Didascalicon, Book II: the sciences, their parts and their discipline
Chapter X. On geometry
Geometry is interpreted measure of the earth, because this discipline was first discovered by the Egyptians, whose boundaries, when the Nile covered them with mud by its flooding and confounded the limits, they began to measure the land with rods and cords; then it was carried further by the wise and extended to measuring the spaces of the sea, the heaven and the air, and of any bodies whatever.