1 Oriental Metrology and the Politics of Antiquity in Nineteenth-century Survey Sciences Simon Schaffer University of Cambridge E-mail:
[email protected] Argument Metrological techniques to establish shared quantitative measures have often been seen as signs of rational modernisation. The cases considered here show instead the close relation of such techniques with antiquarian and revivalist programmes under imperial regimes. Enterprises in survey sciences in Egypt in the wake of the French invasion of 1798 and in India during the East India Company’s revenue surveys involved the promotion of a new kind of oriental metrology designed to represent colonisers’ measures as restorations of ancient values to be applied to current systems of survey and measurement. Surveyors’ practice and hardware help clarify the significance of the complex historical and political functions of scientific standards. The balance of the paper discusses the survey work of later nineteenth century indigenous Egyptian astronomers at a conjuncture of major economic and political dislocation to explore the various versions of antiquity at stake in these metrological programmes. 2 Introduction: survey sciences and metrology’s invention “Egyptian genius always seems to take pleasure in veiling from the world the principle of its lovely creations, concealing it from profane eyes, perhaps so as better to give them a divine origin, keep them pure and guard them from time’s injuries. Thus one sees in use in Egypt, but without being able to understand the principle, a measurement system apparently crude but in fact the most exact of all known systems”: Mahmud al-Falaki, “The current Egyptian measurement system” (Mahmud 1873, 67) Metrological equipment relies on material measures that somehow embody agreed standards used by a specific community to help make its world knowable in quantitative form.