When we look for further light on this point to the ancient home of all scientific metrology, the result is disappointing. As early as B.C. 3000, the era of Gudca, the Babylonians bad discarded the more primitive or natural system of lineal measures for a rigidly scientific system, constructed, like the rest of their metrology, on a sexagesimal basis. On this system fresh light has recently been thrown by the recovery of two early scales of linear measurement, engraved upon statues of Gudea, from Telloh in Southern B;iliyIonia (see details by C V. Lehmann in Verkandl. d. bcrliner Gescll.f. Anthroiioloqie, 1889, 288 fl'. ; 1896, 453 tl.; Das altbabyl. Mnas- und Geunchtsstjstcm, iy2li'. A short summary with illustration is given by Haupt in Toy's 'Ezekiel' [SBOT 179f.]; cf. art. Babvlonia, vol. i. p. 218''). The more perfect of the two scales is divided by transverse lines into six- teen subdivisions, each a trilie over g in. in length, lifteen of whieli are considered to represent a
?uarter of the double cubit, which, as we know rom the tablet of Senkereh ( IVAI iv." 37), con- stituted the unit of the linear system. This double cubit, then, contained GO of the ubilnu or fin^'erbreadtlis of Gudea's scale, or about 39.^ in., whieli gives a single cubit of 30 digits, or 193 in. Five digits on this system are supposed to have gone to the handbreadth, of which 6 formed the cubit. In addition to this cubit there appears to have been a so-called royal cubit of 33 digits (Herod, i. 178), or 213 in. In all periods of Babylonian history the size of the square bricks for buildinij purposes remained constant at 13 in., which is g of Gudea's cubit or J of the royal cubit, and is termed by Continental metrologists the Babylonian foot.t The primitive Hebrew
• This longer ctibit, however, is not, as our EV would lead one Co suppose, called by the prophet a '(frt-at cubit' (see41sUVm), But the original is here confcsscdiy unintelligible.
t The whole aystem of Babylonian weights und measures is ba^HMi. acconiing to Lehmann, who has luo^ie this subject ipeci&ily his own, on the double cubit (30^ in.) of Qudea's scale.
measures aiipcar to have remained uninflueiced by this more artificial system.
On the otlier hand, when we turn to the other centre of early civilization in the East, we find in Egypt a system presenting an exact correspond- ence with what we have so far learned of the chief Hebrew measure of length (see esp. F. L. Griffith, ' Notes on Egyptian Weights and Mea- sures' in PSBA xiv. [1892] p. 403 tl'.). Here two cubits were in use from the earliest times — the ' short ' cubit of 6 and the ' royal ' cubit of 7 handbreadths. Happily, the survival of actual cubit-rods and the measurements of the pyramids and other ancient monuments have made it pos- sible to determine the length of the royal cubit with sufficient accuracy for ordinary purposes as 20-63 in. (Petrie, Enojc. Brit.' xxiv. 483'; cf. Watson, PEFSt, 1897, 203; Griffith, I.e.). The short cubit, as f of the other, contained 17 '68 in., 6 palms of 295 in., or 24 digits or finger- breadths of '74 in. We have here, then, the same ratio between the cubits, and the same subdivisions as we found in the case of the Hebrew cubits — facts which render it impossible to avoid bringing the two systems, Egyptian and Hebrew, into more intimate connexion. It would be rash at this stage, however, to propose their original identity until we have bad some evidence as to the probable length of the early Hebrew cubit.
Innumerable attempts have been made in the course of the last two centuries, to determine the absolute length or lengths of the OT cubit. One of the most eminent of living metrologists is re- duced to finding ' the sole reliable determination of the Hebrew measures of length ' in a metro- logical table which in its present form is scarcely older than the 14th cent, of our era ! From this document, with doubtful cogency, he argues foi the identity of the ordinary Heb. cubit with the royal Egyp. cubit (Ilultsih, MetroL- 43711'.). lu our own country a few of the more noteworthy values proposed in recent years are as follows : —
16 inches.
Conder {Handbook of the BibleA
and elsewhere) . . .)'
Beswick(P£i''6"i;, 1879, 182 ff.) . . 17-72 „
Watson ( „ 1897, '203 tr.) . . 17-70,,
Warren ( „ 1899, 2-29 U.) . . 17-75 „
Petrie ( „ 189-2,31) . . 226 „
Petrie {Encyc. Brit." xxiv. 484) . 25-2 „
To these may be added the estimates adopted in Smitli'a D}i, from Thenius, of 19'5 in. From these widely-varying results it will be clear to every reader that reliable data for the exact evalua- tion if the Hebrew cubit do not exist. The following is merely a fresh attempt to reach an approximate value.
(a) The evidence of the Siloam inscription. — In lines 4 and 5 of this famous inscription may be read : ' and the waters flowed from the outlet [of the spring] to the Pool [of Siloam] one tliousand and two hundred cubits.' Now the total distance from the spring to the pool, according to Conder's careful measurements {PEFSt, 1882, 122), is 1758 ft., which yields n cul>it of 17-58 in. Unfor- tunately, the number 1200, like the other speci- fication of 100 cubits as the height of the rock above the tunnel, is evidently a round number, so that the value of the cubit as c. 17-6 in. here