ell of 0.525 of a meter, which was regularly in use in Egypt in the fourth century before Christ, and was employed in the building of the pyramids. Although Lepsius had worked with sagacity and caution in the realm of metrology, yet his conclusions in that field were not to remain unchallenged, and he found himself forced to defend the results of his investigations, first against the distinguished Assyriologist Jules Oppert, and then against the attacks of the architect Dörpfeld. This young scholar, who had distinguished himself by his very excellent work in his own special province, attempted to tax Lepsius with a fundamental error, and to prove that the small ell which the latter considered, and was obliged to consider, as a special unit of measure, was in fact nothing of the sort, but should only be regarded as a subdivision of the great royal ell. But the grey-haired scholar, although he had been struck by apoplexy, still rejoiced in a keenness of mind which many a younger man might have envied, and defended himself bravely. He not only opposed his adversary in a controversial treatise scarcely a year before his death, but he also energetically refuted Dörpfeld’s reply in the last of his works, “The Linear Measures of the Ancients.”[80] This appeared a few days before his decease. We have examined both opinions impartially, and cannot but range ourselves on the side of the Master, Lepsius, who had the advantage of his opponent in a knowledge of all the monuments and an understanding of hieroglyphic writing. It was in his favor in the controversy that his adversary partly relied upon perverted translations and on dubious authorities, or those which he was obliged to take at second hand. The old warrior knew how to bring such errors skilfully into the foreground, and thus, at the very beginning, compromise his adversary, who in other respects had worked with good faith in the correctness of his cause. The controversial paper of Lepsius has not the least appearance of being written by an old man suffering from illness. He may have drawn the force of his reply from the conviction that he was in the right. Besides, the vigorous grey-beard saw all that he had won by painful and conscientious labor unexpectedly endangered, and “therefore,” thus he says himself in his last book--“I both desired and was obliged to make a plain answer in a matter which but few understand. Otherwise the greatest confusion might be occasioned in the minds of half-instructed readers by the influence of such an extensive, bold, and yet entirely unfounded attack from a man otherwise estimable, and who, in his own department, has decided merit.”