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The cubit is an ancient unit of length based on the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. [1] It was primarily associated with the Sumerians , Egyptians , and Israelites . The term cubit is found in the Bible regarding Noah's Ark , the Ark of the Covenant , the Tabernacle , and Solomon's Temple .
Egyptian units of length are attested from the Early Dynastic Period.Although it dates to the 5th dynasty, the Palermo stone recorded the level of the Nile River during the reign of the Early Dynastic pharaoh Djer, when the height of the Nile was recorded as 6 cubits and 1 palm [1] (about 3.217 m or 10 ft 6.7 in).
The Egyptian cubit, the Indus Valley units of length referred to above, and the Mesopotamian cubit were used in the 3rd millennium BC and are the earliest known units used by ancient peoples to measure length. The units of length used in ancient India included the dhanus, or dhanush (bow), the krosa (cry, or cow-call) and the yojana (stage).
In Ancient Egypt it was the basic unit of subdivision of the cubit. [1] On surviving Ancient Egyptian cubit-rods, the royal cubit is divided into seven palms of four digits or fingers each. [3] The royal cubit measured approximately 525 mm, [4] so the length of the ancient Egyptian digit was about 19 mm.
Illustration of the ancient Egyptian measure of Seked compared with the slope of the Great Pyramid. Seked (or seqed) is an ancient Egyptian term describing the inclination of the triangular faces of a right pyramid. [1] The system was based on the Egyptians' length measure known as the royal cubit.
The palm was not a major unit in ancient Mesopotamia but appeared in ancient Israel as the tefah, [7] tepah, [8] or topah [8] (Hebrew: טפח, lit. "a spread"). [9] Scholars were long uncertain as to whether this was reckoned using the Egyptian or Babylonian cubit, [7] but now believe it to have approximated the Egyptian "Greek cubit", giving a value for the palm of about 74 mm or 2.9 in. [8]
Cubit-rods of wood or stone were used in Ancient Egypt. Fourteen of these were described and compared by Lepsius in 1865. [ 7 ] Flinders Petrie reported on a rod that shows a length of 520.5 mm, a few millimetres less than the Egyptian cubit . [ 8 ]
The ancient Egyptian units of measurement discussion further shows that the hekat was 1/30 of a royal cubit 3, an analysis that needs to double checked, against the d = 2 suggestion, which means that r = 1, a suggestion that does make sense. One royal cubit of the ancient Egyptian weights and measures = 523.5 millimeters.