379 IX. On the Hebrew Cubit. Measures of length have among all nations been borrowed from the parts of the human body. In primitive times it was the simplest and most natural way of obtaining a standard of measurement. The finger-breadth, the hand-breath or palm, the span, the foot, the ell or cubit were all in the first instance intended to denote the measures of the various parts of the body indicated by the names. This system of measurement was however imperfect: no two men's bodies were exactly of the same size, nor were the lengths of the smaller parts of the body exact subdivisions of the lengths of the larger. The progress of civilization among the different nations rendered a fixed stand- ard necessary, and required that the smaller measures should be corrected so as to become exact subdivisions of the greater, or the greater corrected so as to become exact multiples of the smaller. Fixed standards of length were accordingly adopted, and both they and their multiples and subdivisions were still called by the old names. But as each nation fixed its own standard, and own system of multiples and divisions, the same names were applied by different nations to measures of different length. As the English foot, the Paris foot, and the Dresden foot all differ in our own days, so the Roman ell, the Greek ell, and the Egyptian ell all differed in ancient times. In some cases the same nation had more than one standard : thus it will be seen below that the Egyptians had two distinct cubits both of which were greater than what they regarded as the average ell of the human body. The actual length of the ell of any nation can therefore only be determined by historical evidence. The term ell or cubit itself has been differently interpreted to mean the length of the arm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger, the root of the finger, or the wrist. But the hieroglyphical sign for an ell renders it certain that the Egyp- tians understood by it the first of these lengths. Vol. I. November, 1854. 26
