Rope stretcher

In ancient Egypt, a rope stretcher (or harpedonaptai) was a surveyor who measured real property demarcations and foundations using knotted cords, stretched so the rope did not sag. When performed by a king to begin building a temple the stretching of the rope was probably a religious ceremony. On artefacts as ancient as the Scorpion Macehead, Egyptians documented the royal surveyors' procedure for restoring the boundaries of fields after each flood.

The first surveyors to use ropes and plumbs may have been Egyptian. Rope stretching technology spread to ancient Greece and India, where it stimulated the development of geometry and mathematics. Some think that it was India that influenced Greece.

Rope stretchers used 3-4-5 triangles and the plummet, which are still in use by modern surveyors. The plummet can be used with a square ruled off into intervals on tongue and blade to get a unit rise and run or angle when taking an elevation to a distant point as with a modern sextant.

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