Clearly the Athenian stade was 600 foot. However the bematist's stade was equally clearly 100 paces. It can accurately be measured at 157m because we have the stathmoi from Alexander's expedition and many of the places have known locations today. (It was derived by Fred Hoyle, Astronomy, Rathbone Books Limited, London 1962.) That would be a foot of only 26cm (extraordinarily small and well below the normal range) and I don't quite follow you on your apparent concept of the bematists pacing the route by putting their feet down heel to toe repeatedly: it is a rather comic picture that you conjure up by suggesting they did that Worthy of Horrible Histories!agesilaos wrote:A stadion was 600 feet, and that is standard BUT the length of a foot (pous) varied, just as the weight of a drachma did. Since the Alexandria that Mehmud surveyed was not the whole ancient city, and certainly not the original ancient city, deductions about the stadion from his nineteenth century measurements are clearly not accurate and just inferred, I would refer everyone to Paralus' comment on the Cleitarchus thread. Theis especially odd since you admit Mahmoud guessed many of the measurement he made for the circuit walls (the actual source for the bogus Deinokrates link) yet suddenly his measurements for the area that had certainly changed due to 23 centuries of redevelopment are accurate! Shoe-menders.
Mahmoud Bey's value for a stade in Alexandria is accurate, because he actually excavated the ancient grid of streets and showed that they were repeated regularly both NW-SE and SW-NE. However a value for the circumference of the walls taken from his map will be inaccurate, because he only excavated the walls on the eastern and southern sides. He himself says he inferred (guessed) the course of the walls in the west in particular. I don't really understand your apparent premise that Mahmoud Bey was either entirely accurate or entirely inaccurate. In fact he was either inaccurate or accurate depending on how good and complete his evidence and analysis were.
Best wishes,
Andrew