236 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
Land Measure. 
l."A £ot/£« — (100 cubits) * 1 2 = 10,000 square cubits — 0-683 English acres 
= 0-557 Sw. Tunnalaud. 
Wine Measure. 
1. ’A ou < ttvi £ = about J pint English, or about tV Swedish kanna. 
Weight. 
1. GJULItA. (Mina) = 8304 grains = 1-1863 lb. av., or 1*278 Swedish 
Skalpund. 
2. The author then, finding no such measure as the metron, goes 
on to say : — 
“ It is really very unpleasant to reject a beautiful and ingeniously 
carried out theory which one wishes to believe, but I cannot, how- 
ever, arrive at any other conclusion than that Professor Smyth’s 
very interesting account of an ancient Egyptian standard of length, 
exactly equal to a ten-millionth of the earth’s axis of rotation, and 
the entire system of weights and measures that he has deduced 
from this imaginary unit, requiring accurate knowledge of the 
earth’s dimensions, figure, and density, several centuries before the 
age of Abraham, and the supposed connection of the English 
measures with these, are things purely mythical. On the other 
hand, that the pyramid and its contents were really the standards 
of the ancient Egyptian kingdom, is, or seems to me an opinion 
not destitute of probability ; but I cannot think that those standards 
were constructed with any reference to the dimensions of the earth, 
but that they were arbitrarily chosen quantities, intended to repre- 
sent on a tolerably large scale the size of those portions of the 
human body which their names indicate : e.g., JULAg^I (cubitus), 
the arm from the elbow to the point of the middle finger ; OJOII 
palmus), the breadth of the hand, &c., &c. 
“ In fine, Professor Smyth’s method, namely, that of multiplying 
or dividing by quantities, for the introduction of which it would be 
hard to give any satisfactory reason,— as, for example, the number 
366, with which the base was divided, and which is neither the 
