fact that the “stade” (as we will see in section 1.8) was actually an Egyptian unit,
not a Greek one.
Just as shameless are the comments of Sagan which finish this false explanation remarking that
it was due to Eratosthenes' "zest for experiment" that he discovered the Earth's circumference. The
grand finale of the account, the cherry on the cake comes when Sagan smiles into the camera and says:
"that's pretty good figuring for 2200 years ago." A typical remark by a modernist deluded in the idea of
our superiority in scientific accomplishments in comparison to that of the ancients...
2200 years ago? How about 5750 years ago Mr. Sagan? How about explaining, as a "scientist"
that Syene is located at 24°5' north, and that the shift in the obliquity of the ecliptic located the tropic in
Syene with "absolute" precision in 3750 BC and not in 200 BC when Eratosthenes lived? No mention is
made to the fact that Cleomedes speaks of an uncertainty limit which reaches its limit by 1500 BC some
1300 years before Eratosthenes’ time.

15
 We are not "the first" to come by this fact that Eratosthenes never measured anything. This had
already been observed by Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827 AD), and our attention was drawn to these
facts by R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz who deals with this issue in his magnum opus, The Temple of Man.11
Sagan is a shameless liar who makes up a story of Eratosthenes hiring someone to pace 800 Km
in order to put forth his biased account of Eratosthenes being a "scientist" with a "zeal for experiment."
First of all, Eratosthenes, as we have seen from the quote of Cleomedes believed Alexandria and Syene
were on the same longitude. If Eratosthenes would have made a poor man pace 800 Km southwards
from Alexandria, he would have paced his way to the middle of the desert and missed Syene by 187
Miles to the west... Apart from this fact that Alexandria and Syene are not on the same longitude, if we
accept that the hypothetical pacer fixed a diagonal course and traced a straight line between the cities,
how did the hypothetical pacer cross the Nile twice on his journey and count his paces over the water? A
walk from Alexandria to Syene –apart from being a diagonal path that would give a false distance for a
measure according to latitudes given by the shadow of a sundial– would mean crossing the Nile river at
least twice. Did the pacer also walk on water?
Are we to believe, for example, that “a scientist” would rely on paying someone to count 500
miles (about 500,000 paces)12 and then come back to tell him: "Hey Eratosthenes, I counted 500,000
paces" and making that testimony the basis for “science”? Surely Mr. Sagan supposes that Eratosthenes,
in his “zeal for experiment” thought to himself: "I will rely on the testimony of this person that I paid to
count half a million paces for my calculations ". Does this sound like a serious assessment of what really
happened back in the days of Eratosthenes? Perhaps the reader will understand what we mean when
we speak of shameless accounts by the inventors of the Greek miracle.
The truth is that Eratosthenes never made any kind of experiment: he simply related a method
known by the Egyptians more than 3000 years prior to his time. Eratosthenes did not pay anyone to
pace a distance of 800 km, and he probably never even measured the shadow at Alexandria or Syene,
because if he would have, he would have noticed that Syene at his time was no longer the latitude for
the north tropic. These are the reasonable and logical inferences that come from an unbiased relation of
the data available to us about Eratosthenes and the method he related to the Greek world on how to
measure the Earth’s circumference.
We want to make it clear that we have nothing against Eratosthenes: on the contrary, after
reading from Strabo it is clear that he was a great geographer which gave the Greeks a great number of
details concerning the dimensions of the known world. All that we know from Eratosthenes comes from
second hand accounts, and most of them speak very highly of Eratosthenes. The problem is that
modernists and many Greeks congratulate Eratosthenes as “the first” to measure the circumference of
the Earth. Many academics and scholars consider this true, but the reality is that this congratulation is
unwarranted and based on biased accounts like the one given by Sagan.
As we have just seen from one of the biased accounts of a Greek miracle, Eratosthenes is made
to look like someone who experienced “a zeal for experiment” or someone who “changed the world” or
“made the world”, but all these relations are imaginary and simply advertise the adoration of scientism
as a pseudo religion. In order to provide other academics or the public with an unbiased relation of the
history of science, it is inevitable that we expose these shameless stories for what they are: fictions.

11
R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, The Temple of Man, Vol.1, pp.303-309.
12
The "mile" comes from the Latin term meaning "mile passum" or "thousand paces". The Mile's passum or pace
was actually a double pace (two steps), so we are actually speaking of about a million paces…

16
 1.8 – How long was the Stade of Eratosthenes?

The reader will have noticed that we have left the matter of the stade unanswered, and the
reason is that it merits quite a bit of attention and demands that we relate another story about this
mystery. This "stade" of which Strabo speaks quite frequently in his Geography and acknowledges to
have been used by Eratosthenes to measure the known world was not a Greek unit as most people who
have approached the problem believe.
The common belief which supports most of the endeavors to find out how long this stade was,
stipulates that it must be a Greek unit. It is not. The Greek stade or stadion is a unit of 600 feet
according to the Greek historian Herodotus, and this is the standard ratio between stade and foot:
1:600. It turns out that Eratosthenes was not using a Greek unit of measure but an Egyptian unit of
measure. We will now show why this is the case.
Eratosthenes stipulated in his demonstration that the Earth's circumference was 252,000 of
these "stades", but it is interesting to note that when we hear of the account through Cleomedes, then
1/50th of this number (which is supposed to equal the distance between the latitude of Syene and
Alexandria) is given as 5000 units, when 1/50th of 252,000 is actually 5040 units. The recollection of the
information here is slightly off, and it seems someone has not been careful in arithmetics.
In any case, the reality is that 1/50th of the polar circumference of the Earth gives us around
2,592,000 feet for the distance between Alexandria’s parallel and that of Syene. When we take the
unit of the stade or stadion with its 600 foot value, it becomes evident that neither 5000 nor 5040 Greek
stades match the 2,592,000 ft value, but exceed it quite considerably.

600 x 5040 = 3,024,000 ft (432,000 foot or 81.8 miles of difference)

600 x 5000 = 3,000,000 ft (408,000 foot or 77.3 miles of difference)

A difference of 82 or 74 miles for a calculation between cities is very bad. In fact, it is

unacceptable. In ancient Egypt, say, in the days of Tutmoses III around 1500 BC, it would be
unacceptable for the Egyptian military to have such errors for calculating the strategic displacement of
troops, for example. Communications with a whole day of difference (an 80 mile journey) could make
considerable differences, but on the other hand, for military purposes, it would suffice to know that
Alexandria was so many days journey.
This has been the main problem with figuring out the value of Eratosthenes' stadion or “stade”.
As we know that Eratosthenes was copying from an Egyptian source in the Great Library of Alexandria, it
became very obvious to us that Eratosthenes was calling an Egyptian unit with the Greek name of
“stadion”. Hence, we decided to perform the simple exercise of coming to understand how long this so-
called stadion of Eratosthenes is.
Since the Earth's polar circumference is 129,600,000 feet long,13 a simple division of this figure
by 252,000 (the value given by Eratosthenes for the Earth's polar circumference) will give us the value of
his so-called stade in feet.

129,600,000/252,000= 3600/7 = 514.285714 ft

Here we see that the stadion of Eratosthenes is 514.285714 feet, a figure that can also be
expressed as 3600/7 or 360x10/7. Here we are conceding that the figure for the Earths circumference,

13
We are using round numbers for a figure that looks more like 131,044,634 feet according to the info provided
from the WGS’ 84 and IERS’ 03 satellite surveys.

17
as calculated by the ancients, was originally somewhat correct, as it perfectly can be for any estimate
made by the method discussed in relation to Eratosthenes.
This value for the “stade” holds a tight 6:7 ratio with the 600 ft stadion of the Greeks, but more
importantly, it turns out that this measure is precisely 300 Royal Egyptian Cubits.14 Here, then, is the
original value of the so-called "stade of Eratosthenes": it is an Egyptian unit, not a Greek one. This is
another confirmation that the Egyptians were the ones who had calculated the circumference of the
Earth and that Eratosthenes was merely copying form an Egyptian source in Alexandria.
The Royal Egyptian units hold a ratio to the English units of 8:7. The simple arithmetic value of
the Royal Cubit is 12/7 English feet or 1.71428857 in decimal notation. The ratio between a ‘foot’ and
‘cubit’ is 2:3, the same ratio of the fifth in music. Most importantly in this case is the 8:7 relation
between the English units and the Egyptian ‘royal’ units.

It is easy to see that the Ancient Egyptians had a very exact estimate for the polar circumference
of the Earth of 75,600,000 Royal Cubits: the value that Eratosthenes gives as 252,000 "stades". As we
have just seen, this “stade” was actually a unit of 300 Royal Cubits or 450 Royal Feet. Knowing these
ratios, it is then easy to see that the 1/50th fraction of the polar circumference of the Earth –which is
7°12' of latitude or the distance between the parallels of Alexandria and Syene– is then 1,512,000 Royal
Cubits: 5040 of those so-called "stades" which Pliny mentioned in his Natural History.
The issue if the original unit used is not as important as the method itself that reveals a much
earlier date for the actual experiment, but it does allow us to know that the estimate for the Earth’s
dimensions that can be made by the method known to us through Eratosthenes is very precise.
Let us consider an example. We will assume that ancient Egyptian astronomers in the reign of
Queen Hatshepsut and Tutmoses III, living around 1500 BC, took care to perform the actual experiment
for the method communicated by Eratosthenes in 200 BC. In this hypothetical example, we must
remember that 1500 BC marks the limit of uncertainty related by Cleomedes from the 3750 BC mark
when Syene at latitude 24°5’ was precisely the tropical latitude.
Before we give this example, however, we must consider that we need to actually measure a
distance between two Egyptian settlements. One of those settlements is of course Syene, more
precisely the island of Elephantine or the city known to the Egyptians as Swenett. We will concede that
the other settlement was Thebes (25°42’ N), the capital of the New Kingdom and the location of several
obelisks and monumental architecture.

14
This is equal to 3 khet or “chords” in Egyptian units of length. Each khet is 100 cubits long.

18
 Now, the distance between the latitudes of Syene and Thebes is 345,600 Royal Cubits (112 Miles
or 181 Km). This is 1,152 of those “stades” spoken of by Eratosthenes, and it is a much shorter distance
than the one from the latitudes of Alexandria and Syene. Nevertheless, a rather good estimate may be
made of the Earth’s circumference from this measure. Since Syene is at 24°05’ N and Thebes is at 25°43’
N, the difference between the cities is 1°38’ and this corresponds to a measure of 345,600 Royal Cubits.
Hence, the Earth’s circumference at 360° should be some 76,173,061 Royal Cubits (24,731.5 Statute
Miles or 39,801.5 Km). In the table below, we show modern estimates for the Earth’s circumference
compared to this one.

Name Year Polar Radius Meridian Circumference

Maupertius 1738 AD 3941.200 24763.29
Delambre 1806 AD 3955.900 24855.65
Airy 1830 AD 3952.400 24833.66
Clarke 1866 AD 3949.573 24815.90
Clarke 1880 AD 3949.573 24815.90
IER 1924 AD 3950.109 24819.27
GRS '80 1980 AD 3950.010 24818.65
WGS '84 1984 AD 3950.076 24819.06
IERS '89 1989 AD 3950.075 24819.05
IERS' 03 2003 AD 3950.076 24819.06

Ancient Egyptian c. 1500 BC 3936.140 24731.5

The difference of 87.5 miles between the Ancient Egyptian and WGS’ 84 and IERS’ 03 satellite
surveys is a difference of only 0.35 %. This is of course a relation of somewhat imprecise information
according to the “stade of Eratosthenes”, and we are confident that the ancient Egyptians had an even
better estimate. For example, Hatshepsut’s obelisks allowed for a very precise reading of the latitude of
the Luxor Temple in Thebes, and it is worth noticing that Thebes is exactly on latitude 2/7ths north of
the equator, and the Egyptians are known to have calculated angles according to ratios and not degrees
as the Mesopotamians did.15
With a more exact latitude for Thebes as 2/7th N and with that of Syene at precisely 24°05’00”,
then 1°37’51.43” of latitude would equal 345,600 Royal Cubits as the distance between the parallels of
Syene and Thebes, and then the estimation for the Earth’s circumference would have been 76,284,244
Royal Cubits which is 24,767.6 Statute Miles. In this case it would be roughly equal to the estimations
made in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Satellite technology was introduced in the latter half of
the 20th century and it has refined our previous estimates for the Earth’s dimensions, but we whould not
fail to acknowledge that the dimensions of the Earth were known very long before our days, and even
thousands of years before Eratosthenes’ time.
Although we have presented an example from the Middle Kingdom around 1500 BC, there is no
good reason why the size of the Earth could not have been known to Old Kingdom and even pre-
Dynastic and prehistoric peoples inhabiting the lands of the Nile. The oldest obelisk that we know of

15
It is not a coincidence that Thebes is exactly on latitude 2/7th north of the Equator (90° x 2/7 = 25°42’51.43”).
Avebury in England is exactly on latitude 4/7 and the famous oracle of Delphi in Greece is placed (with lesser
precision) on latitude 3/7 north. For an in depth look at ancient Egyptian mathematics and geometry, see R.A.
Schwaller de Lubicz, The Temple of Man, Vol, 1, chapter 7, Pharaonic Trigonometry, pp. 191-227.

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belonged to pharaoh Sesostris I (c.1971-1926 BC) and it was erected in Heliopolis at 30°7’45” N latitude,
but the Great Pyramids of Giza and Dashur, erected even earlier around 2500 BC would have been even
more accurate gnomons, as these structures reach heights of 480 feet or 146 m.

1.9 - Conclusion
It is impossible for us to congratulate Eratosthenes as “the first” to do anything. Eratosthenes
copies ancient Egyptian sources that related a method for calculating the Earth’s circumference and that
is all. When the actual experiment was made is difficult to say, and the best we can do is rely in the
science of astronomy in this matter, more precisely, to the obliquity of the ecliptic and the latitude of
the tropics. The northern tropic was at the latitude of Syene in 3750 BC, and as we have seen, the
deviation from this mark of 24°05’ N in the time of Eratosthenes was already so great as to notice the
deviation with a relatively small sundial. The margin of uncertainty specified by Cleomedes provides a
limit that concords with the Middle Kingdom of Pharaonic history, and thus we may concede that any
educated guess about the ancient calculation was made by the Egyptians of the Pharaonic era in their
own territory, not by the post-Alexandrian Greeks like Eratosthenes who was copying from the
documents of the Library of Alexandria.

So let us recapitulate what we have learned from the story about Eratosthenes.

1) Eratosthenes gave a geometrical demonstration of how to calculate the Earth's polar or

meridian circumference. He did not carry out any sort of experiment himself, but copied from an ancient
source from the Library of Alexandria.
2) No Greek geographer for over 400 years ever noticed that Syene was not under the north
tropic anymore: hence, no one ever took any sort of measurement or performed any experiment to
confirm what Eratosthenes related from Egyptian sources at the Great Library of Alexandria.
3) According to the shift of the obliquity of the ecliptic, the actual experiment was carried off
between 3750 BC and 1500 BC: thousands of years before Eratosthenes’ time.
4) Modern sources about Eratosthenes tend to relate biased accounts in order to congratulate
the Greeks as the "first" to perform scientific experiments such as this one. They also lack references to
the original testimonies of Cleomedes and tend to obscure the fact that we have no direct account from
Eratosthenes himself.
5) The ancients Egyptians had a very precise notion of the Earth’s dimensions, and their
estimates can be compared to our modern estimates.

In conclusion, there is no reason to believe that Eratosthenes was “the first" to calculate the
circumference of the Earth. He was the first Greek to communicate an estimate by a geometric method
to the post-Alexandrian Greek world.
We would like to leave the reader with a quote from Strabo who writes in book 17 of his
Geography on Egypt. In chapter 1.29, on writing about Heliopolis, he says:

Eudoxus came here with Plato, and, according to some writers, lived thirteen
years in the society of the priests. For the latter were distinguished for their
knowledge of the heavenly bodies, but were mysterious and uncommunicative, yet
after a time were prevailed upon by courtesy to acquaint them with some of the
principles of their science, but the barbarians [i.e. the Egyptians] concealed the
greater part of them. They had, however, communicated the knowledge of the

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 additional portions of the day and night, in the space of 365 days, necessary to
complete the annual period; and, at that time, the length of the year was unknown
to the Greeks, as were many other things, until later astronomers received them
from the persons who translated the records of the priests into the Greek
language, and even now derive knowledge from their writings and from those of
the Chaldeans.16

To this there is a note added by the translator, Goerge Bell, which says:

George (Syncellus, or companion of the Patriarch), a writer of the eighth

century, and who had the reputation of being well versed in history, says that
"Ptolemy Philadelphus collected all the writings of Greeks, Chaldæans, Egyptians,
and Romans, and had such of them as were not Greek translated into that language,
and deposited 100,000 volumes at Alexandria. M. Letronne is disposed to think that
Hipparchus, Eratosthenes, Ptolemy, and others borrowed from these sources.

16
Strabo, Geography 17.1.29.

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