Elementary arithmetic, with brief notices of its history... by Robert Potts.

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.

3~

Some maintain that the double Jewish cubit is the cubit of Iarnak.
Others that the cubit of five palms was the cubit used in the measures
of the Temple of Solomon and the second Temple of Ezra, and called
the royal cubit, and that the sacred cubit was that of six palms. This
cubit is supposed to be of the greatest antiquity.
Sir Isaac Newton remarks in his dissertation on cubits, ' that it,
is agreeable to suppose that the Jews, when they passed out of
Chaldea, carried with them into Syria the cubit which they had
received from their ancestors. This is confirmed both by the dimensions of Noah's Ark, preserved by tradition in this cubit, and by the
agreement of this cubit with the two cubits which the Talmudists say
were engraven on the sides of the city Susan during the empire of
the Persians, and that one of them exceeded the sacred cubit half a
digit, the other a whole digit. Susan was a city of Babylon, and,
consequently, their cubits were Chaldean. We may conceive one of
them to be the cubit of the royal city Susan, the other that of the
city.of Babylon. The sacred cubit, therefore, agreed with the cubits
of divers provinces of Babylon, as far as they agreed with each
other; and the difference was so small, that all of them might be
derived, in different countries, from the same primitive cubits."
The conclusion of Sir Isaac Newton is, that the sacred cubit
consists of 25-6 uncie of the Roman foot. His reasons will be found
in his "Dissertation on Cubits."
Dr. Hussey remarks:-" There is no certain method of obtaining
an absolute value of any one element of the ancient Hebrew measures,
from which a system of values might be calculated for the period
before the captivity of the Jews. No weights, coins, nor measures of
that age exist; and we must have recourse to probable inference or
conjecture for determining th6 values of all."
The exact length of the Greek foot and of the Roman foot has
engaged the attention of men of science in Europe for a very long
period of time, and the result of their researches and investigations
exhibit differences so small of these units in comparison with the
foot measures of England and other countries, as to strengthen the
presumption that all of them, having the same name, have had also
the same origin.
M:r. Stuart measured the upper step of the basement of the front
of the Parthenon at Athens, and found the length to be 101 feet 1-7
inches English measure. And if the name lsecatomnpedon was applied to
it on account of its length, he determined the length of the Greek foot
from this measure to be 12-137 English inches.
In 1639 Mr. Greaves measured the Roman foot in the gardens of
the Vatican,1 and found it to be -972 parts of the English foot, or
1 The following account is given by Professor Greaves himself in his works,
vol. i., pp. 207-210:" In the year 1639 I went into Italy to view, as the other antiquities of the
Romans, so especially those of weights and measures, and to take them with as much
exactness as it was possible. I carried instruments with me made by the best
artisans; where my first inquiry was after that monument of T. Statilius Vol. Aper,
in the Vatican Gardens, from whence Philander took the dimensions of the Roman
foot, as others have since borrowed it from him. In the copying out of this upon an
English foot in brass, divided into 2000 parts, I spent at least two hours (which I
mention to show with what diligence I proceeded in this and the rest), so often comparing the several divisions and digits of it respectively one with another, that I
think more circumspection could not have been used, by which I plainly discovered