Egyptian Fingers to Yards (digit to yd)
1 Egyptian finger equals 0.02050524934 yards (rounded).
How to convert Egyptian fingers to yards
To convert Egyptian fingers to yards, multiply the number of Egyptian fingers by 0.02050524934. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply yards by 48.768.
yards = Egyptian fingers × 0.02050524934
Example: 10 Egyptian fingers = 0.2050524934 yards.
Approximate value. Standards for the Egyptian finger varied by place and period, so this converter uses the most commonly cited value. Treat results as estimates, not exact figures.
About these units
Egyptian Finger (digit)
One 28th of a royal cubit, about 1.875 cm. The smallest standard division of Egyptian length.
Egyptian length units seem to have begun as parts of the body, and the finger, or digit, is the smallest of them: the width of a finger. Modern writers also call it a fingerbreadth, and the Egyptian word is given as tebā. It was the basic subdivision of the royal cubit, which held 28 fingers, and four fingers made one palm. The figure used here, 1.875 cm, is simply the royal cubit of about 52.5 cm divided by 28.
Because the finger depends on the cubit, it carries the same uncertainty. Surviving cubit rods run from roughly 52.35 to 52.92 cm, which puts a finger anywhere between about 1.87 and 1.89 cm, and Wikipedia's article on Egyptian units quotes about 1.875 cm. The rods themselves were marked in fingers, which let craftsmen and builders read off small distances directly. In modern terms a finger is a little under two centimetres, or about three quarters of an inch.
1 Egyptian finger = 0.01875 meters (approximately).
Sources: Wikipedia: Ancient Egyptian units of measurement; Wikipedia: Cubit
Yard (yd)
3 feet or 36 inches, exactly 0.9144 meters. Used for sports fields, fabric and short distances in the US and UK.
Yard descends from the Old English gerd or gyrd, meaning a branch, stave or measuring rod. It first appears in the late seventh-century laws of Ine of Wessex, though there it names a tax unit, the yardland. Around 959 to 963 King Edgar ordered that the measure held at Winchester be used throughout his realm, the earliest record of a prototype. A story that Henry I fixed the yard as the distance from his nose to his thumb is later folklore, and the true origin, whether pace, cubit or waist, remains speculative.
Britain defined the Imperial Standard Yard in 1824 as the distance between two marks on a brass rod at 62 degrees Fahrenheit. A fire in 1834 damaged the standard, a replacement was made in 1845, and the Weights and Measures Act 1855 recognized it. The 1959 international agreement then fixed the yard at exactly 0.9144 meter. Today it measures American and Canadian football fields, association football pitches and cricket pitches, appears on UK road signs for short distances, and is still used to sell fabric in the US and UK.
1 yard = 0.9144 meters (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Yard; Wikipedia: Inch; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors
Related conversions
- Yards to Egyptian fingers (reverse)
- Egyptian fingers to meters
- Egyptian fingers to kilometers
- Egyptian fingers to centimeters
- Egyptian fingers to millimeters
- Egyptian fingers to inches
- Egyptian fingers to feet
- Egyptian fingers to miles
- Meters to yards
- Kilometers to yards
- Centimeters to yards
- Millimeters to yards
- Inches to yards
- Feet to yards
- Miles to yards
- Micrometers to yards
- Nanometers to yards
- Nautical miles to yards
- Pixels (CSS) to yards
- Light-years to yards
See all length units.