Thursday, December 28, 2023

Leen Ritmeyer on the Cubit in Antiquity

  

DEFINING A CUBIT

 

There is much confusion as to the length of the cubit, especially as we know that more than one cubit was used in antiquity. Different lengths for these cubits have been suggested by scholars.

 

That more than one cubit was in use in biblical times is clear from 2 Chronicles 3:3, where it is stated that Solomon was instructed to build the house of God using cubits “after the first measure.” This implies, of course, that there was another “measure” and that at least two different cubits must have been in use during the First Temple period. The prophet Ezekiel (40:5, 43:13) indeed refers to two cubits, one of which was a handbreadth longer than the other. The long or Royal Cubit of seven handbreadths was that used in Ezekiel’s description of the Temple, and is therefore the Temple Cubit. Although so far no rods or inscribed lengths of cubit have been found in Israel, a beautiful specimen of an Egyptian Cubit 20.67 inches long is on display in the Egyptian Gallery of the British Museum (no. K136542, . . . ) together with a rod which is exactly twice as long. In the Egyptian Museum of Torino there is a golden cubit exhibited of the same length and two rods of a span (half a cubit) each. This long or Royal Cubit (20.67 inches or 525 mm) and the Short Cubit of about 18 inches (450 mm) were in use in Egypt since about 3000 B.C. and were widely used in the ancient world. The small cubit was divided into 24 fingerbreadths or 6 handbreadths and the Royal one into 28 fingerbreadths or 7 handbreadths. There is increasing archaeological evidence to show that both these long and short cubits were used simultaneously in Israel since the tenth century B.C. The determination of the length of these cubits is based on the units of measurements found in excavated tombs and other buildings, . . . From these excavations it can be established with increasing certainty that the length of the longer cubit is 20.67 inches (525 mm) and that of the shorter cubit 17.7 inches (450 mm.) (Leen Ritmeyer, The Quest: Revealing the Temple Mount in Jerusalem [Jerusalem: Carta Jerusalem and the LAMB Foundation, 2006, 2015], 171)