Greek measure
The human body is the natural, common reference point for measurement, and the non-Greek world had devised complicated systems of measurement interrelating width of finger, of palm, length of forearm (cubit), foot, and so on in proportion and multiples that approximated to nature. Before life became the model, if an artist wished to draw a human figure at any scale, preparing to sculpt it, for example, he would have recourse to the hierarchy of measure, and in Egypt this was rationalized into a simple grid on which the human body could be drawn in a plausible form. This appealed to the Greeks, but they were soon concerned less with absolute ideal measurement than with proportion, and sought to express a theoretical basis for this ideal. (Boardman, 1986)