Royal Cubits to Centimeters (cubit to cm)

1 royal cubit equals 52.5 centimeters exactly.

1 royal cubit = 52.5 centimeters

How to convert royal cubits to centimeters

To convert royal cubits to centimeters, multiply the number of royal cubits by 52.5. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply centimeters by 0.01904761905 (rounded).

centimeters = royal cubits × 52.5

Example: 10 royal cubits = 525 centimeters.

Approximate value. Standards for the royal cubit varied by place and period, so this converter uses the most commonly cited value. Treat results as estimates, not exact figures.

About these units

Royal Cubit (cubit)

Ancient EgyptianHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)Approximate value

The standard Egyptian cubit of about 52.5 cm (20.7 in), divided into 7 palms of 4 fingers. Surviving cubit rods were used to lay out the pyramids.

Among the earliest standard measures on record is the royal cubit, written meh niswt, meaning the cubit of the king. The English word cubit comes from Latin cubitum, the elbow, since the unit was first the forearm. The Egyptian version ran longer than the common cubit, holding seven palms of four fingers, or 28 fingers, against 24 for the ordinary one. It appears in Old Kingdom building work from at least the Step Pyramid of Djoser, around 2700 BC.

Our knowledge of its size comes from physical rods. Richard Lepsius compared fourteen of them in 1865, and examples from the tombs of Maya at Saqqara and Kha at Thebes survive, one folding rod being in the Museo Egizio in Turin. Measured rods fall between about 523.5 and 529.2 mm, so the 52.5 cm used here is one common estimate within that range. In modern terms the cubit is roughly 20.6 to 20.8 inches, a little over half a metre.

1 royal cubit = 0.525 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Cubit; Wikipedia: Ancient Egyptian units of measurement

Centimeter (cm)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One hundredth of a meter. Used for body measurements, clothing and everyday objects.

Scientists, rather than shopkeepers, gave the centimeter its place. In 1832 Carl Friedrich Gauss proposed a system of absolute units built on length, mass and time, choosing the millimeter, milligram and second. In 1873 a committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, whose members included James Clerk Maxwell and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), recommended the centimeter, gram and second instead. That CGS system dominated physics for decades, until the metre-kilogram-second system replaced it in the mid-twentieth century and led to SI.

CGS units proved awkward for rooms and buildings, which run to hundreds of centimeters, but the centimeter itself never went away. It is still the everyday unit for height, clothing and small objects, and it appears in map scales and rainfall reports. An adult fingernail is roughly one centimeter wide, and a milliliter is defined as exactly one cubic centimeter. An inch is exactly 2.54 centimeters. The CGS system itself survives mainly in theoretical physics and astrophysics, where Gaussian units are still common.

1 centimeter = 0.01 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Centimetre-gram-second system of units; Wikipedia: Centimetre; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

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