HEBREW WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. 



291 



a Sabbath-day's journey, which was 2,000 Jewish cubits, with the 

 Antiquities, XX, viii, G, where the distance is given as five 

 stadia, which are 2,000 Greek cubits. 



As regards the monumental evidence, we have no actual 

 standards to tell their tale, as was the case with the Jewish 

 weights. No measuring rods have survived, such as are frequent 

 in Egypt. Such monumental evidence as is available is all, 

 therefore, indirect. From the reign of Hezekiah, probably, we 

 have the Siloam tunnel or aqueduct with its famous inscription 

 giving the length as 1,200 cubits. According to the learned 

 archaeologist, Pere Vincent, who recently had a unique oppor- 

 tunity of taking exact measurements, the actual lens;th of the 

 tunnel is between 533 and 534 metres, say 1,750 feet, more or 

 less {Rev. Biblique, 1912, 425/). This gives 17J inches for the 

 cubit, but unfortunately the 1,200 cubits of the inscription is, 

 from the nature of the work, only the nearest approximate 

 round number ; from the literary evidence, however, we know 

 that 17 h inches canuot be far out. 



A few years ago it occurred to me to examine the remains of 

 Herodian masonry with the assistance of the very full and 

 detailed measurements in the reports of the British surveyors, 

 Sir Charles Wilson, Sir Charles Warren, and others. The results 

 were published in a series of papers in the E?:pository Times, 

 vol. xx (1908-09). Let me give you briefly one or two of the 

 more striking. Taking some of the more important of the lower 

 courses of masonry in the retaining walls of the Haram area, 

 which are acknowledged by all to be Herodian, I found, for 

 example, that the foundation course at the S.E. angle, where, in 

 the words of the official report, the stones are as perfectly 

 preserved " as if they had been recently cut," showed a uniform 

 height of 3 feet 8 inches. Now as stones were no doubt cut, as 

 bricks were made (Mishna, Erubin i, 3), in so many hand- 

 breadths, this yields 15 handbreadths, or 2 J of a cubit of 17*6 

 inches without a remainder. From the courses of masonry I 

 proceeded to test this result by the length of the eastern and 

 western w r alls of the Haram itself, from the S.E. and S.W. 

 angles, to the points at which it is now agreed they met the 

 north wall in Herod's reconstruction. The distance on the 

 survey map is, as nearly as may be, 1,173 feet, which is just 

 800 of a 17*6 inch cubit. I then had the curiosity to try the 

 position of the several gateways. To my surprise, I confess, 

 I found that the distance of the Double Gate in the South Wall 

 from the S.W. angle, as measured by the surveyors, viz., 330 

 feet, is exactlv 225 of the 17*6 cubit without a fraction over. 



u 2 



