A tool’s outline can look simple while its catalogue records separate dimensions for the parts. An Egyptian hoe at The Met offers a useful example of reading those measurements carefully.
Start with the identified object
The Met record for hoe 22.3.37 identifies wood as the material and gives a handle length of 47.5 centimetres and a blade length of 39 centimetres. It dates the object broadly to the New Kingdom, around 1550–1080 BCE.
Write the dimensions beside their component names. Adding the two lengths would not automatically give the assembled object’s overall length, because the parts meet at an angle and their relationship matters.
Use the find information without inventing a worker
The catalogue connects the hoe with excavations in the Southern Asasif at Thebes. That context does not supply a complete biography of the person who used it.
A small sketch can mark handle and blade, with the source’s measurements attached. Keep any question about use or construction separate from the documented facts. The object then becomes a concrete starting point for studying tools, rather than a generic illustration of daily labour filled out with an imagined scene.