Cubit

The cubit is an ancient unit of length based on the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger.

Cubits of various lengths were employed in many parts of the world in antiquity, during the Middle Ages and as recently as early modern times.

[6] The ancient Egyptian royal cubit (meh niswt) is the earliest attested standard measure.

[8] Use of the royal cubit is also known from Old Kingdom architecture, from at least as early as the construction of the Step Pyramid of Djoser designed by Imhotep in around 2700 BC.

[10] Ancient Mesopotamian units of measurement originated in the loosely organized city-states of Early Dynastic Sumer.

The Classical Mesopotamian system formed the basis for Elamite, Hebrew, Urartian, Hurrian, Hittite, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Arabic, and Islamic metrologies.

[11][full citation needed] The Classical Mesopotamian System also has a proportional relationship, by virtue of standardized commerce, to Bronze Age Harappan and Egyptian metrologies.

In 1916, during the last years of the Ottoman Empire and in the middle of World War I, the German assyriologist Eckhard Unger found a copper-alloy bar while excavating at Nippur.

[21] Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz (the "Chazon Ish"), dissenting, put the length of a cubit at 57.6 cm (22+11⁄16 in).

[23] In ancient Rome, according to Vitruvius, a cubit was equal to 1+1⁄2 Roman feet or 6 palm widths (approximately 444 mm or 17+1⁄2 in).

[28] Other measurements based on the length of the forearm include some lengths of ell, the Russian lokot (локоть), the Indian hasta, the Thai sok, the Malay hasta, the Tamil muzham, the Telugu moora (మూర), the Khmer hat, and the Tibetan khru (ཁྲུ).