_Length of the Sacred Cubit._--Sir Isaac Newton, in his remarkable _Dissertation upon the Sacred Cubit of the Jews_ (republished in full by Professor Smyth in the second volume of his _Life and Work at the Great Pyramid_), long ago came to the conclusion that it measured 25 unciae of the Roman foot, and 6/10 of an uncia, or 24.753 British inches; and in this way it was one-fifth longer than the cubit of Memphis--viz. 20.628 inches, as previously deduced by him from Greaves' measurements of the King's Chamber and other parts of the interior of the Great Pyramid. Before drawing his final inference as to the Sacred Cubit being 24.75 inches, and as so many steps conducting to that inference, Sir Isaac shows that the Sacred Cubit was some measurement intermediate between a long and moderate human step or pace, between the third of the length of the body of a tall and short man, etc. etc. Professor Smyth has collected several of the estimations thus adduced by Newton as "methods of approach" to circumscribe the length of the Sacred Cubit, and omitted others. Adding to eight of these alleged data, what he mistakingly avers to be Sir Isaac's deduction of the actual length of the Sacred Cubit in British inches--(namely, 24.82 instead of 24.753)--as a ninth quantity, he enters the whole nine in a table as follows:-- _Professor Smyth's Table of Newton's data of Inquiry regarding the Sacred Cubit._[259] "First between 23.28 and 27.94 British inches. Second " 23.3 27.9 " Third " 24.80 25.02 " Fourth " 24.91 25.68[260] " And Fifth, somewhere near 24.82." "The mean of all which numbers" (Professor Smyth remarks) "amounts to 25.07 British inches. The Sacred Cubit, then, of the Hebrews" (he adds) "in the time of Moses--_according to Sir Isaac Newton_--was equal to 25.07 British inches, with a probable error of +-.1."