Adams, Walter M.: The house of the hidden places: a clue to the creed of early Egypt from Egyptian sources (London, 1895)

v.] The Measure of Nearest Approach. 165

highest expression of sanctity, and the final
ornament placed upon the holy dead. From
the moon also we (approximately) obtain two
standards of Egyptian measure. For the num-
ber of days in a lunar month gives closely, at
an inch for a day, the 29'3 inch cubit of the
IVth dynasty. And, at an inch for a year,
the number of years (about 18 "6) in the cycle
of the lunar nodes—(that is, the interval
which elapses between two successive crossings
of the equinoctial plane by the moon at pre-
cisely the same point of her orbit)—yields
(very nearly) the 187 inch cubit of the XIIth
dynasty. And, once more, since the orbit of
the earth is not strictly a circle, but an
ellipse with the sun in one focus, there will
always be one point in the orbit which will
oe in "perihelion," that is, nearer the sun
than any other. And this point is not
stationary, but makes a circuit of the earth's
°rbit in about 114,000 years; whereof the
half-circuit gives us the fifty-seven inch cubit