In my previous articles, I delved into various cultural similarities between ancient Kerala and Egypt. In this article, I touch on the similarities in an ancient length measure, the cubit. This is not a surprise: trading nations could use similar measures. Direct trade between Kerala and Egypt has been documented during Roman times, ca. 50 CE in the travelogue Periplus Maris Erythraei penned by an anonymous Egyptian trader-sailor. Such trade is also circumstantially evident in Egyptian coins found in Kerala dating to the Ptolemaic era, ca. 300 BCE-30 BCE.¹ What is intriguing here is the time frame suggested by the cubit in Kerala.
The cubit is a human-derived measure being the length between the elbow and the middle finger of a man. It was commonly used in ancient times across many diverse cultures — Sumerian, Egyptian, Harappan, Arabian, Greek, peninsular Indian, Chinese, and many others. In each of these cultures, it had a different name: pekhys in Greek, hasta in Sanskrit, dhira in Arabian, chi in Chinese, and so on. It is called muzham മുഴം in Malayalam, Kerala’s native tongue. In ancient Egyptian, it was denoted by the whip hieroglyph 𓎔, representing the consonant [m] followed by a sound that morphed into [zh] in Malayalam.² In other words, the ancient Egyptian word for “cubit” was almost identical to the Malayalam word muzham!
The muzham in Kerala supposedly derives from the Tamil “span” chaan ചാൺ, measuring half a cubit. There were two different types of span: a long span, called nedunchaan നെടുഞ്ചാൺ, which was the distance between the thumb and extended small finger, approximately 26.67 cm; and a short span, called chottachaan ചൊട്ടച്ചാൺ, which was the distance between the thumb and extended forefinger, approximately 22.86 cm.³ Since the muzham is twice the span, a long cubit derived from the long span would be around 53.34 cm and a small cubit derived from the short span would be 45.72 cm.
Indeed, Kerala had a small cubit for everyday measurements and a great cubit for monumental structures, such as temples. The small cubit was based on the short span, having a value of approximately 45.72 cm. But the great cubit, which ultimately evolved into the modern standard for the muzham, measured around 72 cm, not 53.34 cm as one would expect for a measure derived from the long span.⁴ Besides, the cubit everywhere else in India, including in Tamil Nadu, measured 45.72 cm, corresponding to Kerala’s small cubit. So where did the great cubit of Kerala come from?
Perhaps from ancient Egypt, where three different versions of the cubit were used contemporaneously once upon a time: a pyramid cubit, approximately between 60 cm and 75 cm for building pyramids; a royal cubit, approximately 52.3 cm for building other structures; and a short cubit, approximately 45 cm, for ordinary everyday measurements.⁵ Kerala’s small cubit approximately matches the short cubit of Egypt. In addition, Kerala’s great cubit is within the range of the Egyptian pyramid cubit, suggesting that the great cubit of Kerala could have derived not from elsewhere in India, but from Egypt across the Indian Ocean.
However, the Egyptian cubit system changed around 672 BCE, when the multiple cubits were replaced by a single “reformed” cubit measuring around 52.3 cm.⁶ This reformed cubit continued into Graeco-Roman times, when Egypt had extensive trade with Kerala. The two muzham of Kerala were clearly not this reformed cubit, but the ones predating it, suggesting that the Egyptian cubits arrived in Kerala before the change in the Egyptian cubit system around 672 BCE. Indeed, the pyramid cubit stopped being relevant in Egypt after the time of the pyramids, ca. 2000 BCE, and most measures of the cubit since were limited to the royal cubit and the short cubit until the reformation in 672 BCE. Thus, for the pyramid cubit to have reached Kerala, the two lands must have been interacting before 2000 BCE.
In Kerala today, the small muzham is used by flower sellers to measure garlands and the great muzham is used in traditional vaastu architecture. It is simply amazing that they could be vestigial remnants of metrology practiced by the ancient Egyptians across the Indian Ocean more than four thousand years ago!
Notes
[1] Jee Francis Therattil, 2011, “Kerala-The Egyptian Connection.” In Proceedings of Archaeology in Kerala: Emerging Trends-Joint Annual Conferences of The Indian Archaeological Society, Indian Society for Prehistoric and Quaternary Studies, and The Indian History and Culture Society.
[2] 𓎔𓂣 mḥ. https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/73330. See also Alan Gardiner, 1927, Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs, 3rd ed., 524 (Oxford: Griffith Institute).
[3] Many other cultures across the world had the great span and the short span too, defined in the same way as in Kerala. This is not surprising, given that the measure derives from human dimensions.
[4] Other interpretations of the different cubits derive from different grains used to define a “finger”: barley for the great cubit and sesame for the small cubit. A cubit is defined as 24 fingers, and a finger as 8 seeds wide. A barley seed is around 3.7 mm wide; the cubit derived from barley is approximately 71 cm, which is close to the great cubit of Kerala. However, barley is not natively cultivated in Kerala, so it is unlikely to have formed the basis of any local cubit measure. On the other hand, a sesame seed is around 2 mm wide; the cubit derived from sesame is approximately 38.4 cm, which is not close to the small cubit. Now, paddy is locally grown extensively in Kerala. But neither the great cubit nor the small cubit would have derived from paddy, which has an average width of 2.82 mm. Thus, a more persuasive explanation clearly lies elsewhere. The modern great cubit of Kerala is based on a “finger” having a width of 3 cm, corresponding to a grain width of 3.75 mm.
[5] Antoine Pierre Hirsch, 2013, “Ancient Egyptian Cubits — Origin and Evolution,” 4, Doctoral Thesis, University of Toronto. Hirsch succinctly summarizes various sources for the three measures. Two other cubit measures were derived from the royal cubit — the djeser cubit, which was 2/3 the royal cubit and the remen cubit, which was 5/6 the royal cubit. Interestingly, many ancient cultures had such multiple length measures based on the end use. For example, during Mughal emperor Akbar’s reign in the 16th century CE, three different length measures were in vogue: finger widths measuring 8, 7 and 6 barley corns; the longest was for measuring lands, roads, etc.; the middle was for measuring temples, wells, etc.; and the shortest for furniture, palanquins, etc. Saradha Srinivasan, 1979, Mensuration in Ancient India, 11 (Delhi: Ajanta Publications). Centuries earlier, during the Mauryan period, the finger angul, was again the basic length unit, from which other units were derived as multiples or fractions. Shailaj Kumar Shrivastava, 2017, “Length and Area Measurement System in India Through the Ages,” International Journal of Innovative Research and Advanced Studies (IJIRAS), volume 4(3): 114–117.
[6] See Hirsch, “Ancient Egyptian Cubits — Origin and Evolution,” 1. By the time of this reformation, pyramids had long since ceased being built in Egypt, so that the pyramid cubit was irrelevant.
