Elgin Marbles, the splendid collection of antique sculptures brought chiefly from the Parthenon of Athens to England by the seventh Earl of Elgin (1766-1841) in 1814, and afterwards purchased by Parliament for the British Museum at the cost of £35,000. They consist of figures in low and high relief and in the round, representing gods, goddesses, and heroes; the combats of the Centaurs and Lapithæ; the Panathenaic procession, &c. They exhibit Greek sculpture at its highest stage, and were partly the work of Phidias. The historical and artistic value of the Elgin marbles was at first doubted, and Lord Elgin himself was not spared. His act in removing the marbles was denounced as vandalism.
El Hasa, a fertile district of Eastern Arabia, on the Persian Gulf. It produces dates, wheat, millet, and rice. Pop. estimated at 175,000.
Eli, one of the Hebrew judges, the predecessor of Samuel. He was high-priest and judge for forty years, but was less successful as head of his own household. His two sons having been slain, and the ark taken in battle by the Philistines, the
news proved so severe a shock that he fell and broke his neck, at the age of ninety-eight. Little is really known of the history of Eli, since he is only shown to us in the weakness of old age, unable to control his sons Hophni and Phinehas, whose wickedness disgusted and alienated the people.
Eli´jah, the most distinguished of the prophets of Israel, flourished in the ninth century B.C., during the reigns of Ahab and Ahaziah, and until the beginning of the reign of Jehoram, his special function being to denounce vengeance on the kings of Israel for their apostasy. He incurred the anger of Jezebel, wife of Ahab, for slaying the prophets of Baal, but escaped to Horeb, afterwards returning to Samaria to denounce Ahab for the murder of Naboth. Elijah at length ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire, Elisha, his successor, being witness. See 1 Kings, xvii to xxi, and 2 Kings, i and ii.
Elimination, in mathematics, the process of treating a given set of equations so as to deduce from them an equation free from a selected letter, or from several selected letters. For instance, if the system of equations
a1x + b1y + c1z = 0,
a2x + b2y + c2z = 0,
a3x + b3y + c3z = 0,
has a solution in which one at least of x, y, z is different from zero, then