Egyptian Palms to Millimeters (palm to mm)

1 Egyptian palm equals 75 millimeters exactly.

1 Egyptian palm = 75 millimeters

How to convert Egyptian palms to millimeters

To convert Egyptian palms to millimeters, multiply the number of Egyptian palms by 75. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply millimeters by 0.01333333333 (rounded).

millimeters = Egyptian palms × 75

Example: 10 Egyptian palms = 750 millimeters.

Approximate value. Standards for the Egyptian palm 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 Palm (palm)

Ancient EgyptianHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)Approximate value

One seventh of a royal cubit, about 7.5 cm. Four fingers (digits) made a palm.

Four finger widths side by side made one palm, the breadth of the hand across the knuckles without the thumb. Its Egyptian name is given as shesep, and modern writers also call it a hand or handsbreadth. Seven palms made a royal cubit, so the palm is a seventh of that rod and comes to 7.5 cm at a cubit of 52.5 cm. Ordinary common cubits in other cultures had only six palms, which is one reason Egyptian rods are easy to recognise.

Surviving rods show that the palm was a working division. Each rod was cut into seven palms, and the palms were split into fingers and finer fractions, so masons and carpenters could check a stone or a timber against a standard instead of their own hands. The palm shifts slightly with the cubit it comes from, since rods are measured at about 52.35 to 52.92 cm, giving palms of about 7.48 to 7.56 cm. Related units include the remen of five palms, about 37.5 cm, and a foot of four palms, close to 30 cm.

1 Egyptian palm = 0.075 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Ancient Egyptian units of measurement; Wikipedia: Cubit

Millimeter (mm)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One thousandth of a meter. Used in engineering, manufacturing and rainfall measurement.

Carl Friedrich Gauss put the millimeter at the base of his 1832 proposal for absolute units, pairing it with the milligram and the second, although the centimeter-based CGS system later won out among scientists. The name combines the metric prefix milli-, from the Latin for one thousand, with the meter. Since 1983 a millimeter has been tied to the speed of light: it is the distance light covers in 1/299,792,458,000 of a second.

Millimeters are the language of fine mechanical work. Standard rulers are divided into them, digital calipers commonly read to 0.01 mm, and mechanical pencil leads come in 0.5 and 0.7 mm. Copy paper is about 0.1 mm thick, and a thin hair, at 0.02 to 0.04 mm across, is close to the smallest thing the naked eye can see. A wave with a frequency of 300 GHz has a wavelength of 1 mm. An inch is exactly 25.4 mm. One trap for readers in the United States is that mil there traditionally means a thousandth of an inch, not a millimeter.

1 millimeter = 0.001 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Millimetre; Wikipedia: Centimetre-gram-second system of units; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

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