Elbow Room: A Rough Guide to Cubits

Right after one of the weekly library information columns I write for local newspapers, I got this e-mail:

“ You equated 4.5 cubits to 3 feet. That works out to 8" per cubit. But a cubit is 18", that is when it isn't 21" -- the so-called long cubit. An 18" cubit, of course, would make the (three-foot tall ancient Assyrian) bride's height 6' 9’’. Something seems awry here. A span, at 9", is the closest unit I can think of off hand that fits your case, but that term is very English. Any ideas?”

I wrote a second column, including the e-mail and this response:

With apologies to Gertrude Stein, I must admit that error is an error is an error. It hardly matters that the error was committed late in the evening in a rush to substitute a column by deadline.

The ancient Assyrian cubit whose length I misreported was for all intents and purposes that which appears in the Old Testament over 100 times in measurements of distances, buildings, furnishings and other larger objects. Paul J. Achtemeier, in the Harper Collins Bible Dictionary, does add, however, that there were “several cubits in use in ancient Israel … In addition to the usual or ‘short’ cubit, there was the ‘long’ cubit implied in Ezekiel’s vision of the restored Temple (Ezekiel 40:5), possibly equivalent to the Egyptian cubit of around 20.6 inches. A third cubit may be referred to in the description of the bed of Og, the king of Bashan, the ‘common cubit’.” Of Og’s iron bedstead, Deuteronomy 3:11 said that “nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man.” The New American Standard Bible translates “the cubit of man” as “ordinary cubit” and the New International Version states that the bed was “thirteen feet long and six feet wide” in modern terms (source: http://bible.christianity.com/).

According to the Dictionary of Judaism in the Biblical Period (Jacob Neusner, Editor in Chief), the cubit was “roughly 17-18 inches, though it varied from region to region.” The Hebrew word for the unit was “’amrah,” which – like Latin “cubitum” – literally meant “elbow.” There are surviving measuring rods from ancient Egypt, neatly marked off into cubits. Gay Robins (“Mathematics, Astronomy and Calendars in Pharaonic Egypt,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East) said that the small Egyptian cubit (18 inches) was further divided into four fingers. The royal cubit of 21 inches consisted of seven palms. “Both cubits,” she added “are written with a hieroglyph depicting the forearm from elbow to fingertip.” Quibbling about the exact length of ancient cubits arises when scholars disagree on whether the measure extended to the thumb tip or to the end of the fingers.

The New Testament cubit (Greek “pechys”), said Achtemeier, “seems to be merely a popular estimate of both length and time.” This is apparent in Matthew 21:8, when Christ told his disciples, “Which of you by being anxious can add a cubit to his life?”