In short (to quote the words of Professor Smyth), "that wonder within a wonder of the Great Pyramid—viz., the porphyry coffer,"—that "chief mystery and boon to the human race which the Great Pyramid was built to enshrine,"—"this vessel of exquisite meaning," and of "far-reaching characteristics,"—mathematically formed under alleged Divine inspiration as a measure of capacity (and, according to M. Jomard, probably of length also) for all men and all nations, for all time,—and particularly for these latter profane times,—is, in simple truth, nothing more and nothing less than—an old and somewhat misshapen stone coffin.

STANDARD OF LINEAR MEASURE IN THE GREAT PYRAMID.

The standard in the Great Pyramid, according to Messrs. Taylor and Smyth, for linear measurements, is the length of the base line or lines of the pyramid. This, Professor Smyth states, is "the function proper of the pyramids base." It is professed also that in this base line there has been found a new mythical inch—one-thousandth of an inch longer than the British standard inch; and in the last sections of his late work Professor Smyth has earnestly attempted to show that the status of the kingdoms of Europe in the general and moral world may be measured in accordance with their present deviation from or conformity to this suppositious pyramidal standard in their modes of national measurement.[253] "For the linear measure" (says Professor Smyth) "of the base line of this colossal monument, viewed in the light of the philosophical connection between time and space, has yielded a standard measure of length which is more admirably and learnedly earth-commensurable than anything which has ever yet entered into the mind of man to conceive, even up to the last discovery in modern metrological science, whether in England, France, or Germany."

The engineers and mathematicians of different countries have repeatedly measured arcs of meridians to find the form and dimensions of the earth, and the French made the metre (their standard of length), 1/10,000,000 of the quadrant of the meridian. Professor Smyth holds that the basis line of the pyramid has been laid down by Divine authority as such a guiding standard measure.

* * * * *

What, then, is the exact length of one of its basis lines? The sides of the pyramid have been measured by many different measurers. Linear standards have, says Professor Smyth, "been already looked for by many and many an author on the sides of the base of the Great Pyramid, even before they knew that the terminal points of those magnificent base lines had been carefully marked in the solid rock of the hill by the socket-holes of the builders." But—as in the case of the cubic capacity of the coffer—these measurers sadly disagree with each other in their measurements, which, in fact, vary from some 7500 or 8000 inches to 9000 and upwards. Thus, for example, Strabo makes it under 600 Grecian feet, or under 7500 English inches; Dr. Shawe makes it 8040 inches; Shelton makes it 8184 inches; Greaves, 8316; Davison, 8952: Caviglia, 9072; the French academicians, 9163; Dr. Perry, 9360, etc., etc.

At the time at which Professor Smyth was living at the Pyramids, Mr. Inglis of Glasgow visited it, and, for correct measurement, laid bare for the first time the four corner sockets. Mr. Inglis's measurements not only differed from all the other measurements of "one side" base lines made before him, but he makes the four sides differ from each other; one of them—namely, the north side—being longer than the other three. Strangely, Professor Smyth, though in Egypt for the purpose of measuring the different parts of the pyramid—and holding that its base line ought to be our grand standard of measure, and further holding that the base line could only be accurately ascertained by measuring from socket to socket—never attempted that linear measurement himself after the sockets were cleared. These four corner sockets were never exposed before in historic times; and it may be very long before an opportunity of seeing and using them again shall ever be afforded to any other measurers.

Before the corner sockets were exposed, Professor Smyth attempted to measure the bases, and made each side of the present masonry courses "between 8900 and 9000 inches in length," or (to use his own word) "about" 8950 inches for the mean length of one of the four sides of the base; exclusive of the ancient casing and backing stones—which last Colonel Howard Vyse found and measured to be precisely 108 inches on each side, or 216 on both sides. These 216 inches, added to Professor Smyth's measure of "about" 8950 inches, make one side 9166 inches. But Professor Smyth has "elected" (to use his own expression) not to take the mathematically exact measure of the casing stones as given by Colonel Vyse and Mr. Perring, who alone ever saw them and measured them (for they were destroyed shortly after their discovery in 1837), but to take them, without any adequate reason, and contrary to their mathematical measurement, as equal only to 202 inches, and hence "accept 9152 inches as the original length of one side of the base of the finished pyramid." He deems, however, this "determination" not to be so much depended upon as the measurements made from socket to socket.

The mean of the only four series of such socket or casing stone measures as have been recorded hitherto by the French Academicians (9163), Vyse (9168), Mahmoud Bey (9162), and Inglis (9110), amounts to nearly 9150. The first three of these observers were only able to measure the north side of the pyramid. Mr. Inglis measured all the four sides, and found them respectively 9120, 9114, 9102, and 9102, making a difference of 18 inches between the shortest and longest. Professor Smyth thinks the measures of Mr. Inglis as on the whole probably too small, and he takes two of them, 9114 and 9102—(but, strangely, not the largest, 9120)—as data, and strikes a new number out of these two, and out of the three previous measures of the French Academicians, Vyse, and Mahmoud Bey; from these five quantities making a calculation of "means," and electing 9142 as the proper measure of the basis line of the pyramid—(which exact measure certainly none of its many measurers ever yet found it to be); and upon this foundation, "derived" (to use his own words) "from the best modern measures yet made," he proceeds to reason, "as the happy, useful, and perfect representation of 9142," and the great standard for linear measure revealed to man in the Great Pyramid. Surely it is a remarkably strange standard of linear measure that can only be thus elicited and developed—not by direct measurement but by indirect logic; and regarding the exact and precise length of which there is as yet no kind of reliable and accurate certainty.

Lately, Sir Henry James, the distinguished head of the Ordnance Survey Department, has shown that the length of one of the sides of the pyramid base, with the casing stones added, as measured by Colonel H. Vyse—viz. 9168 inches—is precisely 360 derahs, or land cubits of Egypt; the derah being an ancient land measure still in use, of the length of nearly 25-1/2 British inches, or, more correctly, of 25.488 inches; and he has pointed out that in the construction of the body of the Great Pyramid, the architect built 10 feet or 10 cubits of horizontal length for every 9 feet or 9 cubits of vertical height; while in the construction of the inclined passages the proportion was adhered to of 9 on the incline to 4 in vertical height, rules which would altogether simplify the building of such a structure.[254] The Egyptian derah of 25.48 inches is practically one-fourth more in length than the old cubit of the city of Memphis. Long ago Sir Isaac Newton showed, from Professor Greaves' measurements of the chambers, galleries, etc., that the Memphis cubit (or cubit of "ancient Egypt generally") of 1.719 English feet,[255] or 20.628 English inches, was apparently the working cubit of the masons in constructing the Great Pyramid[256]—an opinion so far admitted more lately by both Messrs Taylor and Smyth; "the length" (says Professor Smyth) "of the cubit employed by the masons engaged in the Great Pyramid building, or that of the ancient city of Memphis," being, he thinks, on an average taken from various parts in the interior of the building, 20.73 British inches.[257] According to Mr. Inglis' late measurement of the four bases of the pyramid, after its four corner sockets were exposed, the length of each base line was possibly 442 Memphis cubits, or 9117 English inches; or, if the greater length of the French Academicians, Colonel Vyse, and Mahmoud Bey, be held nearer the truth, 444 Memphis cubits, or 9158 British inches.

But Professor Smyth tries to show that (1.) if 9142 only be granted to him as the possible base line of the pyramid; and (2.) if 25 pyramidal inches be allowed to be the length of the "Sacred Cubit," as revealed to the Israelites (and as revealed in the pyramid), then the base line might be found very near a multiple of this cubit by the days of the year,[258] or by 365.25; for these two numbers multiplied together amount to 9131 "pyramidal" inches, or 9140 British inches—the British inch being held, as already stated, to be 1000th less than the pyramidal inch. Was, however, the "Sacred Cubit"—upon whose alleged length of 25 "pyramidal" inches this idea is entirely built—really a measure of this length? In this matter—the most important and vital of all for his whole linear hypothesis—Professor Smyth seems to have fallen into errors which entirely upset all the calculations and inferences founded by him upon it.

* * * * *

Length of the Sacred Cubit.—Sir Isaac Newton, in his remarkable Dissertation upon the Sacred Cubit of the Jews (republished in full by Professor Smyth in the second volume of his Life and Work at the Great Pyramid), long ago came to the conclusion that it measured 25 unciae of the Roman foot, and 6/10 of an uncia, or 24.753 British inches; and in this way it was one-fifth longer than the cubit of Memphis—viz. 20.628 inches, as previously deduced by him from Greaves' measurements of the King's Chamber and other parts of the interior of the Great Pyramid. Before drawing his final inference as to the Sacred Cubit being 24.75 inches, and as so many steps conducting to that inference, Sir Isaac shows that the Sacred Cubit was some measurement intermediate between a long and moderate human step or pace, between the third of the length of the body of a tall and short man, etc. etc. Professor Smyth has collected several of the estimations thus adduced by Newton as "methods of approach" to circumscribe the length of the Sacred Cubit, and omitted others. Adding to eight of these alleged data, what he mistakingly avers to be Sir Isaac's deduction of the actual length of the Sacred Cubit in British inches—(namely, 24.82 instead of 24.753)—as a ninth quantity, he enters the whole nine in a table as follows:—

Professor Smyth's Table of Newton's data of Inquiry regarding the Sacred Cubit.[259]

"First between 23.28 and 27.94 British inches. Second " 23.3 27.9 " Third " 24.80 25.02 " Fourth " 24.91 25.68[260] " And Fifth, somewhere near 24.82."

"The mean of all which numbers" (Professor Smyth remarks) "amounts to 25.07 British inches. The Sacred Cubit, then, of the Hebrews" (he adds) "in the time of Moses—according to Sir Isaac Newton—was equal to 25.07 British inches, with a probable error of +-.1."

But—"according to Sir Isaac Newton"—the Sacred Cubit of the Jews was not 25.07, as Professor Smyth makes him state in this table, but 24.75 British inches, as Sir Isaac himself more than once deliberately infers in his Dissertation.[261] Besides, in such inquiries, is it not altogether illogical to attempt to draw mathematical deductions by these calculations of "means," and especially by using the ninth quantity in the table—viz. Sir Isaac's own avowed and deliberate deduction regarding the actual length of the Sacred Cubit—as one of the nine quantities from which that length was to be again deduced by the very equivocal process of "means?" Errors, however, of a far more serious kind exist. The "mean" of the nine quantities in Professor Smyth's table is, he infers, 25.07 inches; and hence he avows that this, or near this figure, is the length of the Sacred Cubit. But the real mean of the nine quantities which Professor Smyth has collected is not 25.07 but 25.29—a number in such a testing question as this of a very different value. For the days of the year (365.25) when multiplied by this, the true mean of these nine quantities, would make the base line of the pyramid 9237 inches instead of Professor Smyth's theoretical number of 9142 inches; a difference altogether overturning all his inferences and calculations thereanent. And again, if we take Sir Isaac Newton's own conclusion of 24.75, and multiply it by the days of the year, the pretended length of the pyramid base comes out as low as 9039.

Alleged "really glorious Consummation" in Geodesy.

The incidentally but totally erroneous summation which Professor Smyth thus makes of the nine equivocal quantities in his table, as amounting to 25.07, he declares (to use his own strong words) as a "really glorious consummation for the geodesical science of the present day to have brought to light;" for he avers this length of 25.07—(which he forthwith elects to alter and change, without any given reason whatever, to 25.025 British inches)—being, he observes, "practically the sacred Hebrew cubit, is exactly one ten-millionth (1-10,000,000th) of the earth's semi-axis of rotation; and that is the very best mode of reference to the earth-ball as a whole, for a linear standard through all time, that the highest science of the existing age of the world has yet struck out or can imagine. In a word, the Sacred Cubit, thus realised, forms an instance of the most advanced and perfected human science supporting the truest, purest, and most ancient religion; while a linear standard which the chosen people in the earlier ages of the world were merely told by maxim to look on as sacred, compared with other cubits of other lengths, is proved by the progress of human learning in the latter ages of time, to have had, and still to have, a philosophical merit about it which no men or nations at the time it was first produced, or within several thousand years thereof, could have possibly thought of for themselves." Besides, adds he elsewhere, "an extraordinarily[262] convenient length too, for man to handle and use in the common affairs of life is the one ten-millionth of the earth's semi-axis of rotation when it comes to be realised, for it is extremely close to the ordinary human arm, or to the ordinary human pace in walking, with a purpose to measure."

Of course all these inferences and averments regarding the Sacred Cubit being an exact segment of the polar axis disappear, when we find Sir Isaac Newton's length of the Sacred Cubit is not, as Professor Smyth elects it to be, 25.025 British inches; nor 25.07, as he incorrectly calculated it to be from the mean of the nine quantities selected and arranged in his table; nor 25.29, as is the actual mean of these nine quantities in his table; but, "according to Sir Isaac Newton's" own reiterated statement and conclusion, 24.753. (See footnote, p. 245.) A Sacred Cubit, according to Sir Isaac Newton's admeasurements of it, of 24.75 inches, would not, by thousands of cubits, be one ten-millionth of the measure of the semi-polar axis of the earth; provided the polar axis be, as Professor Smyth elects it to be, 500,500,000 British inches.[263]

AXIS OF THE EARTH AS A STANDARD OF MEASURE.

The standards of measure in France and some other countries are, as is well known, referred to divisions of arcs of the meridian, measured off upon different points of the surface of the earth. These measures of arcs of the meridian, as measurements of a known and selected portion of the surface of the spheroidal globe of the earth, have, more or less, fixed mathematical relations with the axis of the earth; as the circumference of a sphere has an exact mathematical ratio to its diameter. The difference in length of arcs of the meridian at different parts of the earth's surface, in consequence of the spheroidal form of the globe of the earth, has led to the idea that the polar diameter or axis of the earth would form a more perfect and more universal standard than measurements of the surface of the earth. In the last century, Cassini[264] and Callet[265] proposed, on these grounds, that the polar axis of the earth should be taken as the standard of measure. Without having noticed these propositions of Cassini and Callet,[266] Professor Smyth adopts the same idea, and avers that 4000 years ago it had been adopted and used also by the builders of the Great Pyramid, who laid out and measured off the basis of the pyramid as a multiple by the days of the year of the Sacred Cubit, and hence of the Pyramidal Cubit while the Sacred or Pyramidal Cubit were both the results of superhuman or divine knowledge, and were both, or each, one ten-millionth of the semi-polar axis of the earth. We have already seen, however, that the Sacred Cubit, "according to Sir Isaac Newton," is not a multiple by the days of the year of the base line of the Great Pyramid; and is not one twenty-millionth of the polar axis of the earth, when that polar axis is laid down as measuring, according to the numbers elected by Professor Smyth, 500,500,000 British inches.

* * * * *

But is there any valid reason whatever for fixing and determining, as an ascertained mathematical fact, the polar axis of the earth to be this very precise and exact measure, with its formidable tail of cyphers? None, except the supposed requirements or necessities of Professor Smyth's pyramid metrological theory. The latest and most exact measurements are acknowledged to be those of Captain Clarke, who, on the doctrine of the earth being a spheroid of revolution computes the polar axis to be 500,522,904 British inches, calculating it from the results of all the known arcs of meridian measures. If we grant that the Sacred Cubit could be allowed to be exactly 25.025 inches, which Sir Isaac Newton found it not to be; and if we grant that the polar axis is exactly 500,500,000 British inches, which Captain Clarke did not find it to be; then, certainly, as shown by Professor Smyth, there would be 20,000,000 of these supposititious pyramidal cubits, or 500,000,000 of the supposititious pyramidal inches in this supposititious polar axis of the earth. "In so far, then" (writes Professor Smyth), "we have in the 5, with the many 0's that follow, a pyramidally commensurable and symbolically appropriate unit for the earth's axis of rotation." But such adjustments have been made with as great apparent exactitude when entirely different earth-axes and quantities were taken. Thus Mr. John Taylor shows the inches, cubits, and axes to answer precisely, although he took as his standard a totally different diameter of the earth from Professor Smyth. The diameter of the earth at 30 deg. of latitude—the geographical position of the Great Pyramid—is, he avers, some seventeen miles, or more exactly 17.652 miles longer than at the poles.[267] But Mr. Taylor fixed upon this diameter of the earth at latitude 30 deg.—and not, like Professor Smyth, upon its polar diameter—as the standard for the metrological linear measures of the Great Pyramid; and yet, though the standard was so different, he found, like Mr. Smyth, 500,000,000 of inches also in his axis, and 20,000,000 of cubits also.[268] The resulting figures appear to fit equally as well for the one as for the other. Perhaps they answer best on Mr. Taylor's scheme. For Mr. Taylor maintained that the diameter of the earth before the Flood, at this selected point of 30 deg., was less by nearly 37 miles than what it was subsequently to the flood,[269] and is now; a point by which he accounts for otherwise unaccountable circumstances in the metrological doctrines which have been attempted to be connected with the Great Pyramid. For while Mr. Taylor believes the Sacred Cubit to be 24.88, or possibly 24.90 British inches, he holds the new Pyramidal cubit to be 25 inches in full; and the Sacred and Pyramidal cubits to be different therefore from each other, though both inspired. In explanation of this startling difference in two measures supposed to be equally of sacred[270] origin, Mr. Taylor observes—"The smaller 24.88 is the Sacred Cubit which measured the diameter of the Earth before the Flood; the one by which Noah measured the Ark, as tradition says; and the one in accordance with which all the interior works of the Great Pyramid were constructed.[271] The larger (25) is the Sacred Cubit of the present Earth, according to the standard of the Great Pyramid when it was completed."

Surely such marked diversities and contradictions, and such strange hypothetical adjustments and re-adjustments of the data and calculations, entirely upset the groundless and extraordinary theory of the base of the pyramid being a standard of linear measurement; or a segment of any particular axis of the earth; or a standard for emitting a system of new inches and new cubits;—seeing, on the one hand, more particularly, that the basis line of the pyramid is still itself an unknown and undetermined linear quantity, as is also the polar axis of the earth of which it is declared and averred to be an ascertained, determined, and measured segment.

M. Paucton, in 1780, wrote a work in which he laid down the base side of the pyramid as 8754 inches; maintained, like Mr. Taylor and Mr. Smyth, that this length was a standard of linear measures; found it to be the measure of a portion of a degree of the meridian, such degree being itself the 360th part of a circle;—and apparently the calculations and figures answered as well as when the measurement was declared to be 9142 inches, and the line not a segment of an arc of the circumference of the earth, but a segment of the polar axis of the earth; for De l'Isle lauds Paucton's meridian degree theory as one of the wondrous efforts of human genius, or (to use his own words) "as one of the chief works of the human mind!" Yet the errors into which Paucton was seduced in miscalculating the base line of the Pyramid as 8754 inches, and the other ways he was misled, are enough—suggests Professor Smyth—"to make poor Paucton turn in his grave."

SIGNIFICANCE OF CYPHERS AND FIVES.

M. Paucton, Mr. Taylor, and those who have adopted and followed their pyramid metrological ideas, seem to imagine that if, by multiplying one of their measures or objects, they can run the calculation out into a long tail of terminal 0's, then something very exact and marvellous is proved. "When" (upholds Mr. Taylor), "we find in so complicated a series of figures as that which the measures of the Great Pyramid and of the Earth require for their expression, round numbers present themselves, or such as leave no remainder, we may be sure we have arrived at primitive measures." But many small and unimportant objects, when thus multiplied sufficiently, give equally startling strings of 0's. Thus, if the polar axis of the earth be held as 500,000,000 inches, and Sir Isaac Newton's "Sacred Cubit" be held, as Professor Smyth calculated it to be, viz. 24.82 British inches—then the long diameter of the brim of the lecturer's hat, measuring 12.4 inches, is 1-40,000,000th of the earth's polar axis; a page of the print of the Society's Transactions is 1-60,000,000th of the same; a print page of Professor Smyth's book, 6.2 inches in length, is 1-80,000,000th of this "great standard;" etc. etc. etc.

Professor Smyth seems further to think that the figure or number "five" plays also a most important symbolical and inner part in the configuration, structure, and enumeration of the Great Pyramid. "The pyramid" (says he) "embodies in a variety of ways the importance of five." It is itself "five-angled, and with its plane a five-sided solid, in which everything went by fives, or numbers of fives and powers of five." "With five, then, as a number, times of five, and powers of five, the Great Pyramid contains a mighty system of consistently subdividing large quantities to suit human happiness." To express this, Mr. Smyth suggests the new noun "fiveness." But it applies to many other matters as strongly, or more strongly than to the Great Pyramid. For instance, the range of rooms belonging to the Royal Society is "five" in number; the hall in which it meets has five windows; the roof of that hall is divided into five transverse ornamental sections; and each of these five transverse sections is subdivided into five longitudinal ones; the books at each end of the hall are arranged in ten rows and six sections—making sixty, a multiple of five; the official chairs in the hall are ten in number, or twice five; the number of benches on one side for ordinary fellows is generally five; the office-bearers of the Society are twenty-five in number, or five times five; and so on. These arrangements were doubtless, in the first instance, made by the Royal Society without any special relation to "fiveness," or the "symbolisation" of five; and there is not the slightest ground for any belief that the apparent "fiveness" of anything in the Great Pyramid had a different origin.

GREAT MINUTENESS OF MODERN PRACTICAL STANDARDS OF GAUGES.

In all these "standards" of capacity and length alleged to exist about the Great Pyramid, not only are the theoretical and actual sizes of the supposed "standards" made to vary in different books—which it is impossible for an actual "standard" to do—but the evidences adduced in proof of the conformity of old or modern measures with them is notoriously defective in complete aptness and accuracy. Measures, to be true counterparts, must, in mathematics, be not simply "near," or "very near," which is all that is generally and vaguely claimed for the supposed pyramidal proofs, but they must be entirely and exactly alike, which the pyramidal proofs and so-called standards fail totally and altogether in being. Mathematical measurements of lines, sizes, angles, etc., imply exactitude, and not mere approximation; and without that exactitude they are not mathematical, and—far more—are they not "superhuman" and "inspired."

Besides, it must not be forgotten that our real practical standard measures are infinitely more refined and many thousand-fold more delicate than any indefinite and equivocal measures alleged to be found in the pyramid by even those who are most enthusiastic in the pyramidal metrological theory. At the London Exhibition in 1851, that celebrated mechanician and engineer, Mr. Whitworth, of Manchester, was the first to show the possibility of ascertaining by the sense of touch alone the one-millionth of an inch in a properly-adjusted standard of linear measure; and in his great establishment at Manchester they work and construct machinery and tools of all kinds with differences in linear measurements amounting to one ten-thousandth of an inch. The standards of the English inch, etc., made by him for the Government—and now used by all the engine and tool makers, etc., of the United Kingdom—lead to the construction of machinery, etc., to such minute divisions; and the adoption of these standards has already effected enormous saving to the country by bringing all measured metal machinery, instruments, and tools, wherever constructed and wherever afterwards applied and used, to the same identical series of mathematical and precise gauges.

THE SABBATH, ETC. TYPIFIED IN THE PYRAMID.

The communication next discussed some others amongst the many and diversified matters which Professor Smyth fancifully averred to be typified and symbolised in the Great Pyramid.

One, for example, of the chambers in the Great Pyramid—the so-called Queen's Chamber—has a roof composed of two large blocks of stone leaning against each other, making a kind of slanting or double roof. This double roof, and the four walls of the chamber count six, and typify, according to Professor Smyth, the six days of the week, whilst the floor counts, as it were, a seventh side to the room, "nobler and more glorious than the rest," and typifying something, he conceives, of a "nobler and more glorious order"—namely, the Sabbath; it is surely difficult to fancy anything more strange than this strange idea.[272] In forming this theory liberties are also confessedly taken with the floor in order to make it duly larger than the other six sides of the room, and to do so he theoretically lifts up the floor till it is placed higher than the very entrance to the chamber; for originally the floor and sides are otherwise too nearly alike in size to make a symbolic seven-sided room with one of the sides proportionally and properly larger than the other six sides. Yet Professor Smyth holds that, in the above typical way, he has "shown," or indeed "proved entirely," that the Sabbath had been heard of before Moses, and that thus he finds unexpected and confirmatory light of a fact which, he avers, is of "extraordinary importance, and possesses a ramifying influence through many departments of religious life and progress."

He believes, also, that the corner-stone—so frequently alluded to by the Psalmist and the Apostles as a symbol of the Messiah—is the head or corner-stone of the Great Pyramid, which, though long ago removed, may yet possibly, he thinks, be discovered in the Cave of Machpelah; though how, why, or wherefore it should have found its way to that distant and special locality is not in any way solved or suggested.

GREAT PYRAMID ALLEGED TO BE A SUPERHUMAN, AND MORE OR LESS AN INSPIRED METROLOGICAL ERECTION.

Professor Smyth holds the Great Pyramid to be in its emblems, and intentions and work "superhuman;" as "not altogether of human origination; and in that case whereto" (he asks) "should we look for any human assistance to men but from Divine inspiration?" "Its metrology is," he conceives, "directed by a higher Power" than man; its erection "directed by the fiat of Infinite Wisdom;" and the whole "built under the direction of chosen men divinely inspired from on high for this purpose."

If of this Divine origin, the work should be absolutely perfect; but, as owned by Professor Smyth, the structure is not entirely correct in its orientation, in its squareness, etc. etc.—all of them matters proving that it is human, and not superhuman. It was, Professor Smyth further alleges, intended to convey standards of measures to all times down to, and perhaps beyond, these latter days, "to herald in some of those accompaniments of the promised millennial peace and goodwill to all men." Hence, if thus miraculous in its forseen uses, it ought to have remained relatively perfect till now. But "what feature of the pyramid is there" (asks Professor Smyth) "which renders at once in its measurements in the present day its ancient proportions? None." If the pyramid were a miracle of this kind, then the Arabian Caliph Al Mamoon so far upset the supposititious miracle a thousand years ago—(of course he could not have done so provided the miracle had been truly Divine)—when he broke into the King's Chamber and unveiled its contents; inasmuch as the builders, according to Professor Smyth, intended to conceal its secrets for the benefit of these latter times, and for this purpose had left a mathematical sign of two somewhat diagonal lines or joints in the floor of the descending passage, by which secret sign or clue[273] some men or man in the far distant future, visiting the interior, should detect the entrance to the chambers; and which secret sign Professor Smyth himself was, as he believes, the first "man" to discover two years ago. The secret, however, thus averred to be placed there for the detection of the entrance to the interior chambers in these latter times, has been discovered some 1000 years at least too late for the evolution of the alleged miraculous arrangement. And in relation to the Great Pyramid, as to other matters, we may be sure that God does not teach by the medium of miracle anything that the unaided intellect of man can find out; and we must beware of erroneously and disparagingly attributing to Divine inspiration and aid, things that are imperfect and human.

* * * * *

The communication concluded by a series of remarks, in which it was pointed out that at the time at which the Great Pyramid was built, probably about 4000 years ago, mining, architecture, astronomy, etc., were so advanced in various parts of the East as to present no obstacle in the way of the erection of such magnificent mausoleums, as the colossal Great Pyramid and its other congener pyramids undoubtedly are.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 233: See on other proposed significations and origins of the word pyramid, APPENDIX, No. I.]

[Footnote 234: In the plain of Troy, and on the higher grounds around it, various barrows still remain, and have been described from Pliny, Strabo, and Lucia down to Lechevalier, Forchhammer, and Maclaren. In later times, Choiseul and Calvert have opened some of them. Homer gives a minute account of the obsequies of Patroclus and the raising of his burial-mound, which forms, as is generally believed, one of those twin barrows still existing on the sides of the Sigean promontory, that pass under the name of the tumuli of Achilles and Patroclus. Pope, in translating the passage describing the commencement of the funeral pyre, uses the word pyramid. For

... "those deputed to inter the slain, Heap with a rising pyramid the plain."

Professor Daniel Wilson, in alluding, in his Prehistoric Annals, vol. i. p. 74, to this account by Homer of the ancient funeral-rites, and raising of the funeral-mound, speaks of the erection of Patroclus' barrow as "the methodic construction of the Pyramid of earth which covered the sacred deposit and preserved the memory of the honoured dead."]

[Footnote 235: Colonel Pownall, while describing in 1770 the barrow of New Grange, in Ireland, to the London Society of Antiquaries, speaks of it as "a pyramid of stone." "This pyramid," he observes, "was encircled at its base with a number of enormous unhewn stones," etc. "The pyramid, in its present state, is but a ruin of what it was," etc. etc. See Archaeologia, vol. vi. p. 254; and Higgins' Celtic Druids, p. 40, etc.]

[Footnote 236: In his Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, Dr. Daniel Wilson states (vol. i. p. 87), that "the Chambered Cairn properly possesses as its peculiar characteristic the enclosed catacombs and galleries of megalithic masonry, branching off into various chambers symmetrically arranged, and frequently exhibiting traces of constructive skill, such as realise in some degree the idea of the regular pyramid." He speaks again of the stone barrows or cairns of Scotland as "monumental pyramids" (vol. i. p. 67); of the earth barrow being an "earth pyramid or tumulus" (p. 70); of Silbury Hill as an "earth pyramid" (p. 62): and in the same page, in alluding to the large barrow-tomb of the ancient British chief or warrior, he states, "in its later circular forms we see the rude type of the great pyramids of Egypt." The same learned author, in his work on Prehistoric Man, refers to the great monuments of the American mound-builders as "earth pyramids" (p. 202), "huge earth pyramids" (p. 205), "pyramidal earth-works" (p. 203); etc.]

[Footnote 237: In his History of Scotland, Mr. Burton speaks of the barrows of New Grange and Maeshowe (Orkney), as erections which "may justly be called minor pyramids" (vol. i. p. 114).]

[Footnote 238: In mentioning the great numbers of sepulchral barrows spread over the world, Sir John Lubbock observes—"In our own island they may be seen on almost every down; in the Orkneys alone it is estimated that two thousand still remain; and in Denmark they are even more abundant; they are found all over Europe from the shores of the Atlantic to the Oural Mountains; in Asia they are scattered over the great steppes from the borders of Russia to the Pacific Ocean, and from the plains of Siberia to those of Hindostan; in America we are told that they are numbered by thousands and tens of thousands; nor are they wanting in Africa, where the pyramids themselves exhibit the most magnificent development of the same idea; so that the whole world is studded with these burial-places of the dead."—Prehistoric Times, p. 85. See similar remarks in Dr. Clarke's Travels, 4th edition, vol. i. p. 276, vol. ii. p. 75, etc.]

[Footnote 239: Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson thinks that the pyramids of Sakkara are probably older than the other groups of these structures, as those of Gizeh or the Great Pyramid erected during the fourth dynasty of kings.—See Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. ii. chap. viii. Manetho assigns to Uenophes, one of the monarchs in the first dynasty, the erection of the Pyramids of Cochome. See Kenrick's Ancient Egypt, ii. p. 112, 122, 123; Bunsen's Egypt, ii. 99, etc.]

[Footnote 240: On these Archaic forms of sculpture, see APPENDIX, No. II. In many barrows the gallery in its course—and in some as it enters the crypt—is contracted, and more or less occluded by obstructions of stone, etc., which Mr. Kenrick likens to the granite portcullises in the Great Pyramid. See his Ancient Egypt, vol. i. p. 121.]

[Footnote 241: Mr. Birch, however—and it is impossible to cite a higher authority in such a question—holds the cartouches of Shufu and Nu Shufu to refer only to one personage—namely, the Cheops of Herodotus; and, believing with Mr. Wilde and Professor Lepsius, that the pyramids were as royal sepulchres built and methodically extended and enlarged as the reigns of their intended occupants lengthened out, he ascribes the unusual size of the Great Pyramid to the unusual length—as testified by Manetho, etc.—of the reign of Cheops; the erection of a sepulchral chamber in its built portion above being, perhaps, a step adopted in consequence of some ascertained deficiency in the rock chamber or gallery below. Indeed, the subterranean chamber under the Great Pyramid has, to use Professor Smyth's words, only been "begun to be cut out of the rock from the ceiling downwards, and left in that unfinished state." (Vol. i. 156.) Mr. Perring, who—as engineer—measured, worked, and excavated so very much at the Pyramids of Gizeh, under Colonel Howard Vyse, held, at the end of his researches, that "the principal chamber" in the Second Pyramid is still undetected. See Vyse's Pyramid of Gizeh, vol. i. 99.]

[Footnote 242: The Mexican Pyramid of Cholula has a base of more than 1420 feet, and is hence about twice the length of the basis of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh. See Prescott's Conquest of Mexico, book iii. chap. i., and book v. chap. iv.]

[Footnote 243: Herodotus states that the Egyptians detested the memories of the kings who built the two larger Pyramids, viz., Cheops and Cephren; and hence, he adds, "they commonly call the Pyramids after Philition, a shepherd, who at that time fed his flocks about the place." They thus called the Second, as well as the Great Pyramid, after him (iii. Sec. 128); but, according to Professor Smyth, the Second Pyramid, though architecturally similar to the first, and almost equal in size, has nothing about it of the "superhuman" character of the Great Pyramid.]

[Footnote 244: The extracts within inverted commas, here, and in other parts, are from—(1.) Mr. John Taylor's work, entitled The Great Pyramid—Why was it Built, and Who Built it? London, 1859; and (2.) Professor Smyth's work, Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, Edinburgh, 1864; (3.) his later three-volume work, Life and Work at the Great Pyramid, Edinburgh, 1867; and (4.) Recent Measures at the Great Pyramid, in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for 1865-66.]

[Footnote 245: Professor Smyth has omitted to state—what, after all, it was perhaps unnecessary to state—that one set of these measurements, which he has tabulated and published, viz., that given by Dr. Whitman, was taken for him "by a British officer of engineers;" as, when Dr. Whitman visited Gizeh, he did not himself examine the interior of the Great Pyramid.—See Colonel Vyse's work, vol. ii. p. 286.]

[Footnote 246: "Its contents," says Mr. Taylor (p. 299), "are equal in cubic inches to the cube of 41,472 inches—the cubit of Karnak—viz., to 71,328 cubic inches." Elsewhere (p. 304) he states—"The Pyramid coffer contains 256 gallons of wheat;"—"It also contains 256 gallons of water, etc."]

[Footnote 247: At a later meeting of the Royal Society, on 20th April, Professor Smyth explained that, among the numerous instruments he carried out, he was not provided with calipers fit for this measurement.]

[Footnote 248: See plate iii. Fig. 1, in his great folio work on the Pyramids of Gizeh from Actual Survey and Admeasurement, Lond. 1839. "The sarcophagus is," he remarks, "of granite, not particularly well polished; at present it is chipped and broken at the edges. There are not any remains of the lid, which was however, fitted on in the same manner as those of the other pyramids."]

[Footnote 249: "The western side," observes Professor Smyth, "of the coffer is, through almost its entire length, rather lower than the other three, and these have grooves inside, or the remains of grooves once cut into them, about an inch or two below their summits, and on a level with the western edge; in fact, to admit a sliding sarcophagus cover or lid; and there were the remains of three fixing pin-holes on the western side, for fastening such cover into its place." (Vol. i. p. 85.)]

[Footnote 250: For age, etc., of Al Hakm, see Dr. Rieu in APPENDIX No. III.; and Jomard on length of the Sarcophagus, No. IV.]

[Footnote 251: In the original Arabic, the expression is "birdlike (or hieroglyphic) characters writ with a reed."]

[Footnote 252: See Greaves' Works, vol. i. p. 61 and p. 115. In Colonel Vyse's works are adduced other Arabian authors who allude to this discovery of a body with golden armour, etc., etc., in the sarcophagus of the King's Chamber; as Alkaisi, who testifies that "he himself saw the case (the cartonage or mummy-case) from which the body had been taken, and that it stood at the door of the King's Palace at Cairo, in the year 511" A.H. (See The Pyramids of Gizeh, vol. ii. p. 334). See also to the same effect Abon Szalt, p. 357; and Ben Abd Al Rahman, as cited in the Description de l'Egypte, vol. ii. p. 191. "It may be remarked," observes Dr. Sprenger in Colonel Vyse's work, "that the Arabian authors have given the same accounts of the pyramids, with little or no variation, for above a thousand years." (Vol. ii. p. 328.) See further APPENDIX, p. 270.]

[Footnote 253: See APPENDIX, No. VII.]

[Footnote 254: Our great Scottish architect, Mr. Bryce, believes that, with these data given, any well-informed master-mason or clerk of works could have drawn or planned and superintended the building.]

[Footnote 255: See Newton's Essay, in Professor Smyth's work, vol. ii. 360; and Sir Henry James' masterly Memorandum on the Length of the cubit of Memphis, in APPENDIX, No. V.]

[Footnote 256: Sir Isaac Newton says—"In the precise determination of the cubit of Memphis, I should choose to pitch upon the length of the chamber in the middle of the pyramid." Greaves gives this length 34.38 = 20 cubits of 20.628 inches.]

[Footnote 257: Yet this, the Memphian cubit, "need not" (somewhat mysteriously adds Professor Smyth), "and actually is not, by any means the same as the cubit typified in the more concealed and symbolised metrological system of the Great Pyramid."]

[Footnote 258: Godfrey Higgins, in his work on The Celtic Druids, shows how, among the ancients, superstitions connected with numbers, as the days of the year or the figures 365, have played a prominent part. "Amongst the ancients" (says he) "there was no end of the superstitious and trifling play upon the nature and value of numbers. The first men of antiquity indulged themselves in these fooleries" (p. 244). Mr. Higgins points out that the old Welsh or British word for Stonehenge, namely Emrys, signifies, according to Davies, 365; as do the words Mithra, Neilos, etc.; that certain collections of the old Druidic stones at Abury may be made to count 365; that "the famous Abraxas only meant the solar period of 365 days, or the sun," etc. "It was all judicial astrology.... It comes" (adds Mr. Higgins) "from the Druids."]

[Footnote 259: See this table in Professor Smyth's Life and Work at the Great Pyramid, vol. ii. p. 458. The table professes to give some of Sir Isaac Newton's data regarding the Sacred Cubit by changing the measurements which Sir Isaac uses of the Roman foot and inch into English inches. But all the figures and measurements are transferred into English inches by a different rule from that which Sir Isaac himself lays down—viz., that the English foot is 0.967 of the Roman foot; and, consequently, in every one of the instances given in Mr. Smyth's table, the lengths in English inches of these data of Sir Isaac Newton are assuredly not their lengths in English inches as understood and laid down by Newton himself.]

[Footnote 260: The fourth line in the table presents a most fatal and unfortunate error in a special calculation to which the very highest importance is professed to be attached. This fourth line gives the measurement of the Sacred Cubit as quoted by Newton from Mersennus, who laid down its length as 25.68 inches of Roman measurement. Professor Smyth changes this Roman measurement into 24.91 English inches, and then erroneously enters these same identical Roman and English measurements of Mersennus—viz., 24.91 and 25.68—not as one identical quantity, which they are—but as two different and contrasting quantities; and further, he tabulates this strange mistake as one of the "methods of approach" for gaining a correct idea of the Sacred Cubit. Never, perhaps, has so unhappy an error been made in a work of an arithmetical and mathematical character.]

[Footnote 261: Thus, after deducing the length of the cubit of Memphis from the length of the King's Chamber, Sir Isaac Newton observes:—"From hence I would infer that the Sacred Cubit of Moses was equal to 25 unciae of the Roman foot and 6/10 of an uncia." (See his Dissertation on the Sacred Cubit, as republished in Professor Smyth's Life and Work at the Great Pyramid, vol. ii. p. 362.) Again, at p. 363, Sir Isaac speaks of "the cubit which we have concluded to have been in the time of Moses 25-60/100 inches" of the Roman foot; and at p. 365, in closing his Dissertation, he remarks—"The Roman cubit therefore consists of 18 unciae, and the Sacred Cubit of 25-3/5 unciae, of the Roman foot." In other words, according to Sir Isaac Newton, the Sacred Cubit of 25.60 inches of the Roman foot is equal to 24.75 British inches; for, as he calculated, the Roman foot "was equal to 967/1000 the English foot." (See p. 342.) This is the measurement of the Roman foot laid down by Sir Isaac Newton in his Dissertation, and the only standard of it mentioned in Professor Smyth's Life and Work at the Great Pyramid; yet in that work Professor Smyth calculates Sir Isaac's Sacred Cubit to be 24.82 instead of 24.75 British inches. In doing so, he has calculated the English foot as equal to .970 of the Roman foot; but was he entitled to do so when using Sir Isaac's own data, and when employing Sir Isaac's own calculated conclusion as to the length of the Sacred Cubit? In the published Proceedings of the Royal Society, in consequence of following the calculation by Professor Smyth of Sir Isaac Newton's conclusion from Sir Isaac's own data as to the length of the Sacred Cubit, it was erroneously spoken of as 24.82, instead of 24.75 British inches.]

[Footnote 262: This word "extraordinarily," was, by a clerical or printer's error, spelled "extraordinary" in the Proceedings of the Royal Society; and a friend who looked over the printed proof, and suggested two or three corrections, placed the word (sic) on the margin after it, from whence it slipped into the text:—accidents to be much regretted, as, from Professor Smyth's remarks to the Society on the 20th April, they had evidently given him much, but most unintentional offence.]

[Footnote 263: At the close of a subsequent meeting of the Royal Society, on the 20th April 1868, Professor Smyth gave away a printed Appendix to his three-volume work, in which he has acknowledged the erroneous character—as pointed out in this communication—of his all-important table, p. 22, on the length of the Sacred Cubit, by withdrawing it, and offering one of a new construction and character, but without being able to make the length of the cubit come nearer to his theory. See further, APPENDIX, No. VI]

[Footnote 264: Traite de la Grandeur et de la Figure de la Terre. Amsterdam edition (1723), p. 195.]

[Footnote 265: Tables Portatives de Logarithmes. Paris, 1795, p. 100.]

[Footnote 266: The same idea of using the earth's axis as a standard of length has been suggested also by Professor Hennessy of Dublin, and by Sir John Herschel. See Athenaeum for April 1860, pp. 581 and 617.]

[Footnote 267: The diameter of the earth in latitude 30 deg. is really about 20 miles longer than the polar axis. But Mr. Taylor obviously did not know the nature of the spheroidal arcs of the meridian, and so falls into the most inconsistent assertions respecting the length of this particular diameter. Thus, in pp. 75 and 87, he asserts the diameter in latitude 30 deg. to be 500,000,000 inches [that is = 7891.414 miles], which is 7.756 miles less than the polar axis—the least diameter of all; whereas, in p. 95, he states this diameter in lat. 30 deg. to be 17.652 miles greater than the polar axis.]

[Footnote 268: "The diameter of the earth, according to the measures taken at the Pyramids, is 41,666,667 English feet, or 500,000,000 inches." (See The Great Pyramid, p. 75.) "Dividing this number by 20,000,000 we obtain the measure of 25 (English) inches for the Sacred Cubit" (p. 67).]

[Footnote 269: "When" (says Mr. Taylor, p. 91) "the new Earth was measured in Egypt after the Deluge, it was found that it exceeded the diameter of the old Earth by the difference between 497,664,000 inches and 500,000,000 inches; that is, by 2,336,000 inches, equal to 36.868 miles."]

[Footnote 270: Alleged Sacred Character of the Scottish Yard or Ell Measure.—Professor Smyth tries to show (iii. 597), that if Britain stands too low in his metrological testing of the European kingdoms and races, its "low entry is due to accepting the yard for the country's popular measure of length." But long ago the "divine" origin of the Scottish ell—as in recent times the divine origin of the so-called pyramidal cubit and inch—was pleaded rather strenuously. For when, in the 13th century, Edward I. of England laid before Pope Boniface his reasons for attaching the kingdom of Scotland to the Crown of England, he maintained, among other arguments, the justice and legality of this appropriation on the ground that his predecessor King Athelstane, after subduing a rebellion in Scotland under the auspices of St. John of Beverley, prayed that through the intervention of that saint, it "might be granted to him to receive a visible and tangible token by which all future ages might be assured that the Scots were rightfully subject to the King of England. His prayer was granted in this way: Standing in front of one of the rocks at Dunbar, he made a cut at it with his sword, and left a score which proved to be the precise length of an ell, and was adopted as the regulation test of that measure of length." This legend of the "miraculously created ellwand standard" was afterwards duly attested by a weekly service in the Church of St. John of Beverley. (See Burton's History of Scotland, ii. 319.) In the official account of the miracle, as cited by Rymer, it is declared that during its performance the rock cut like butter or soft mud under the stroke of Athelstane's sword. "Extrahens gladium de vagina percussit in cilicem, quae adeo penetrabilis, Dei virtute agente, fuit gladio, quasi eadem hora lapis butirum esset, vel mollis glarea; ... et usque ad presentem diem, evidens signum patet, quod Scoti, ab Anglis devicti ac subjugata; monumento tali evidenter cunctis adeuntibus demonstrante." (Foedera, tom. i. pars ii. 771.)]

[Footnote 271: Elsewhere (p. 45) Mr. Taylor corroborates Sir Isaac Newton's opinion that the working cubit by which the Pyramid was built was the cubit of Memphis.]

[Footnote 272: The interior of any Scottish cottage, where the inside of the thatched or slated roof is left exposed by uncovered joists within, contains, on the same principle, six sides, and a seventh or the floor.]

[Footnote 273: "The clue was not prepared for any immediate successors of the builders, but was intended, on the contrary, to endure to a most remote period. And it has so endured and served such a purpose even down to those our own days." (Professor Smyth's Life and Work at the Great Pyramid, vol. i. p. 157.) "The builders, or planners rather, of the Great Pyramid, did not leave their building without sure testimony to its chief secret; for there, before the eyes of all men for ages, had existed these two diagonal joints in the passage floor, pointing directly and constantly to what was concealed in the roof just opposite them, and no one ever thought of it. Practically, then, we may say with full certainty that these two floor marks were left there to guide men who, it was expected, would come subsequently, earnestly desiring, on rightly-informed principles, to look for the entrance to the upper parts of the Pyramid." (Vol. i. p. 156-7.) At p. 270 Professor Smyth again alludes to this supposed mark, made up by two diagonal joints in the passage floor, as evading the notice of all visitors, except "those very few, or perhaps even that one only man, who had been previously instructed to look for a certain almost microscopic mark on the floor."]



APPENDIX.

I.—DERIVATION OF THE TERM PYRAMID. (Page 219.)

Professor Smyth suggests the origin of the term Pyramid from the two Coptic words, "pyr," "division," and "met," "ten." This derivation, which he first heard of in Cairo, is, he believes, a significant appellation for a metrological monument such as the Great Pyramid, and coincides with its five-sided, five-cornered, etc., features (see anteriorly, p. 255) and decimal divisions. But surely a name, which in this metrological and arithmetical view of "powers and times of ten and five," meant division into ten, and which divisional metrological ideas applied, according to Professor Smyth, to one pyramid only, namely the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, was not likely to have been applied as a general term to all the other pyramidal structures in Egypt—not one of which had, according to Professor Smyth himself, anything whatsoever of this metrological or divisional character in their composition and object. It is not likely that all these structures should have been named from a series of qualities supposed to belong to one; but altogether hidden and concealed, in these early times, even in that one pyramid, being for the information of future times and generations.

In a similar spirit of exclusiveness, Mr. John Taylor derives the word pyramid from the two Greek words [Greek: pyros], wheat, and [Greek: metron], measure—apparently in the belief that the coffer or sarcophagus within one pyramid (the Great Pyramid) was intended as a chaldron measure of wheat—though none of the sarcophagi, in any of the many other royal pyramidal sepulchres of Egypt, were at all intended for such standard measures; and although, according to Mr. Taylor's theory, the Greeks, too, who out of their own language applied the term of Pyramid, or Wheat-Measurer, to all these structures,—never dreamed of the Great Pyramid or of any other of them having locked up in one of its concealed chambers a supposed standard measure of capacity of wheat, water, etc., for all nations and all times.

Fifteen centuries ago, Ammianus Marcellinus derived the word pyramid from another Greek word [Greek: pyr], fire; because, as he argues, the Egyptian Pyramid rises to a sharp pointed top, like to the form of a fire or flame. This derivation, which, of course, excludes the mathematical idea of the sides of the pyramid being a series of flattened triangles that meet in a point at the apex, has been adopted by various authors.

Keats, the poor surgeon, but rich poet, who died at Rome at the early age of twenty-six, was buried in the beautiful Protestant Cemetery there, amid the ruins of the Aurelian Walls. His grave is surmounted by a pyramidal tomb, which Petrarch romantically ascribed to Remus, but which antiquarians generally accord, in conformity with the inscription which it bears, to Caius Cestius, a tribune of the people, who is remembered for nothing else than his sepulchre. In his elegy of Adonais, Shelley, in alluding to the resting-place of Keats beside this remarkable monument, brings in, with rare poetical power, the idea of the word pyramid being derived from [Greek: pyr], and signifying the shape of flame:—

And one keen pyramid with edge sublime, Pavilioning the dust of him who planned This refuge for his memory, doth stand Life flame transformed to marble.[274]

If the word pyramid is of Greek origin, the suggestion of that able writer and scholar, Mr. Kenrick of York, is probably more true, viz. that the term [Greek: pyramis] (from [Greek: pyros], wheat, and [Greek: melitos], honey) was applied by the Greeks to a pointed or cone-shaped cake, used by them at the feasts of Bacchus (as shown on the table at the reception of Bacchus by Icarus; see Hope's Costumes, vol. ii. p. 224), and when they became acquainted with the Pyramids of Egypt, they, in this as in other instances, applied a term to a thing till then unknown, from a thing well known to them; in the very same way as they applied to the tall pointed monoliths peculiar to Egypt, the word obelisk—no doubt a direct derivation from the familiar Greek word [Greek: obelos], a spit.

For a learned discussion on various other supposed origins of the word pyramid, see Jomard, in the Description de l'Egypte, vol. ii. p. 213, etc.

II.—ARCHAIC CIRCLE AND RING SCULPTURES. (Page 222.)

Representations of incised cups, rings, circles, and spirals, are found on stones connected with other forms of ancient sculpture besides chambered barrows or cairns,—as on the lids of stone cists, megalithic circles, etc.; and, from this connection with the burial of the dead, these antique sculpturings were possibly of a religious character. In a work on "Archaic Sculpturings of Cups, Rings, etc. upon Stones and Rocks of Scotland, England, and other Countries," published last year by the author of the present communication, it was further argued that they were probably also ornamental in their character, in a chapter beginning as follows:—

"Without attempting to solve the mystery connected with these archaic lapidary cups and ring cuttings, I would venture to remark that there is one use for which some of these olden stone carvings were in all probability devoted—namely, ornamentation. From the very earliest historic periods in the architecture of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, etc., down to our own day, circles, single or double, and spirals, have formed, under various modifications, perhaps the most common fundamental types of lapidary decoration. In prehistoric times the same taste for circular sculpturings, however rough and rude, seems to have swayed the mind of archaic man. This observation as to the probable ornamental origin of our cup and ring carvings holds, in my opinion, far more strongly in respect to some antique stone cuttings in Ireland and in Brittany, than to the ruder and simpler forms that I have described as existing in Scotland and England. For instance, the cut single and double volutes, the complete and half-concentric circles, the zig-zag, and other patterns which cover almost entirely and completely some stones in those magnificent though rude western Pyramids that constitute the grand old mausolea of Ireland and Brittany, appear to be, in great part at least, of an ornamental character, whatever else their import may be."

In a communication on the Great Pyramid, made to the Royal Society 16th December 1867, Professor Smyth most unexpectedly, and quite out of his way, took occasion to criticise severely the remarks contained in the preceding extract, on two grounds:

First, He laid down that the term pyramid was misapplied, as the term referred only to figures and structures of a special mathematical form; being apparently quite unaware that, as shown in the text and notes, pp. 219 and 220, it was often applied archaeologically to sepulchral mounds and erections that were not faced, and which did not consist of a series of triangles meeting in an apex.

Secondly, He objected to the statement that, "from the very earliest historic periods in the architecture of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, etc., circles and spirals, or modifications of them, constituted perhaps the most common fundamental types of lapidary decoration;" because, though circles, spirals, etc., occurred in the later architecture of Thebes, etc., yet in the Great Pyramid of Gizeh no such decorations were to be found, nor, indeed, lapidary decorations of any other kind. Cheops, the builder of the Great Pyramid, was, according to Manetho, "arrogant towards the gods." Was it this spirit of religious infidelity or scepticism that led to the rejection of any ornamentation? Professor Smyth notices what he himself terms an "ornament," "a most unique thing certainly," on the upper stone of what Greaves calls "the granite leaf" portcullis, in the interior of the Great Pyramid (ii. 100), and he represents it, it is now said erroneously in plate xii. as a portion of a double circle instead of a general raised elevation.[275]

All the other Pyramids of Gizeh seem, like the Great Pyramid, wonderfully free from lapidary decorations on their interior walls, the exteriors of all of them being now too much dilapidated to offer any distinct proof in relation to the subject; though in Herodotus' time there were hieroglyphics, at least on the external surface of the Great Pyramid. The whole surface of the basalt sarcophagus in the Third Pyramid, or that of Mycerinus, was sculptured. "It was," to use the words of Baron Bunsen, "very beautifully carved in compartments, in the Doric style" (vol. ii. 168). This carving, in the well-known carpentry form, was, according to Mr. Fergusson, a representation of a palace (Handbook of Architecture, p. 222).

Fragments, however, of lapidary sculpture have been found among the ruins of Egyptian pyramids supposed to be older than those of Gizeh, or than their builders, the Memphite kings of the fourth dynasty. Thus one of the most able and learned of modern Egyptologists, Baron Bunsen, has written at some length to show that the great northern brick pyramid of Dashoor belongs to the preceding or third dynasty of kings. Colonel Vyse and Mr. Perring, when digging among its ruins, discovered two or three fragments of sculptured casing and other stones, with a few pieces presenting broken hieroglyphic inscriptions. One of the ornamented fragments represents a row of floreated-like decorations, and each decoration shows on its side a concentric circle, consisting of three rings,—the whole ornament being one which is found in later Egyptian eras, not unfrequently along the tops of walls in the interior of chambers, etc. Mr. Perring represents this fragment of sculpturing from the brick Pyramid of Dashoor, in his folio work, The Pyramids of Gizeh, plate xiii. Fig. 7. Hence among the very earliest Egyptian lapidary decorations we have, as in other countries, the appearance of the simple circular ornamentation.

Besides, more complex circular and spiral decorations, in the form of the well-known guilloche and scroll, were made use of in Egypt during the sixth dynasty, or immediately after the Memphite dynasty that reared the larger Pyramids of Gizeh. Thus, speaking of the ancient Egyptian architectural decorations, Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson observes—"The Egyptians did not always confine themselves to the mere imitation of natural objects for ornament; and their ceilings and cornices offer numerous graceful fancy devices, among which are the guilloche, miscalled Tuscan borders, the chevron, and the scroll patterns. They are to be met with in a tomb of the time of the sixth dynasty; they are therefore known in Egypt many ages before they were adopted by the Greeks, and the most complicated form of the guilloche covered a whole Egyptian ceiling, upwards of a thousand years before it was represented on those comparatively late objects found at Nineveh."—Popular account of the Ancient Egyptians, ii. 290.

III.—ERA OF THE ARABIAN HISTORIAN, IBN ABD AL HAKM. (Page 236.)

Professor Smyth owns that the grooves and pin holes which the coffer in the King's Chamber presents, were (to use his own words) "in fact to admit a sliding sarcophagus cover or lid" (see ante, p. 236, footnote). But in his recent communication to the Royal Society on the 20th April, he doubted Al Hakm's account of the mummy having been actually found in the sarcophagus when the King's Chamber was first entered by the Caliph Al Mamoon, in the ninth century, arguing, on the authority of a Glasgow gentleman, that the historian himself, Al Hakm, did not live for three or four centuries afterwards, and, therefore, could not be relied upon. But all this reasoning or assertion is simply a mistake. In a late letter (7th April), Dr. Rieu of the British Museum,—the chief living authority among us on any such Arabic question,—writes, "The statement relating to Al Mamoon's discovery could hardly rest on a better authority than that of Ibn Abd Al Hakm; for not only was he a contemporary writer (having died at Old Cairo, A.H. 269, that is, thirty-eight years after Al Mamoon's death), but he is constantly quoted by later writers as an historian of the highest authority. You will find a notice of him in Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary, vol. ii. etc." He was a native of Egypt, and chief of the Shafite sect. Born in A.D. 799, he died in A.D. 882, or at the age of 83.

IV.—LENGTH OF THE SARCOPHAGUS IN THE KING'S CHAMBER. (Page 236.)

M. Jomard, in the Description de l'Egypte, drawn up by the French Academicians, remarks in vol. ii. p. 182, that looking to the length of the cavity or interior of the sarcophagus in the King's Chamber, that it could not hold within it a cartonage or mummy case, enclosing a man of the ordinary height. This statement proceeds entirely upon a miscalculation. The length of the interior or cavity of the sarcophagus is six and a half English feet; and the average stature of the ancient Egyptians, "judging from their mummies, did not" observes Mr. Kenrick, "exceed five feet and a half." (See his Ancient Egypt, vol. i. p. 97.) The space thus left, of one foot, is much more than sufficient for the thickness of the two ends of a cartonage or mummy case; and the embalmed body was generally, or indeed always, closely packed within them. The length of the coffin was, long ago, quaintly observed Professor Greaves, "large enough to contain a most potent and dreadful monarch being dead, to whom, living, all Egypt was too strait and narrow a circuit" (Works, i. p. 131).

V.—MEMORANDUM ON THE CUBIT OF MEMPHIS AND THE SACRED CUBIT, BY SIR HENRY JAMES. (Page 242.)

Sir Isaac Newton says, "for the precise determination of the cubit of Memphis I should choose to pitch upon the length of the chamber in the middle of the Pyramid, where the king's monument stood, which length contained 20 cubits, and was very carefully measured by Mr. Greaves." (See vol. ii. p. 362 of Professor Smyth's Life at the Pyramids, etc.)

Greaves' measures of the King's chamber are given at p. 335, vol. ii. of the same work.

The length of the chamber on the south side, he says, is

34.380 feet = 20 cubits. 17.190 " = 10 cubits. 12 ———- 206.280 inches = 10 cubits, and 20.628 " = 1 cubit of Memphis;

and Newton himself says, at p. 360, vol. ii. Life at the Pyramids,—

"The cubit of Memphis of 1.719 English feet," 12 ——— or 20.628 inches,

and, therefore, there can be no possible doubt but that this is Newton's determination of the length of the cubit of Memphis.

But Newton goes on to say in the same page, the cubit "double the length of 12-3/8 English inches (=24.75 inches) will be to the cubit of Memphis as 6 to 5."

Therefore, if we add 1/5 to 20.628 inches, 4.126 ——— we have 24.754

as Newton's determination of the length of the Sacred Cubit.

Newton's determinations are therefore—

Length of Sacred Cubit 24.754 inches. " Cubit of Memphis 20.628 "

The cubit measured by Mersennus (see p. 362, vol. ii. Life at the Pyramids) was 23-1/4 Paris inches, and Mr. Greaves estimated the Paris foot as equal to 1.068 of the English foot; therefore 23.25 + 1.068=24.831 was the length of this cubit, if we take Greaves' proportion of the Paris to the English foot; but by the more exact determination of the proportion of the Paris to the English foot made at the Ordnance Survey Office, Southampton, it is found to be as 1 to 1.06576 and 23.25 + 1.06576=24.780 English inches, which differs only in excess .026 from the length of the Sacred Cubit determined by Newton.

The double Royal Cubit of Karnak, which is in the British Museum, was found by Sir Henry James to measure 41.398 inches; the length of the single cubit was therefore 20.699 inches, and differs only in excess .071 inches from the length of the cubit of Memphis, as determined by Newton.

It will be observed that the lengths of the cubits derived by Newton from the length of the King's chamber are shorter than the measured lengths of the cubits which have come down to us. But if

we add 1/5 or = 4.140 to the length of the Karnak cubit = 20.699, ——— we have 24.839 for the Sacred Cubit.

The one measured by Mersennus = 24.780 and the ——— mean of the two = 24.810, whilst the length derived by Newton was = 24.754, showing ——— a difference of only .056 between the ======

length of the Sacred Cubit derived from the actual lengths of the two cubits which have come down to us, and the length of the Sacred Cubit derived by Newton from the length of the King's chamber.

The method adopted by Professor P. Smyth, to find the length of the Sacred Cubit, in p. 458, vol. ii. Life at the Pyramids, is also wrong in principle. He has no right to take the means between the limits of approach, or to say that the Sacred Cubit was, according to Sir Isaac Newton, 25.07 inches, when, as I have shown in his own words, Sir Isaac says it was 24.754 inches.

VI.—PROFESSOR SMYTH'S RECENT COMMUNICATION TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY ON 20TH APRIL 1868.

It has been already stated (see footnote, p. 248) that, on the 20th April Professor Smyth brought before the Royal Society a new communication on the pyramids, the principal part of which consisted of a criticism upon the preceding observations, and a defence of his hypotheses regarding the Great Pyramid. His chief criticisms related to points already adverted to, and answered in footnotes, pp. 234, 248, etc. In addition, he expressed great dissatisfaction that the quotation from Sprenger, in Vyse's Work, quoted in footnote, p. 237, was not extended beyond the semicolon in the original, at which the quotation ends, and made to embrace the other or latter half of the sentence, viz., " ...; and that they appear to have repeated the traditions of the ancient Egyptians, mixed up with fabulous stories and incidents, certainly not of Mahometan invention."[276] But this latter half, or the traditions about the pyramid builders, Surid, Ben Shaluk, Ben Sermuni, etc., who lived "before the Flood," etc. etc., did assuredly not require to be quoted, as they had really nothing whatever to do with the object under discussion—viz., the opening of the sarcophagus under the Caliph Al Mamoon, and the accounts or history of the pyramids, as given by Arabian authors themselves.

In the course of this communication to the Royal Society, Professor Smyth did not allude to or rescind the erroneous table and calculations from Sir Isaac Newton regarding the Sacred Cubit, printed and commented upon in some of the preceding pages (see ante, p. 244, etc.) But, at the end of the subsequent discussion he handed round, as a printed "Appendix" to his three volume work, a total withdrawal of this table, etc., and in this way so far confessed the justice of the exposition of his errors on this all-vital and testing point in his theory of the Sacred Cubit, as given in p. 243, etc., of the present essay. He attributes his errors to "an unfortunate misprinting of the calculated numbers;" and (though he does not at all specialise what numbers were thus misprinted) he gives from Sir Isaac Newton's Dissertation on the Sacred Cubit a new and more lengthened table instead of the old and erroneous table. For this purpose, instead of selecting as he did, without any attempted explanation in his old table, only five of Sir Isaac Newton's estimations or "methods of approach," he now, in his new table, takes seven of them to strike out new "means." The simple "mean" of all the seven quantities tabulated—as calculated, in the way followed, in his first published table—is 25.47 British inches; and the "mean" of all the seven means in the Table is 25.49 British inches. Unfortunately for Professor Smyth's theory of the Sacred Cubit being 25.025 British inches, either of these numbers makes the Sacred Cubit nearly half a British inch longer than his avowed standard of length—an overwhelming difference in any question relating to a standard measure. What would any engineer, or simple worker in metal, wood, or stone, think of an alleged standard measure or cubit which varied so enormously from its own alleged length? But, surely, such facts and such results require no serious comment.

In this, his latest communication on the Pyramids, Professor Smyth also offered some new calculations regarding the measurements of the interior of the broken stone coffin standing in the King's Chamber. Formerly (1864), he elected the cubic capacity of this sarcophagus to be 70,900 "pyramidal" cubic inches; latterly he has elected it to be 71,250 cubic inches. According, however, to his own calculations, he found, practically, that it measured neither of these two numbers; but instead of them 71,317 pyramidal inches (see vol. iii. p. 154). The capacity of the interior of this coffin does not hence correspond at all to the supposititious standard of 71,250 pyramidal cubic inches; but in order to make it appear to do so he has now struck a "mean" between the measurement of the interior of the vessel and some of the measurements of its exterior, in a way that was not easily comprehensible in his demonstration. But what other hollow vessel in the world, and with unequal walls too (see p. 233), had the capacity of its interior ever before attempted to be altered and rectified by any measurements of the size of its exterior? What, for example, would be thought of the very strange proposition of ascertaining and determining the capacity of the interior of a pint, a gallon, a bushel, or any other such standard measure by measuring, not the capacity of the interior of the vessel, but by taking some kind of mean between that interior capacity and the size or sizes of the exterior of the vessel? According to Messrs. Taylor and Smyth, this standard measure—along with other supposed perfect metrological standards—in the Great Pyramid is "of an origin higher than human," or "divinely inspired;" and yet it has proved so incapable of being readily measured, and hence used as a standard, that hitherto it has been found impossible to make the actual capacity of this coffer to correspond to its standard theoretical or supposititious capacity; whilst even its standard theoretical capacity has been declared different by different observers, and even at different times by the same observer, as shown previously at p. 231.

VII.—METROLOGICAL TABLES AND TESTS OF THE EUROPEAN RACES. (See p. 238.)

Professor Smyth believes that among the nations of Europe the metrology used will be found closer and closer to the Hebrew and "Pyramid" standards, according to the amount of Ephraimitic blood in each nation. He further inclines to hold, with Mr. Wilson, that the Anglo-Saxons have no small share of this Israelitish blood, as shown in their language, and in their weights and measures, etc. After giving various Tables of the metrological standards of different European nations, Professor Smyth adds, "It is not a little striking to see all the Protestant countries standing first and closest to the Great Pyramid; then Russia, and her Greek, but freely Bible-reading church; then the Roman Catholic lands; then, after a long interval, and last but one on the list, France with its metrical system—voluntarily adopted, under an atheistical form of government, in place of an hereditary pound and ancient inch, which were not very far from those of the Great Pyramid; and last of all Mahommedan Turkey." Subsequently, when speaking of British standards of length, etc., Professor Smyth remarks,—"But let the island kingdom look well that it does not fall; for not only has the 25.344 inch length not yet travelled beyond the region of the Ordnance maps,—but the Government has been recently much urged by, and has partly yielded to, a few ill-advised but active men, who want these invaluable hereditary measures (preserved almost miraculously to this nation from primeval times, for apparently a Divine purpose) to be instantly abolished in toto,—and the recently atheistically-conceived measures of France to be adopted in their stead. In which case England would have to descend from her present noble pre-eminence in the metrological scale of nations, and occupy a place almost the very last in the list; or next to Turkey, and in company with some petty princedoms following France, and blessed with little history and less nationality. 'How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!' might be then, indeed, addressed to England with melancholy truth. Or more plainly (Professor Smyth adds), and in words seemingly almost intended for such a case, and uttered with depressing grief of heart, 'O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself!'" (Professor Smyth's Life and Work at the Great Pyramid, 1867, vol. iii. p. 598.)

In his previous work in 1864, Professor Smyth denounced also, in equally strong terms, the French decimal system of metrology, considering it as—to use his own words—"precisely one of the most hearty aids which Satan, and traitors to their country, ever had to their hands." (Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, p. 185, etc.)

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 274: Shelley himself is now interred in the same cemetery, near the pyramid of Cestius, and a little above the grave of Keats.]

[Footnote 275: In vol. i. p. 365, this "raised ornament" is described as "a very curious, and, for the Pyramid, perfectly unique adornment, of a semicircular form, raised about one inch above the general surface, and bevelled off on either side and above," etc.]

[Footnote 276: The whole sentence runs thus, and is punctuated thus:—"It may be remarked that the Arabian authors have given the same accounts of the pyramids with little or no variation, for above a thousand years; and that they appear to have repeated the traditions of the ancient Egyptians, mixed up with fabulous stories and incidents, certainly not of Mahometan invention." Vol. iii. p. 328.]

END OF VOL. I.

Printed by R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh.