NEW MEASURES OF THE GREAT PYRAMID, BY A NEW MEASURER. " And tkou. my son, know thouthe Godof thy father, and serve Him with a perfect heart, and with a willing mind ; for the Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts : ifthou seek Him He will be found of thee; but if thou forsake Him, He mil cast thee of for ever"l Chron. xxviii. 9. NEW MEASURES OF THE GREAT PYRAMID, BY A NEW MEASURER, gesmbcb mib ^Ecstcb bn C. PIAZZl SMYTH, ASTRONOMER-ROYAL FOR SCOTLAND, F.R.S.E., F.R.A.S., A.M.L.A.S., F.R.S.S.A., &c., &c. Extended and Corrected from the Review in the 'Banner of Israel" for November and December, 1883. PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY ROBERT BANKS, RACQUET COURT, FLEET ST. March, 1884. " How say ye unto Pharaoh, I am the son of tfte wise, the son of ancient kings ? Where are they ? Where are thy wise men ? and let them telltkee now, and let them know, what the Lord of hosts hath purposed upon Egypt" Isa.xix. 11, 12. TO Clje International Institute, CLEVELAND AND BOSTON, U.S.A., FOR PRESERVING AND PERFECTING HEREDITARY WEIGHTS AND MEASURES, MORE ESPECIALLY THE ANGLO-SAXON, AND FOR THE DISCUSSION AND DISSEMINATION OF THE WISDOM CONTAINED IN THE GREAT PYRAMID OF JEEZEH IN, BUT NOT OF, EGYPT, TO* fittle $0ok, DESCRIPTIVE OF SOME NEW INFORMATION ON THE GRAND SUBJECT WHICH THE MEMBERS HAVE SO MUCH AT HEART, Is gcbkattb BY ONE WHO HAS WORKED AT THIS PYRAMID QUESTION FOR CLOSE UPON TWENTY YEARS (OR EVER SINCE THE DEATH OF THE LATE JOHN TAYLOR, WHO COMMENCED IT ON ITS PRESENT LINES), AND WITH CONTINUALLY INCREASING BELIEF THAT THERE IS MORE THAN ACCIDENT, MORE THAN MAN'S INTENT, IN BOTH ITS PRIMEVAL ORIGINATION' AND NOW LATTER-DAY INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT, 10 Driikateb mast fiespectfullg, BY THEIR DEVOTED FELLOW-LABOURER, 0. PIAZZI SMYTH, Astronomer-Royal for Scotland, AND FOR THIS CAUSE, EX. F.R.S., LONDON. Edinburgh, March 25, 18&4. 2091780 " And besides this, giving all dili- gence, add to your faith, virtue ; and to virtue, knowledge ; "And to knowledge, temperance; and to temperance, patience ; and to patience, godliness ; "And to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity. "For if these things be in you, and abound, they malie you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.'" 2 Peter i. 58. CONTENTS. PART I. NEW AUTHORS ON THE GREAT PYRAMID. TAOK CHAPTER 1. Mr. Proctor's Book 13 ,, 2. Mr. F. Petrie's Book and his Antecedents ... 15 PART II. EXTERIOR OF THE GREAT PYRAMID. CHAPTER 1. Shape of Great Pyramid 19 2. Base-size of Great Pyramid 22 ., 3. Relative Age of Great Pyramid, with respect to other Egyptian remains in its neighbourhood 28 4. Change in the Position of the World's Axis of Rotation since the Great Pyramid was founded 34 PART III. INTERIOR OF THE GREAT PYRAMID. CHAPTER!. Bearings of the Base-size thereon 37 ,, 2. Unfinished Subterranean Chamber antagonises Egyptological Theories of Modern times ... 39 3. The System of Passages equally antagonises them 41 4. Asserted Errors in C. P. S.'s Great Pyramid Passage measures ... .. .. 44 5. The same touching the King's Chamber Measures 46 6. The Coffer Measures 48 7. Ante-chamber Measures 54 ,, 8. The Hebraically Sacred, Earth-commensurable, Anti-Egyptian Cubit of 25 British inches, nearly 56 Till. CONTENTS. PART IV. HISTOEY, SACRED AND PROFANE. PAGK CHAPTER 1. Of the respect due to Ancient Classical Authors... 59 2. The Philition of Herodotus 63 3. Absolute date of the Great Pyramid 66 4. The Latter-end Indications of the Time-Passage Theory; tested by passing, and surpassing, present events ... 67 PA RT V. CHAPTER 1. Action of the International Institute. Cleveland ... 77 2. Answer sent by C. Piazzi Smyth, Ex-F.R.S., through Rev. H. G. Wood, to the International Institute for Preserving and Perfecting Weights and Measures, Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 81 3. The Present State of the Base-side Length Question of the Great Pyramid. By the Rev. H. G. Wood, Sharon, Pa., D.S. A 87 APPEN DICES. APP. 1. Prospective American Expedition to Re-measure the Great Pyramid 101 ., 2. Eev. Dr. Alex. Mackay on the Fulfilment of Prophecy 107 ,, 3. Editor of the Banner of Israel on "The Saviour and the Great One " of Isaiah xix. 20 112 4. Notice of the New Metrological Institute in America 117 5. A Message from Khartoum (Banner of Israel). ... 125 PREFACE. THAT which immediately follows is a reprint of the first two pages of the first edition of my book, " Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid," published in 1864 ; and is the best explanation I can offer now for the formal issue of the present dissertation, or review written at particular request. (PAGE 1 OP 1864.) "To JOHN TAYLOR, ESQ., OF LONDON, "In his Eighty-fourth year, "Author of ' The Great Pyramid : Why was it Built and Who Built It ? ' (in reference to which Lord Neaves, vice- president, in the chair, at the Royal Society, Edinburgh, on the evening of March 21, 1864, said: 'If these things are only coincidences, they are most extraordinary coincidences; but if they are facts that is, if the metrical proportions indicated were designedly and purposely established, they form the most remarkable discovery of the age '), this attempt to follow out some of his (J. T.'s) arguments, and to test the truth that is in them, is dedicated by the friend of his latter years and admirer of his true and earnest life. " C. PlAZZI SlIYTH. " Edinburgh, June. 1864." B X PREFACE. (PAGE 2 OP 1864.) " In the short interval between the printing and publica- tion of this book, the estimable John Taylor is dead. " During the late spring he had come to know, only too surely, that his mortal career was drawing rapidly to a close, while many years, he considered, might still elapse before his Pyramid discoveries would be appreciated in the world. But he had already calmly resigned himself to believe that he must pass away before the popular prejudice with which a new view is always received can be forgotten. " ' The Cause,' he wrote recently in a private letter, ' is the grand object; and if in any manner we are able, while on earth, to vindicate the tvaijs of God to men, we have not lived in vain.' " But again, rather checking himself, he added: ' Many must approve before the thought will enter into the popular mind ; and if that result ever takes place, I am only one among many who are entitled to any commendation; nay, there is no room for commendation to anyone, for all do but impart what has been given. " Paul plants, Apollos waters, but it is God gives the increase." I suppose this is the meaning of the elders casting their crowns before the throne in Revelation iv.' "(' Saying, Thou art worthy Lord to receive glory, and honour, and power; for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.') " Such was the spirit which fell asleep in the Lord, on the 5th of the present month, July, 1864. " C. P. S." While, further and later, to quote from the Preface to the Fourth Edition of the same book: PREFACE. XI " When the late worthy John Taylor (publisher to the London University) produced in 1859, his larger work, entitled, ' The Great Pyramid: Why Was it Built, and Who Built It?' and afterwards, in January, 1864, his smaller pamphlet, ' The Battle of the Standards ' (of Linear Measure) the ancient of 4,000 years against the modern of the last fifty years the less perfect of the two, he opened up for archasology a freer, nobler, more intellectual pathway to light than that study had ever enjoyed before. " But academic archaeology would not accept it; indeed the whole reading world stood askance; and I can hardly now explain how it came about that something induced me in February, 1864, to commence an independent examination of Mr. Taylor's theory; and my first publication in Septem- ber of that year (i.e., the first Edition of ' Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid ') contained the findings so arrived at. Findings, in many points confirmatory of the principal thread of Mr. Taylor's chief and most startling discovery, but exhibiting in the general literature of the subject, and on which, unfortunately, he had been obliged to depend too much, a lamentable deficiency in the accurateness of nearly all the numerical data required: and which necessary exact- itude nothing but practical examination and instrumental measure at the place could hope properly to supply. " Meanwhile, John Taylor died, and with almost his last breath emphatically confided this, the most important labour of his long life-toil, to my most unworthy hands." And then follows the account of how, accompanied by my Wife, and with all the measuring apparatus I could muster, we went out to Egypt in "November, 1864, and toiled at the Great Pyramid until May, 1865. With this introductory insight into the manner in which I began with the Great Xll. PREFACE. Pyramid subject full twenty years ago, the reader may all the more readily enter into, and understandingly appreciate, the question as attacked and defended in 1883-1884. C. PIAZZI SMYTH. NEW MEASURES OF THE GREAT PYRAMID, PART I. ^eto ^uthtrrs 011 the (iveat Jgvantib. CHAPTER I. MR. PROCTOR'S BOOK. ON being recently informed by a friend that Mr. Flinders Petrie's much expected book on the Great, and other Pyramids in Egypt, was out at last, I not only sent for a copy of it,* but ordered one at the same time of Mr. R. A. Proctor's lately compiled and very showy volume, entitled, a The Great Pyramid, Observatory, Tomb, and Temple," London, 1883. The latter work arrived first, and I opened it immediately, specially to see what could possibly have formed the ground of its author's serious accusation which I had heard of already from several quarters te the effect that I had discreditably brought out results * " The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh," by W. M. Flinders Petrie. Field & Tuer, London, 1883. 14 NEW MEASURES OF [Parti. for the Great Pyramid, "by what school-boys call the method of fudge." The book, however, has no index; its table of contents is comprised in twelve lines, and though I read till I was wearied in the mass of got-up printed pages which follow, it was not my fortune to alight on the indictment alluded to, nor to learn any- thing new and really true about the Great Pyramid. But I did learn not a little about Mr. Proctor's overweening notions of astrology, and the extra- ordinary assurance with which he can charge upon others the inventing of new religions, and the holding, in reality, of most anti-religious opinions, such as they have never given utterance to, and thoroughly eschew on presentation as being positively anti-Christian. In short, the book, and why did he ever write it, is mainly Mr. Proctor publishing himself; and who can prevent him doing that ? Chap, ii.j THE GREAT PYRAMID. 15 CHAPTER II. MR. F. PETRIE'S BOOK, AND HIS ANTECEDENTS. MR. Flinders Petrie's work proved, however, on its arrival, to be a very different "affair; far larger, more closely printed, full of figure work, with most original diagrams, and containing the quintessence of many years of hard labour; first, in silent preparation of instruments, literary knowledge, and mechanical experience; then in two seasons' active work at the Great Pyramid itself; and lastly, in as long a period of arranging, theorising on, and printing the chief results of his almost innumerable measures in line and angle; interspersed with antiquarian disquisitions and Egyptological interpretations of a very advanced order indeed. The battery of scientific measuring instruments which he took out with him was more extensive than anything before known in that region, and had been in large part prepared most studiously for the occasion by his own hands, with a mental acuteness and manual dexterity which cannot be too highly commended; while his subsequent use of the apparatus at the Pyramid, and his intuitive quickness in detecting minute errors in the work of the ancient Pyramid masons is clever, clever, oh ! exceedingly clever. Immense advantage therefore can hardly but accrue to our knowledge touching details of the Great 16 NEW MEASURES OF [Parti. Pyramid from what he has been doing. It is indeed in many respects the very outcome with time which I have been longing for ever since my own work there in 1865.* And if my measures then were more numerous and detailed than those of most of my predecessors, it is exactly as it should be now, after sixteen years interval, when a smart young scientist, of easy, independent means, and no professional occu- pation, follows me in all my steps, even to living in a tomb on the Eastern side of the Pyramid hill; exactly, I say, as was to be both expected and desired, that his measures again should be far more numerous, more minute, and in some points more accurate than mine. Many of his figures, therefore. I accept^ at_jQgce with thanks^ whether they are in addition to, or to be employed in place of, mine. And if there are others of them where 1 still prefer my own observations, discussions, or applications, or those of other explorers between my time and his I shall not attempt to defend them in particular in the present place; but endeavour to set before my readers, without the slightest personal prejudice, and for the cause's sake alone, how the Great Pyramid's for so long called "sacred and scientific theory " looks when examined into and tested by the light of these latest mensu- rations. Mensurations rather hastily assumed by some persons to be both absolutely perfect and utterly irre- futable, chiefly because they hope that their author has succeeded by such means in accomplishing his and their long cherished purpose, of both killing and bury- * Published in 1867 in three volumes, entitled, " Life and Work at the Great Pyramid." Douglas & Co., Edinburgh. Chap. II.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 17 ing the said " sacred and scientific " theory for all future time. For the fuller discovery of the ancient and absolute truth of this " Miracle in Stone " as the primeval Great Pyramid has well been termed by the Rev. Dr. Seiss, Phil., U.S. this latter feature and tendency of the new measuring authority is of inestimable advantage to others and the cause, whatever it may be ultimately to himself; and should by no means be lost sight of. Wherefore, although Mr. Flinders Petrie now bows to the community, first, as bearing the surname of his eminent father, Mr. William Petrie, the contributor in 1869 to the Rev. Dr. Mackay's "Facts and Dates" of an admirable compendium of Great Pyramid, earth, and sun commensurabilities, in close accordance with, and in some cases admirable development of, the "sacred and scientific" theory;* and second, as being * " The above synopsis," wrote Dr. Mackay, in a note to his p. 135, " is by "W. Petrie, who, in according to our request for it, desires us to say that his investigations and results are the consequence of his following the clue supplied by- Professor C. Piazzi Smyth, after the latter had brought the light of modern science to bear more fully on the ideas originated by John Taylor of London, recognising the Holy Scriptures as being words from the Creator, irrespectively of human intellect, and yet in perfect harmony with all that is true in modern science." See " Life and Work at the Great Pyramid," three vols., with plates; also "Antiquity of Intellectual Man," one vol., with a diagram comparing the architectural remains, from the earliest example, onward through each century, in various countries, both by Prof. C. Piazzi Smyth. See also " Plates and Notes on Structures called Pyramids," one vol. fol., a valuable illustrated work by St- John Vincent Day, C.E., Glasgow. And " The Monumental History of Egypt," by William Osburn, an eminently trustworthy work. The germ of the three first being found in a work entitled, "The Great Pyramid, Why Was it Built, and Who Built It?" 1860 (second edition, 1864), by John Taylor, London. 18 NEW MEASURES OF [Parti. himself the author of two treatises, one on " Inductive Metrology," and the other on " Stonehenge," it is to be regretted that he, Mr. F. P., did not also ac- knowledge himself to have been the author of a certain " Diagram of the Great Pyramid," published and sold in London in 1877. For thereby readers would have been prepared for much of the method of his present book; and would have appreciated how early Mr. F. P. had taken to certain theoretical views, leading him to assert in a most accentuated manner, that " The Great Pyramid's passages are not chronological, or not as taught in the so-called time-passage theory." The spirit of that commencement on the Great Pyramid subject seems to have gone on intensifying in the young author's mind with the years that followed, until in his present book one looks in vain for any trace of respect for Scripture in sight into early human history; though finding extraordinary venera- tion for almost anything inscribed by idolatrous Egyptians, and remarkable aptitude, too, for entering into such matter and discussing it on apparently equal terms with the highest of the modern Egyptologists themselves. Let us hasten on, however, now to see, in the first place, how the exterior of the Great Pyra- mid looks when illuminated by the light of this new authority, subjected only occasionally to a word of the very mildest doubt, or simplest question. Chap. I.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 19 PART II. (Bxtcrtor of the feat CHAPTER I. SHAPE OF GREAT PYRAMID. THE first point for practical knowledge touching any regular four-sided Pyramid is its shape, or its proportions in the only mode in which any such Pyramid abstractly, may differ from another. That most important quality is wrapped up in the expression for, or amount of, the one entirely dominant angle of each of its sides; and there John Taylor's deductions for the Great Pyramid, from Howard Yyse's measures, remains still 'untouched. For Mr. F. P. declares his own direct measures of it to give, with remarkable certainty, for the angle of rise of its sides 51 52' H^ 2'; and this includes John Taylor's angle, while it excludes the far different angles of all the other principal Pyramids of Egypt, so far as Mr. F. P. or anyone else has measured or re-measured them. There is not known, therefore, a sinjrle other Pyramid throughout Eg which has the same angle of shape as the one, and only, Great Pyramid ; and that an angle profound in its meaning, through pure mathematics and applied physics as well. Said angle was also constructed at the Great Pyra- 20 NEW MEASUKES OF [Part II. mid with a degree of perfection and solidity in its 11 casing-stones " (long lost to view under heaps of rubbish, but recently in part uncovered again), which cannot fail to draw the respect of all well-educated and good scientific men ; for, says Mr. F. P., fully con- firming thereby the praise of Colonel Howard Vyse, nearly half-a-century ago, touching the very same stones: " Several measures were taken of the thickness of the joints of the casing-stones. The Eastern joint of the Northern casing-stones is on the top '020, '002, '045 (of an inch only) wide; and on the face, '012, '022, -013, and '014 (of an inch) wide.* The next joint is, on the face, 'Oil and '014 wide. Hence the mean thickness of the joints there is *020; and therefore the mean variation of the cut- ting of the stone from a straight line, and from a true square, is but '01 in a length of 75 inches up the face, an .amount of accuracy equal to most modern opticians' straight- edges of such a length. These joints, with an area of some 35 square feet each, were not only worked as finely as this, but cemented throughout. Though the stones were brought as close as T ^ 7 inch, or, in fact, into contact, and the mean opening of the joint was but T V inch, yet the builders managed to fill the joint with cement, despite the great area of it, and the weight of the stone to be moved some sixteen tons. To merely place such stones in exact contact at the sides, would be careful work; but to do so with cement in the joints seems almost impossible." * Whenever Mr. F. P. introduces any numerals of linear measure- ment in his book, without stating the name of the unit or standard employed, he explains that inches are to be understood. This was a method introduced, I believe, by myself, in dealing with the Great Pyramid in 1865, and has since then been followed by so many writers, that I presume they must have found the inch a peculiarly suitable unit of measure for that building, ~- / 9 i. t/.- Chap. I.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 21 In fact, there never were such exemplary casing- stones as these of the Great Pyramid, so superbly large, and so marvellously accurate, erected anywhere else, whether in Egypt or in any other land, either before or since ; while for anyone to contrast them, the earliest positively known examples, with the puny, perishing casing-stones, or, in some instances, mere sun- dried bricks, of any of the subsequent Egyptian Pyra- mids, miserably executed at last, must cut most poignantly into the pride of all the advocates of progressive development by the forces of man alone, among the rationalistic, and generally natural-history, philosophers of our day. 22 NEW MEASURES OF [Part II. CHAPTER II. BASE SIZE OF GREAT PYRAMID. HERE Mr. F. P. has something very new and unexpected; for he brings out two widely diverse base-side lengths, each of which requires to be treated as a separate and distinct existency. They are, in fact, so very different one from the other, as to seem to establish that there were intended to be two ways or modes of judging of the size and perhaps the symbolism of the monument. The shorter of these two lengths is far shorter than anything named in modern times, being only 9,069 inches long (p. 39), and has been obtained by measuring the Pyramid in a different manner to anyone else viz., by referring t to the surface of a certain hitherto rather problem- \ * v atic bit of raised pavement, openly seen as yet only on f-. a small portion of the North side. But similarly * elevated portions, near the centres of the other sides, - having been apparently sounded by sinking temporary .^narrow and dangerous* holes down through the enor- Srmous rubbish heaps lying now, and for a thousand 4 years past, upon these sides, their level has been c* carried by calculation round the whole Pyramid, y * On the rubbish heap of the South side the hole was so particu- \ larly dangerous, from the looseness of the material it was carried k through, and the frequent falling in of tons of it, that " no one but negroes would work in it at last." THE GREAT PYRAMID. 23 though manifestly high above the corners, or ends of each actual base-side. And the inevitable consequence of measuring a Pyramid with sloping flanks on a newly-assumed higher level, is, of course, to cut further into its figure, and bring out thereby a shorter so- called base-side length than those who had always pre- viously, and for very good reasons, measured it at a lower level. Now, such a lower level is most authoritatively offered at the Great Pyramid by its four corner-sockets sunk into the rock; and ever since John Taylor's happy identification of the verse in Job xxxviii. 6 (aided by the marginal translation) with the building of the Great Pyramid, and its sockets made to sink, or the foundations fastened, in or upon rock the majority of explorers have been firm in maintaining that the actual, and still socket-defined, corners of the base in the solid, living foundational rock bearing the monument, are the ancient architect's intended fidu- cial points for defining the true size, or full base-side measure, of his grand work of all the ages. Indeed, a friend who happily assisted at some of the recent uncovering work at the middle of the North side has voluntarily written to me: "The pavement is there; but there seemed to me to be no obligation to measure the base-side length, for the determination of the whole measurement of the building, in the obtuse and most untoward angles of its (the pavement's) sides meeting those of the Pyramid. It appeared to me that the real fiducial points were in the corner casing-stones, once fitted into the socket-holes, but now srone." 24 NEW MEASURES OF [Part II. Measuring, therefore, on the said empty socket-holes, for they fortunately are not gone, and are not stamped out of existence yet, though most lamentably left for years uncovered and to be trodden under foot by visitors of every nation measuring, I say, upon them, but always under extreme and gratuitous practical diffi- culties, different persons have obtained during the present century varied, though yet converging, quantities for the base-side length i.e., anywhere between 9,110 and 9,168 inches; theorists generally using 9,140 inches, the result of a weighted mean of the individual measures. These, then, are the figures to be compared with the larger of the two base-sides arrived at by Mr. F. P.; and he confirms the honesty of his predecessors, though claiming greater accuracy, by arriving at a length, for the mean of the four sides of the monument, numbering 9,126 British inches. Now, as to his first, or very small, Base-side length, which is equally for the mean of the four sides of the Pyramid, but measuring them at a higher level; sup- pose for the mere temporary and rather trifling purpose of comparison in size with all other known Egyptian Pyramids, we take that shortest possible length that any one could attribute to the Great Pyramid viz., 9,069 British inches. Then, as the second Pyramid only claims a base-side length of 8,475 inches, as measured by Mr. F. P. himself (p. 201), and all other known Pyramids, by all the measurers, fall rapidly below that, and even down to a few hundred inches only at last the Great Pyramid is left unquestionably for size the facile princeps of all human architectural creations of that kind. Of fat. Chap. II.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 25 But for grander comparisons of the Great Pyramid with nature, and to arrive at the primeval architect's highest ideal, or possibly inspired wisdom i.e., thoughts above his thoughts implanted into his mind for a purpose unknown to him we can take no other than the Scripture-justified, socket-defined, base-side length; and that, accordiug.to Mr. F. P., is 9,126, and not 9,140, British inches long. How then does such new length answer to the theory commenced by John Taylor? That theory for the last 15 years has claimed three illustrative commensurabilities in nature viz., (1) the number of days in a year, in terms of an evenly earth- commensurable standard of length, the sacred cubit, equal to one ten-millionth of the earth's semi-axis of rotation; (2) the elder William Petrie's magnificent theorem of the Pyramid-shewn mean distance of the sun from the earth; and (3), the double-crossing diagonal representation of that Grand Cycle, or clock of ages for the history of man upon earth, the pre- cession of the equinoxes, in terms of a Pyramid inch to a year. Not that any person held that one and the same exact quantity, number, or length for the base-side could express each and every one of these three most different things in the cosmos of God perfectly; and for all the ages of time past, present, and future. But that, for representing the Earth, during the present period of the existence of Adamic man upon its sur- face, they converged so nearly, so near even to mixing up with the unavoidable errors of modern measure- ment, as in conjunction with other features of the c 26 NEW MEASURES OF [Part II. building, to lead any properly-regulated and highly- instructed mind to believe that the triple indication was intended. And might also have been adapted to each case, and to almost any exactitude, by certain small additions to, or subtractions from, the one grand, mean, and over-all base-side length of 9,12G, or 9,140 inrVipe; )n*-oAc.*+ " (**+-**""(* '+ CAtt+AiX&i <*"*+*** **nfi mcueb. ^^ ^^J^m^iMwAfc, fC-Kf. ***~^ '& a: n*f*J*& Now there are precisely sucn subsidiary differences, and such indicated small quantities, or as it were private markings, at the place, well attested by all recent explorers; and which no Egyptologist has yet explained otherwise, between one socket and another, in both shape, size, level, and tool marks. Differences, too, they are. quite large enough in themselves to cover all the errors which modern science, with its own very varying results, never absolutely agreeing together for anything practical, might be inclined to suggest in the Pyramid numbers for each of the three presentations. Whether such a use of these supplementary little features was really intended by the supposed divinely- inspired architect, in a primeval age, it is out of our power to ascertain very directly now. But the following illustration may be picked up on p. 200 of Mr. F. P.'s own book, showing admirably the very striking practical power of these markings to effect such adaptations. For there we read that, whereas the Royal Engineers, in 1874, did measure the South side of the socket-defined base-side length of the Great Pyramid, and published it as 9,140 inches long, he, venturing to consider that the socket-mark they measured from was not the right socket-mark for that purpose, and having chosen another for himself, sub- Chap. II.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. / tracted 17'5 inches from their measure, and republishes it as approximating to his own, or being 9122^5 inches only; while, if they were to assume the power of * applying the 17-5 to his 9,126, there would be a base- side length of 9143'5 British-inches. So that here, also, there is nothing that need be at this time altered or erased from the older accounts, giving mainly 9,140 British, or 9,131 Pyramid-inches, together with the diverse socket corrections, for the base-side length of the Great Pyramid. While ex- planatory of those socket corrections, something further will be found, from a most independent and unbiassed source viz., the Rev. H. G. "Wood's (Sharon, Penn- sylvania, U.S.) excellent paper on that subject, in our Appendix, Part 3. For the present, therefore, we may readily excuse, in a young author, a little shortcoming in the correct weighing, and full estimation of the effects, as well as the intentions, of those minute and most recondite, ancient, details, in reward for two, if not three, excel- lent things which he, Mr. F. P., has performed, touching a different class of questions at the Great Pyramid questions too most violently disputed hith- erto by both Egyptologists and rationalists, and l') (2.) . touching not only its age and topographical situation with reference to other Egyptian monuments ; but also its powers for chronicling the rate of change in the position of the axis of the world, as well. 28 NEW MEASURES OF [Part II. CHAPTER III. RELATIVE AGE OF GREAT PYRAMID, COMPARED WITH ALL OTHER EGYPTIAN REMAINS IN ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. TO all those who hold John Taylor's Great Pyra- mid views, and have recognised in the " sudden, as well as early, appearance " in history of the best- built and mightiest building throughout Egypt and the world, the phenomenon of a something quite different from the ordinary unassisted course of mere human progressive development, a severe blow and dire discouragement was sought to be administered a few years ago by M. Mariette Bey, the French Minister of Antiquities in Cairo, and the Egyptologists. For they announced triumphantly the discovery of a most ancient hieroglyphic-inscribed stone-tablet on the Pyramid-hill, setting forth in indubitable terms, that that biggest of idols, the Sphinx, and some other buildings near it, were all of them far older than the Great Pyramid; and that the latter grand building, in spite of its so long known blameless walls and pure architecture, was yet devoted in its origin, by those who were its seniors, masters, and originators, to the idolatrous worship of Isis, Osiris, Khem, Bast, and all the rankest profanity and oppositions to the God of Israel, ever practised by the servants of Pharaoh, and Chap. Ill] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 29 hitherto supposed to have been invented only in the latter days of ancient Egypt. It was allowed by some that the story was rather too bizarre to be entirely trusted; but the opportunity could not be lost. So the disturbing tablet was set up with honour in the Khedive's Museum at Boolak; and influenced, doubtless, the minds of many European visitors against both the antiquity of the Great Pyramid and the chronology of the Bible. But on his pp. 156-7, Mr. F. P. relates that, by aid of further excavations on the Pyramid-hill, at the same isolated, petty, ruined little building, where the first inscription was found, as part of the lining of the walls of an interior room, other stones of the same set have since then been found, and prove, on rigid analysis, that they were one and all the work of King Petuk- hanu, of the very late, or Twenty-first Dynasty; and that one only came into existence some 1,500 years, at least, after the building, completion, and sealing up of the Great Pyramid in the time of the Fourth Dynasty, when Cheops was king. Mr. F. P. further declares that these wretched stones are of no authority for any earlier time than their own very late period; that no trace of a Sphinx in statuary, tablets, or inscriptions, is to be found in any of the genuine remains of the old Empire of Egypt, or on anything Egyptian, until the later Hyksos period, say of the Tenth or Eleventh Dynasties ; and that these most mischievous Boolak Museum inscriptions are comparatively very modern concocted stories, inventions, novels, or romances; wretchedly scratched into, or merely scribbled on stone surfaces; "a degradation," he positively says, 30 NEW MEASURES OF [Part II. " of the decadence of the twentieth," for the mere mural decoration, (something like wall-paper hangings) of a small temple of the usurping Twenty-first Dynasty. I had myself arrived at, and published* a nearly similar conclusion as to the worthlessness and posthu- mous character of the first Boolak Museum inscribed stone; but this more extensive and learned condemna- tion of both it and its history by an Egyptologist, will be far more convincing, it is to be hoped, to the world at large. Mr. F. P. does indeed also most frankly admit that when Cheops (Khufu, or Shofo), of the Fourth Dynasty, began his unequalled monument of " the Great Pyramid," the hill of Grizeh was bare of, and unoccupied by, any building. He was the first comer, therefore, and in that capacity had free choice of that hill's top ; and found it the most striking site for a grand monument presented by all that line of country for leagues and leagues along the Western side of Egypt. This quality, too, must have been more especially the case for the Northern precipitous brink of the hill, so very (almost dangerously) close to which Khufu chose to lay the foundations of his enormous structure. ^ All the other, and subsequent, Gizeh Pyramids? temples, and tombs had, therefore, necessarily to be built to the Southward of his Northernmost one; a circumstance which has led many writers to expatiate * " Oar Inheritance in the Great Pyramid." Fourth Edition, pp. 508-512. Chap. III.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 31 on Northerly position indicating superior age amongst Egyptian Pyramids. One notable exception, indeed, was occasionally cited to this theory, in that the so-called Pyramid of Abu Roash was N. N.-West of the Great Pyramid by a good many miles. That further Northing was a fact most patent to everybody, for something like a commencement of a Pyramid was certainly visible there. But if only a commencement, only a mere flat area of building-stones, how could such a surface be called, either logically, mechanically, or mathematically, a " Pyramid "? argued some stiff reason ers ; who, there- fore, would not allow that it interfered in any way with the long-finished Great Pyramid, being the Northern- most and most ancient of all the real, architectural, Pyramids of Egypt. But Mr. F. P. ingeniously and creditably removes the ground for that argument by further facts ; and yet brings them all to bear finally, and still more powerfully, towards the same end as before, in this rather startling manner. By personal visit to, and examination of, the ruins (or remnants, rather), he deduces that the Abu Roash Pyramid must have been in its own day completely finished in full pyramidal figure; cased, too, with granite in the most expensive manner, and furnished inside with sarcophagus, mummy, and diorite statue of its king. But he was one, who was not only later than Cheops of the Great Pyramid, but subsequent even to King Mencheres, of the third and {Southernmost Pyramid of Gizeh. He was, in fact, King Men-ra 32 NEW MEASUKES OF [Part II and who, objecting to build for himself a fourth pyra- mid at Gizeh because, if in the line continued of the first, second, and third, his predecessors, it would have been off the hill-top Southward struck out in a totally different quarter, or on the high land in the North-West, now called by the Arabs, Abu Koash. But it proved somehow to be the Worst place that ever man chose to build his would-be immortalising monument upon ; as, from a very early period in Egyptian history, that unhappy building became the object of most inveterate attack and despoil to the Egyptians themselves (see Mr. F. P.'s pp. 140-142, 151, 152). The granite casing, he says, was stripped off, broken to pieces, and carried away ; the core masonry pulled to bits and removed ; the carefully lined chambers, the granite sarcophagus, and the diorite statue, were all turned out into the open. " Everything," Mr. F. P. more particularly adds, "has been smashed with the greatest care. The wrought granite has been mainly burnt and powdered, and the surfaces of the statue were bruised to pieces before it was broken up, with a vehemence of destruction, and patient, hard-working vengeance " which it is difficult to account for. Through the times of the Ptolemies the wrecking went on, and is even being prosecuted still " at the rate of 300 camel-loads a day during the season." Until, ol an ancient though not the most ancient Egyptian Pyramid, more than 300 feet broad at the base, almost the entire substance has been removed. And in a very few years more the Great Pyramid on its own hill at Gizeh will look forth over the expanse Chap. III.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 33 of the Delta Northward, North-westward, and North- eastward, without the shade of a rival, even of any long subsequent age, to dispute its pre-eminence in that world's surface central position it fills so well and has filled so long.* Some persons have indeed attempted from time to time to undervalue the Great Pyramid as any object of importance in itself alone, and have tried to connect it Southward and backward from its own place, with all the posse of Egyptian and certainly idolater-built Pyramids behind it. But Mr. F. P. has been privi- leged to show (p. 125) by his most careful measures and grand triangulation that the position, angles and distances of these other Pyramids have no regularity or exact relations. And further, that "from the nature and appearance of the ground, and the ir- regularity of the peribolus walls, it would not seem likely that any connection had been planned." * " Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid," edition iv., pp. 72 84. 34 NEW MEASURES OF [Part II. CHAPTER IV. CHANGE IN THE POSITION OF THE WORLD'S AXIS OF ROTATION SINCE THE GREAT PYRAMID WAS FOUNDED. BUT with respect to the astronomical emplacement of the architecture of each principal Pyramid in itself alone, a most remarkable result is brought out. I had already set forth that there is a defalcation in the latitude of the Great Pyramid, as required by theory of old, and given by observations now.* Such, too. that it would imply a change in the same direction, and not greater in amount with the time elapsed, than a certain minute alteration of a not very clearly understood, or as yet generally acknowledged kind, that must have been going on during the last hundred years in all Europe; though certainly observed and instrumentally recorded only at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Also that there is an error of something like 5 minutes of a degree in the orientation of both the socket-lines, and the vertical passage-planes of the Great Pyramid, which may have its explanation in the same way, by a slow movement of the axis of rotation of the earth within itself. But the idea was condemned fifteen years ago by the great mathematical physicists of the time, who *"Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid," edition iv. pp. 72 84. Chap. IV.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 35 had proved, society said, the fixity of the earth's axis of rotation within its own snbstance " to be equal to the stiffness of a column of hammered steel." While other rationalistic scientists pointed with delight to the demonstration they said I had myself furnished that the Great Pyramid hill not being in the required latitude, divine inspiration could not have had any hand in planning and procuring the erection of that building. For God, added they very confidently, would have taken care to provide a hill in exactly the right place, and not have been content to use one which was merely the nearest to it. Yet now Mr. Flinders Petrie remarkably confirms and extends my view, that though the hill is not in the required latitude now, by 1' 9", nor the building cor- rectly oriented by full 5 ' of angle, yet both features may have been true and correct at the time of the Pyramid's foundation, to at least 12" of space, or a smaller quantity than is usually reckoned visible to the un- assisted eye. And he further even ventures (p. 127) to approximately compute the force and the work of unbalanced ocean currents which are in action at this very moment, and finds them sufficient to produce the effects observed. Wherefore here, through means of the Great Pyramid and the modern scientific examinations of it prompted by John Taylor's theory of its truly sacred character in Hebrew and Christian light is brought into view a slow movement of the earth's axis of rotation, which modern knowledge ought to have discovered of itself long ago, and will have very soon to make some remarkable confessions about. 36 NEW MEASUKES OF [Part II. Enough, however, at present of the exterior of this most unique Great Pyramid building; for its still more important interior, under the same new and sup- posed destructive illumination by a new measurer, awaits us. Chap. I] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 37 PART III. Interior of the dreat CHAPTER I. BEARINGS OF THE BASE-SIDE THEREON. ON changing from our late topic of the exterior, to the new one of the interior, of the Great Pyramid, much praise is due to Mr. Flinders Petrie for his grand handling of the measures made by himself, and his apparently accurate connections of the ancient outside, restored, with the existing inside of the building produced so as to meet it. Bearing in mind, however, that he is tacitly assuming the upper surface of the central bitjrf pavement on the North side, and not the socket-corners of the base, as the and only level to be always referred to. ^E^X 3 "^ For when he does that, he of course brmglou^ combination with the admitted angle of the exterior, a different height and different weight for the Pyramid from what his predecessors have done. Besides giving rise to plenty of anomalies amongst details hitherto described as coincidences, between measures of length or breadth inside, against others outside the Pyramid viewed in the light of certain important ratios. Hence it is quite needless to follow him through the numerous cases in the latter part of his book, where 38 NEW MEASUKES OF [Part III. the errors upon errors he charges on the theorists who have preceded him, are largely explained by his using a different base-side length to theirs, and one which does not tell the whole facts of the Pyramid. It would, therefore, have been far more satisfactory for his character if he had given the results of each equation, not only for his extra short 9,069, but also for his 9,126 inch base-side, as well as perhaps for the 9,140 inch, both of the Royal Engineers which he erased, and of previous writers whom he is trying to refute. Something of this kind of more than single founda- tion, too, is one of the first reactions which we may learn, and he has learnt from his own measures, of the interior on the exterior Of the Great Pyramid. For on his p. 221 he allows, agreeably with Mr. James Simp- son's and my own representations, that there are two heights for the King's Chamber one, the wall height, and the other the height between the ceiling and the floor, different from the other by about five inches, on account of the floor being raised up to that amount inside the granite walls above their bases. For that method of building Mr. F. P. admits " some reasons must have existed;" and he very commendably en- deavours to find, as Mr. James Simpson did before him, a geometrical ideal and intellectual justification for each of them. The matters, however, more immediately to be discussed by us will not be sensibly influenced from the exclusive adoption, by anyone, of this or that particular base-side lens-th. Chap. II.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 39 CHAPTER II. UNFINISHED SUBTERRANEAN CHAMBER ANTAGONISES EGYPTOLOGICAL THEORIES OF MODERN TIMES. 1/URST, for instance, in this department comes that JD most strange fact, so subversive of Professor Lepsius' and other Egyptologists' favourite " law of Pyramid building " viz., that in place of the Sub- terranean Chamber of the Great Pyramid being, as invariably with the other subsequent and perfectly Egyptian structures of that kind, the first thing completed at the building of a Pyramid, and forming- the very object for the honourable covering of which, as a place of sepulture, the whole edifice was to be afterwards erected by slow additions above ground, year after year; said Subterranean Chamber at the Great Pyramid was never even attempted to be finished or brought into any condition for possible use, or for lodging a sarcophagus in, even for a day or an hour. The vast size, moreover, of that unique monument, the Great Pyramid, is shown by Mr. Flinders Petrie, by aid of a new set of arguments, Egyptological mainly and specially valuable to the Taylor anti- theory on that account, to^have been planned and laid out of that full size, or according to him 9,126 inches from socket to socket, from the first: and by no means 40 NEW MEASURES OF [Part III. to have been a result of slow accretion upon a small nucleus of a dozen or two of stones, and dependent for its final agglomerated size on the accidental duration of life of a single individual, according to the so-called " law," imagined for the ancients by a few modern doctrinarHsT" Chap. III.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 41 i o V? ^ 2 CHAPTER III. THE SYSTEM OF PASSAGES EQUALLY ANTAGONISES THEM. BUT the Sloping Passage, some 4,000 and more 3 7 ^ inches long, leading down to that only com- 3 ^5- - menced, never finished, subterranean room, was beau- tifully built at its upper, outer, end . Furnished, too, at* 1 the very top, and flush with the outside surface of the Pyramid with a closely-fitting stone door hung on horizontal stone pivots, or Strabo's movable stone; and cut off from the rest of the interior, and its peculiar ascending system of Passages, by solid-looking masonry, which told no secrets to any man or nation until three thousand years had passed away. For then, in the hearing of Caliph Al Mamun's workmen, who were rudely breaking a way for them- selves through the limestone core-masonry of the building, a prism-shaped stone fell out of the roof of the descending Entrance Passage (which was much closer to them at that moment than they had been aware of) and disclosed, when they rushed in, that another Passage ascended into the interior from that point ; but had its lower end plugged with, to them, and to all other men also since them, immovable blocks of granite. All this, however, is the old, old story of John Taylor's Great Pyramid theory, except the neat sup- 42 NEW MEASURES OF [Part III. plying of the door in the casing by Mr. Flinders Petrie; and which is not only likely enough, but is probably from its having fitted close and got jammed after the days of the Romans the very reason why the Mohammedans, under the Eastern Caliph, did not attempt to enter the Pyramid in the right way by the " door," but broke in through the solid masonry below and on one side, like the thieves and robbers they were. Breaking their violent way also round the granite blocks, still to this day plugging the lower end of the Ascending Passage; and then, whether there were many, or few, more plug-stones above those we still see in place, these fanatics got rid of them somehow or other, as by breaking and extraction, until they found the way clear before them up through the rest of that white-lined Passage. Thence, on the level of its upper opening, they rushed forward to the Queen's Chamber; next, by the still further Ascending Grand Gallery, to the Ante-Chamber; and then to the final King's Chamber of red granite, with the Coffer of the same material as its only contents, notwith- standing the noble size and finish of the apartment. The general structure, closeness, and regularity of the joints in both the King's and the white-stoned Queen's Chambers, frequently comes in for Mr. Flinders Petrie's high praise; though the building of the passages between, (Mr. Waynman Dixon's girdle- stones of the first Ascending Passage excepted) is blamed for much rough and bad work. Some of it, indeed, as at the North end of the Ante-Chamber, being even declared so bad, as if it had been to show how badly, instead of how well, as with the casing-stones, Chap. III.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 43 (p. 20) Great Pyramid builders could build. While the Well leading down from the North-west corner of the Grand Gallery, through the Grotto, to the lower sub- terranean part of the long sloping Entrance Passage. is stigmatised as very poor performance indeed. But the whole of these Ascending Passages and Chambers are allowed by Mr. Flinders Petrie to form a system, the like of which is known to exist nowhere else. That is, nowhere else adopted into a Pyramid; for the peculiar " trial passages " cut into the rock North-east of the Great Pyramid, duly mentioned by me and first pictured by Colonel Howard Vyse, are recognised by him to be a reality; and an astonishingly close record, too, of breadths and transverse heights of both the Passages, the Grand Gallery, and its ramps; in everything, in fact, except one namely, the vertical shaft between the Ascending and Descending systems of inclined ways; and why that vertical shaft is there, no Egyptologist has yet been able to explain. So giving up the more difficult task of interpreting that primeval monumentalisation of so much that is rich and rare in noble thought, on the John Taylor hypothesis, our new author proceeds to the far easier task of finding fault with some of my mensurations in 1865. 44 NEW MEASURES OF [Part III. CHAPTER IV. ASSERTED ERRORS IN C. P. S.'s GREAT PYRAMID PASSAGE MEASURES. MY angular measures of these remarkable con- structions, indeed, are usually left very nearly intact; but the linear measures are declared to have a small, slowly-increasing error, due to measuring with loose rods on the sloping floor surface of dark passages; while at one particular place in them it is asserted my rods must have slipped, and a length really of 2, inches been mistakenly reported as 2,170. Though a most useful and in itself salutary correc tion, that new figure is fortunately of no influence to anything theoretically important; especially ;8e*- as I had already set forth in print, that the 2,170 looked like an accidental coincidence with a certain other 2,170 number, and was closer than warranted by the circumstances under which the measuring was performed; while the 2.173 may now be just as readily adopted as the 2,170, for any purpose I have used the latter for. And if it is further asserted in the new book that the Grand Gallery of the Pyramid is really 1883-6, and not as I had made it, 1882-8, British inches long, I am equally ready to accept that correction also. For while whoever likes may look on 1882-8 as Chap. IV.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 45 enormously and even shamefully erroneous, he must at least confess it far less discrepant from the new result, than the three mensurations previous to mine ; as they gave out 1,896, 1,872, and 1,824 of the same inch units. Indeed the whole case may serve most usefully to show, without any abstruse mathematics, that the \S[orld is now getting very close to the true size of the Great Pyramid, both in its whole and its parts. And I find myself most happily relieved from too great a weight of responsibility for any one person to bear ; viz., to be the one and only measurer who has hitherto published the numbers for certain parts of the Great Pyramid; on which numbers so many ingenious persons in every Anglo-Saxon, country, colony, or com- munity throughout the world have been framing theories during the last eighteen years, and relying too implicitly, as I have so often had to tell them^ on my figures being exact to a. degree far beyond anything that I had ever claimed or believed. d 3 3 A ~ f ' 46 NEW MEASURES OF [Part III. CHAPTER Y. THE SAME TOUCHING THE KING'S CHAMBER MEASURES. L ET us now proceed to the chief work of the whole interior viz., the granite King's Chamber, as a mensuration test. What is the length of that most notable Chamber? " Very various/' Mr. Flinders Petrie might probably answer; and from a remarkable plate (xiii. and pages 79 and 80), wherein he shows the Chamber's errors (though largely produced by mediaeval earth-quake shocks, and a settling of the ground), concentrated on a plan of his own, multiplied 50 times, and looking, therefore, horrible, he would make its length at the top, close under the ceiling = 412-01; and at the floor 412'66; I having made it in 1865, at a few inches above the floor, = 412*54 British inches. Wherefore, if the room was only intended for fune- real or tombic purposes, that was coming closer than there was any practical occasion for. But if it was also intended by the architect thereby to indicate the size of the exterior, socket-defined, base-side of the whole building by the theorem based on the John Taylor system of explanation (see pp. 198 200 and plate xxi. of " Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid," 4th edition), the measures are still close enough. For the required quantities are within the limits given by Mr. F. P. so nicely, that while we Chap.V.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 47 find the 9,140 socket-defined length usefully and prac- tically symbolised near the floor, and shorter ones higher up; his extra short 9,069 length at his level of the central piece of pavement produced sideways and above the actual corners, may be sought for up towards the nearly impossible ceiling. But will only be found by producing the converging lines of the walls both above the ceiling, and into the dark lofts of the so-called chambers of construction. In fact it is not acknowledged by the open symbolisms of that most authoritative "King's Chamber." 48 NEW MEASURES OF [Part III. CHAPTER VI. THE COFFER MEASURES. fTHHE grand attack, however, on behalf of Egypt- JL. ology and its exclusively tombic associations of idolatrous kings where a Pyramid is concerned, is delivered by the new measurer on the " Coffer." That mere sarcophagus in the eyes of Egyptologists was, according to John Taylor,the type of a primitive mensuration vessel, of whose cubic contents the old Anglo-Saxon quarter was anciently the fourth part. And though it has some slight, and easy to be eliminated by calculation, cuttings into its original or full geometrical shape, for apparently burial purposes; andjnay_even have been used, whether directly or sym- bolically, for and as such, in the mediaeval times of the EgyptianTpeople,it is~yet a very remarkable mensura- tion-looking vessel. This quality arising not only from its figure and the proportions of its parts, but also from the absence of all inscription, figuring, or orna- ments. And now we further learn something of the striking manner in which, at its most remote age, long before written history, it was positively sawed out of extra hard, dense, and syenitic granite, by huge bronze saws more than eight feet long, armed along their cutting edges with teeth of sapphires, according to the exceedingly ingenious speculations of Mr. Flinders Chap. VI.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 49 Petrie; and the interior drilled out by similarly jewelled tubular Drills, three feet long, and worked with stupendous power. He set to work, therefore, on a more particularly mensuration critique with zeal extraordinary; making off-set measures from no less than " 388 points on the outside to 281 on the inside, or 669 in all, besides taking 281 caliper measures " (p. 84). Magnificently accurate results would this have given had it been performed 4,000 years ago, on the then whole and entire vessel. But it has not the power, and Mr. Flinders Petrie's description does by no means enable his readers, to realise the fearful amount of the substance of the vessel which has been broken out and carried away at some past time or times, long before he came to measure it. He may be the best measurer that has ever appeared at the Great Pyramid, and his measures may, or as he not obscurely informs the world, must be, the only ones to be employed in future Pyramid investigations, not only of a single isolated block such as the Coffer, but of congeries of blocks, most of which are now cracked, broken, or separated by excessive pressure, or failing foundation, or seismic violence, or earth changes out of the precise relations in which they once stood to each other. And yet some persons on the other side, with these facts before them, will go on maintaining that where much material of an ancient and otherwise unknown form has been long since removed, lost is lost, and gone is gone so completely that no modern and merely mechanical measuring process, applied with ever so much microscopic minutiae 50 NEW MEASURES OF [Part III, of care, to what remains, can pretend to be perfectly capable of exactly restoring it all. Such, however, as Mr. Flinders Petrie found and measured and then added to by calculation, or assump- tion for the lost parts, he gives thus for the " Coffer " tested as a mensuration vessel (p. 90) : " By employing mean planes, contents =72,030; solid bulk of the containing sides and bottom =70,500; volume over all, 142,530, or " By caliper results, the bulk is 5 8 more and the contents probably 1( J) less ; hence the quantities would be: " Contents 71,960; solid bulk 70,630; volume over all, 142,590 British cubic inches." Now as the half-volume of the whole block, or outside of the Coffer, is from the last of the above statements = 71,295 British cubic inches, there evidently might be theoretically a hollow space cut out of said block equal to that number of inches, while it should leave exactly the same number of them in the substance of the vessel's sides and bottom. But if any modern gentleman even of university education or of secret Free Masonry craft, will try really to cut out such a hollow, from just such a sized block of hardest granite as the 142,590 Coffer block once was, the probabilities are that he will not succeed in accomplishing his task with perfect exactitude; while, if he thus makes the hollow too large, the certainty is, that the remaining substance of the vessel will be too small. Something, too, of that very kind appears to have actually occurred in this case, not only from the inside hollow being declared by Mr. Flinders Petrie to be 71,960, against the remaining substance only 70,630; Chap. VI.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 51 but from his having discovered traces of the vertical drills employed having gone awry, and cut out more of the interior substance than they ought to have done. His two diverse numeral quantities being thus rather curiously like the two values of the chaldron, or four quarters of corn, old Anglo-Saxon and British, as they are given by John Taylor in his Pyramid book for, first the earliest, and then the latest, certifiable Royal authority in this land viz., Henry III. and George IV., seeing that in the former's reign four quarters measured legally 71,680, and in the latter's 70,982 cubic British inches. That double and diverging result, however, is not enough for the present enquiry, seeing that neither one nor other of those kings, nor the mean between them is early enough in the absolute history of the human race to represent the Anglo-Saxon primitive institutions on their first, and by some supposed Divinely assisted, immigration into England from their remote places of Eastern origin and travel. While on the John Taylor theory, duly developed by reference both to our Planet Earth's now known size and density, combined with what has already been ascertained of Great Pyramid methods and numeration, the proper cubic contents for_the_ Coffer have been for several years past taken to be * = 71,250 Pyramid, = 71,464 British, cubic inches^ How then is this larger quantity than Mr. Flinders Petrie's mean = 71,295 of the latter units to be obtained from the Coffer, as he measured it; and for bulk of material, as well as contents ? The answer is, by duly attending to the different * " Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid." Fourth Edition, p. 180. 52 NEW MEASURES OF [Part III. lengths and jjreadths, Jbpth_,msMe and outside, at different levels. Or simply by dealing with the Coffer as we have already done with the King's Chamber con- taining it ; and as I have also already had to do in the far easier matter of linear measure, with the grand example of an almost perfect specimen of a casing- stone of the Great Pyramid, generously presented to me by Mr. Waynman Dixon several years ago.* That method may be described as the principle of limits ; or by not adopting exclusively either the mean measures or the one or other extreme measures at the top or at the bottom of the Coffer; the upper one being_ certainly greater, and the lower one certainly less, than theTheoretical quantity indicated ; butjby measuring^ at a ce^aindisjaj.c^jDL^r_j.pjwn_tbe^ nearly straight sidelT between thosejimits^pf^ excess, and defect. For there, the absolutely true quantity does, and must, exist; and no errors of a faithful, or treacheries of an un- believing and traitorous, workman can possibly prevent it. Hence by measuring the interior of the Coffer, as it stands on the floor of the King's Chamber, at a rather lower level than the mean, we should find it represent a cubical content reduced from 71,960 to 71,464; and by measuring the exterior rather higher than its mean horizontal plane, we should find it represent a larger block, or one whose half size would be increased from 71,295 up to the same 71,464. While, if it be objected by anyone that such an arrangement or principle, though effected by such * " Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid." Fourth Edition, p. 29. Chap. VI.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 53 small amounts of displacement of surface for the large sides of the Coffer as would be quite unnoticed by ordinary visitors, may prevent the Coffer being actu- ally used as a perfect vessel for measuring corn or any other commodity in a practical manner, and will leave it only as a type or symbol of the right size of measure to those duly instructed how to view it ; it may be answered, that such a principle is entirely agreeable to what has long since been established for the astronomy of the Entrance Passage of the whole Great Pyramid. Viz., that it was by no means intended by its architect to be a working observatory, but a silent and secure monumentalization of certain impor- tant astronomical facts of an early period, for the prophetic instruction, and a people's encouraging references after subversion of kingdoms, and death of languages, of another age and another concatenation of human affairs, destined to come long after it. 54 NEW MEASURES OF [Part XII. CHAPTER VII. ANTE-CHAMBER MEASURES. WITH similar approximating results we might go over all these new measures of the Ante- Chamber also; for there, the theoretical quantities, as hitherto stated for the John Taylor theory, seem always to be found among the lesser and greater measures which Mr. F. Petrie gets off the ruined, and dislocated, forms. Though instead of accepting them as in any way confirmatory thereof or, as I have so particularly set forth in "Our Inheritance," fourth edition, as a rude index to more exact things in the King's Chamber he prefers to inveigh against both the errors of the ancient work and the gullibility of modern theorists. This degrading insinuation is especially the case with the " boss " on the Granite Leaf. He allows there (p. 78) that the measures of its thickness are, some under, some over, the typical one inch; and of its breadth some under, some over, the five inches claimed for it ; says nothing about its characteristic eccentricity adjustment of one inch,* but considers he has smashed the whole theory by simply declaring that such a projection was a common feature left on granite blocks to assist in moving them; and he has found, by look- * " Our Inheritance," edit. 4. p. 208. Chap. VII] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 55 ing narrowly with a side light, traces of there having been once some much larger bosses on the granite stones in the King's Chamber. To all which we can calmly reply, that those bosses were, by Mr. F. P.'s own measures, neither of the right size, nor in the right places, to serve the intended metrological purpose of the one boss on the Granite Leaf. While as to a boss having been a common feature for the lifting of blocks in old Egyptian buildings ; that is exactly what has saved this one particular boss of the Ante-Chamber from peculiar and virulently directed Egyptologic destruction during the ages that are passed. Just as the numerous Egyptian burial Pyramids, round about, or near to, the one purer Great Pyramid with a subterranean chamber never soiled by a corpse, have saved it from Pharaonic devastation in past history; and enabled it faithfully to carry on to these last days a prophecy breathed into it of old for far other than Egyptian purposes, by inspiration from the God of Israel. 56 NEW MEASURES OF [Part III. CHAPTER VIII. THE HEBRAICALLY SACRED, EARTH-COMMENSURABLE, ANTI- EGYPTIAN CUBIT, OF 25 BRITISH INCHES NEARLY. IN the Queen's Chamber examinations of the new book, something rather morally instructive than anything else, exhibits itself. v O / For there, Mr. F. P. describes the grand " Niche," so-called, therein, as being, in its several parts, 3, or 2, or 1, or \ cubits broad; such cubit being always with him the cubit of idolatrous, Cainite, animal-worship- ping, ancient Egypt, 2O6 inches long, though with errors "of O66 to +O36 inches; while he intensifies that Egyptological finding of his, by adding thereto (p. 70), "and there is no evidence of a cubit of 25 inches here." This is doubtless in allusion to my having explained the remarkable eccentricity displacement of the whole Niche out of the middle of the Eastern wall of its Chamber (a displacement amounting by the measures of several critical explorers after me to 25-025 British inches)* as the most admirable and scientific method that could well be imagined, for representing one single, concrete example of a short standard of linear measure, in a perfectly inexpungible manner in a vast building erected in the midst of its enemies. * See p. 425 of " Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid," edit. 4. Chap. VIII.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 57 It was also a splendid illustration of the general metaphysical ruling of the John Taylor, Biblically sacred, theory of the Great Pyramid in its entirety viz., that though it was erected by Egyptian labourers, and even built to Egyptian measuring rods in each small step by step, it was yet caused in its whole result to bring out a purpose of an over-ruling Divine influ- ence, which, as I have dilated on years ago in " Our Inheritance," the Egyptians did not understand at the time, never came to understand through all their subsequent history, and would not have liked if they had understood it. So here, before our eyes, is an enthusiastic young modern Egyptologist, delighted to bring out the Cainite cubit of Old Egypt into honourable notice for small things; and after doing so, actually declaring in the midst of that white-stoned, seven-sided chamber (p. 70), " there is no evidence of a 25 inch cubit here." Although too he had himself just measured the eccen- tricity of the noble Niche, and found it, at its lower, larger, and most important section, 25'1 British inches; or, with a workman's error upon the sacred theory, seven times less than what he was agreeable to overlook when the identification of a profane cubit was con- cerned. What is not this, therefore, but the modern European Egyptologist falling into exactly the same pit of blindness and unbelief that was prepared for the native idolater of that country of old. He, that pure and perfect one in his own eyes, used the profane cubit in his own forced work at the Great Pyramid, and never saw that it was being over-ruled then and there- E 58 NEW MEASUKES OF [Part III. alone throughout Egypt, to bring out, in terms of the sacred cubit of Israel, the Bible, and the earth as formed by God for the residence of Adamic man, higher things than he and his co-false religionists had ever dreamt of. Hence I have nothing to alter with regard to what I have written through several years past, either on the Queen's Chamber Niche and its eccentricity Sacred Cubit by measure, or of the ancient Egyptians from the Biblical point of view, or yet of the tendency of modern Egyptological studies. In fact, this very clever book of Mr. Flinders Petrie supplies so many further examples of the same dan- gerous kind, that I should be hardly excusable before the public were I not to endeavour to point out the misleadings of two or three more of them, which may be, perhaps, of a still more fatal influence to those who incautiously embrace them. Chap. I.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 59 PART IV. Distort), axb anb profane. CHAPTER I. OF THE RESPECT DUE TO ANCIENT CLASSIC AUTHORS. IN the index of the new book, " Accuracy of Greek Travellers," figures for page 159, while both there and on page 161 we are told: " The accuracy of the descriptions of the Greek travellers deserves notice, as they are often much more accurate in their facts than modern writers." And then, having given examples, the following is appended: " Thus we see that there is in these historians an honesty and correctness in their descriptions, and a fulfilment of the amount of accuracy which they profess, which it would have been well for many, perhaps for most modern writers to have imitated." But what are the examples on which these conclu- sions are based? The following chiefly: 1. Herodotus is quoted for a base-side length of the Great Pyramid, which Mr. F. P. himself declares to be 53 feet in error. NEW MEASURES OF [Part IV. 2. Diodorus Siculus similarly for a length 47 feet in error. 3. Strabo, for a length which may be twice as much in error, and, 4. Pliny, for a base-side length said to be only \~x40 inches in error ; but as that is produced by gratui- I tously assuming a suitable length thereto for Pliny's nnknown foot standard, and as he was a Roman, his W\;ase may be paired off with that of Strabo, leaving | only Herodotus and Diodorus as the representatives of ^ those Greek travellers whose remarkable accuracy, it Z is said, most modern writers might have imitated with advantage. * Now, in their (the Greek travellers') day, the out- : side circuit of the Great Pyramid was clear of rubbish, * and plain and open to any measurement upon it; and * vet they erred by something amounting to 600 inches on one base-side length. The moderns, on the con- trary, ever since the discovery of the sockets, have 3 ^notwithstanding, too, the immense_rubbish-heaps, [ both now and ever since Mohammedan rule in Egypt began, fearfully encumbering the ground they have, I say, varied only between 9,110 and 9,168, or no more than 58 inches, for the same feature at their extremes; and for their averages, between 9,120 and 9,144, or by 24 inches only, and perhaps by less. What, therefore, can Mr. F. P., himself a man understanding and dealing in the accuracy of decimal fractions of an inch to many places of figures deep, what can he possibly be driving at by praising up the former men and their clumsy measures, as examples to the latter, who did their work by comparison most Chap. I.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 61 respectably! Can he, by giving so mnch exaggerated praise to the former's shockingly rough measures, be seeking to lead off attention from the gross neglect or contumely he treats the very same classic authors with in other matters; of a kind, too, where they were far better qualified to be authorities 1 That would seem impossible, when he thus still further speaks of the earlier of those two Greek writers, and in connection precisely with such verbal, personal, historical matters as he may, with propriety, be referred to as the best, as well as oldest, authority next to the Bible itself : " The accuracy with which Herodotus states what he saw, and relates what he heard; the criticism he often applies to his materials, and the care with which he distinguishes how much belief he gives to each report; all this should prevent our ever discrediting his words unless compelled to do so." Exactly; and how does Mr. F. P. act, after having laid down the above principle so indubitably ? He totally disbelieves Herodotus' account that the builder of the Great Pyramid was not buried in that monu- ment, and was buried a long way outside it, in a peculiar insulated position, deep in the rock, and surrounded by the waters of the Nile. That most peculiar tomb has actually been dis- covered.* Mr. F. P. has visited it; allows that it must have been a work of Cheops' reign, or of the Pyramid-building Fourth Dynasty; but argues that, instead of being Cheops' tomb, it was only the origin * " Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid." Fourth Edition, page 130, and plate xix. 62 NEW MEASURES OF [Part IV. of the story of Cheops' tomb given by Herodotus (p. 139), who was, therefore, romancing, or worse. But why is Mr. F. P. " compelled " thus speedily to smash the doll, or idol, he has just set up ? For no other reason that we can find in his book beyond this : that as he has taken up, body and soul, with the modern Egyptologists in their wholly tombic ideas about the Great Pyramid, he cannot afford to allow that Cheops was buried anywhere else than in that monument; though, too, both of those accurate Greek historians and travellers, so highly approved by himself, have stated, at a historical stand-point, more than 2,000 years nearer the event, that Cheops was by no means buried in the Great Pyramid, and that his tomb was at a distance therefrom. Unfortunate Mr. F. P. ! Chap. II.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 63 CHAPTER II. THE PHILITION OF HERODOTUS. STILL worse, however, than the above case, is Mr. F. P.'s total omission, so far as I can find, of that most telling account in Herodotus, touching the powerful Shepherd, or Shepherd Prince, Philition, having been, in the eyes of the Egyptian people, the effective ruler, controller, or possessor of the two greatest Gizeh Pyramids. Now, from the first publication of John Taylor's, " Why was the Great Pyramid Built, and Who Built It?" down to the fifth edition of Charles Casey's " Philitis ; or, The Mystery of the Great Pyramid Solved," that involuntary Greek admission of an extra-Egyptian, and certainly Eastern influence, prevailing peaceably, but sternly, over the King of Egypt, and all his workmen at that time, has been acknowledged to be the most precious key to the mode of introduction of Hebraic Divine inspiration into the plans, proportions, design, and ultimate objects for donating the world with a Great Pyramid at all ; as well as for building it in Egypt, among Egyptians, and by forced and hateful Egyptian toil. Philitis, or Philition, having been certainly a Shepherd Prince of Palestine, and probably either Shem or Melchizedek. g^y socket/ Theoretically it should be 20'8 inches higher -'-" Chap. III.] than the South-east, and the South-east should be about half-au-inch above its present level. While we suggest the foregoing interpretation of the socket-lines and levels, we do not forget the bearing that angular measurements have upon the truth of theories. With the exception of the angle subtended by the West-side, the differences barely exceed the limit of error allowed in Mr. Petrie's com- putation. The sum of the four theoretical socket- lines we have presented is 36502'944 inches. The sum of Mr. Petrie's measures, allowing 1*6 inch for error in computing the West-side, is 36502-1 + an average error of more than half-an-inch on a side. The theoretical diagonal from North-west to South- east socket corner is 12916-21 inches. Mr. Petrie's measure differs from this by '59+'9 of an inch. These coincidences are at the least remarkable. That they are related to the design of the architect, we perhaps cannot farther demonstrate. The probability that they are accidental diminishes in a geometrical ratio as the number of them increases. We proceed now to apply the properties of the cycloid to some other measurements of the Pyramid. The diameter of the generating circle of the cycloid, whose base is 9140-15 inches, is 9140-15-=-* = 2909-4 inches. Twice this diameter is 5818*8 inches. In a Pyramid whose base is 9140-15 inches square, and altitude 5818-8 -inches, the vertical angle of base and sides is 5151' 14-3". Wherefore, by the cycloidal theory of the construction of the Pyramid, as here developed, we 96 NEW MEASURES OF [Part V. have, 9140*15 inches for the extreme base-side, and 5818-8 inches for the extreme height. A vertical section of a pyramid, through its vertex and at right angles to one of its sides, is a triangle. Let the base of this triangle be 9140*15 inches, and the altitude 5818*8 inches. Let a circle whose circumference is 9140*15 inches be set on the end of the base and rolled along till the line that connects the point L (fig. 4), describing the cycloid, and the point of contact between the circle and the base-line, makes, with the base-line, the angle BDL 29 58' 42". The latitnde of flic, Pyramid is 29 58' 51" with a possible change of 56" in 4000 years. In this circle draw an inscribed square having one side parallel to the base of the triangle. One side of this square intersects the hypothenuse of the triangle at 0. Produce the line DL till it meets the side of the circumscribed square at S, and draw SO. This determines the altitude of the passages of the Great Pyramid, 26 19' 34" nearly. Mr. Petrie gives the altitude of the axis of the Entrance Passage, 26 26' 42"+20, and that of the Ascending Passage and Gallery together, 26 12' 50"; the mean of these is 26 19' 46"+20". Supposing the latitude of the Pyramid to have been 29 58' 46"+5", the difference 3 38' 56"+20" between the latitude and mean passage was the apparent polar distance of Alpha Draconis, as seen through the telescopic ? passages of the Pyramid 2140 B.C. If it was the ^ intention of the architect to produce a reflecting teles- <* cope he would naturally have made the altitude of the Entrance and Ascending Passages the same. Here, again, is found reason to believe that settling South- Chap. III.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. ward to the extent of about 6' has taken place. The effect of such a settling would be to change the alti- tude of the passages, increasing that of the Entrance ^ Passage by about 6 ', and lessening that of the As- cending Passage and Gallery by the same amount. L 3 It would also increase the horizontal distance between the beginning of the basement sheet and the South wall of the Gallery by about 3 inches. It would also lower the level of points along the passage floors; and the more as the distance from the entrance increases. And this is just what the modern measures show in relation to the level of the South-east socket floor. The altitude of I, the beginning of the basement sheet of the Entrance Passage, is equal to the line MB drawn from the foot of the triangle to the nearest 98 NEW MEASUKES OF [Part V- corner of the inscribed square. It is 652-91 inches. This agrees with Mr. Petrie's altitude of the beginning of the basement sheet above the level of the South- east corner socket within half an inch. The horizontal distance of this same point from the North base-line (at the level of the South-east corner socket) is 652-91 inches. The length of the basement sheet from this accurately fixed beginning I to the line of the floor of the Ascending Passage E is (10f) 2 =986-96 inches. Mr. Petrie and Prof. Smyth give it as~"986 or 987 inches. It will be observed that in our scale of measures we have used the British inch and British feet inter- changeably, and the British mile of 5,280 feet. From the relation of the inch to the foot and mile thus exhibited in Pyramid lines we conclude that the architect used these measures in laying out his work. The following theoretical lines in fig. 4 may be of interest: 2 AB = 9140-15 or 9139-871; either measure, as well as those given below, will come within the limits of error allowed by Mr. Petrie. AX = one-half the height of the Pyramid; WB = 50^=493-48 ; IB = (10n-) 2 =986-96; EG = (100;r) 2 -:-8 2 =1542, the floor-line distance from the floor of the Entrance Passage to the intersection of the overhanging plane of the North wall of the Gallery with the floor of the Ascending Passage; GK = 6007r = 1884-95. The meeting of the Generating Circle, the Gallery, roof, and wall, in the angle of the inscribed pentagon at the point N may suggest some connection between geometry and the law of Pyramidal construction. We have not yet discovered the whole truth of this marvellous edifice. Although it has been terribly Chap. III.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 99 shaken and wrenched, and men may criticise some of its distorted lines, it cannot reasonably be denied that the architect had a wonderful knowledge of astronomy, geology, and pure mathematics. H. G. WOOD. ^X^V^L-X, '^^J!^. *7 ~~ ^l* '4~, JH-S --%>/ 93* ^ ^ ^u *~f ^ ^ /V/x). ^ /fair 7^ ^^^^^ ^-t*-***^^*-^^**"^,**^ ^^y ^ ^ ^^A^rTx^ ^K-*-*^-*-^- App. No. 1.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 101 APPENDIX. No. I. PROSPECTIVE AMERICAN EXPEDITION TO RE- MEASURE THE GREAT PYRAMID. (From The New Yvrk Times, Monday, January 28, 1884.) WHAT IS TO BE ACCOMPLISHED BY MEASURING THE PYRAMIDS. INACCURACY OF OLD MEASUREMENTS. CLEVELAND, January 26. The project so long held in mind by the President and some of the leading members of the International Institute for Preserving and Perfecting Weights and Measures of sending a well-equipped body of scientists to Egypt for the purpose of making such an examination and measurements of the Great Pyramid of Ghizeh as has never been given it, and for uncovering the Pyramid and the Sphinx to their foundation, is now in such shape that ifa_ a^tnal accomplish merit rfiay hft InnTcpd _fpr_jn_tha^ near ^future. As the purpose of the proposed expedition is little understood, and as no authoritative state- ment has been made covering that point, The Times' cor- respondent called on Mr. C. E. Latimer, President of the Institute and one of the leading engineers of the country, who kindly explained the purpose in full. "There have been," said Mr. Latimer, " various pro- positions from the members of the society looking to such an expedition and urging the great importance of it in view 102 NEW MEASURES OF [App.No. I. of the diversity of measures made by previous explorers and the great diversity of theories in relation to the symbolism, especially of the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx. There have been a number of measurers in Egypt, the most important one of whom was John Graves, an astronomer at Oxford, who, 250 years ago, took a 10-foot rod, graduated to a thousandth of a foot, and went to the Great Pyramid and measured most particularly the granite Coffer in the King's Chamber. He seemed to give the most particular attention to this re- markable box, which some, without proper knowledge, called a sarcophagus. "' Other measurers followed, notably the French savants in the time of Napoleon's war in Egypt in 1799. They measured the base and the interior of the Great Pyramid most particularly. Then followed Colonel Howard Vyse in 1837, who made his researches at his own expense. Sub- sequently the most notable and accurate measures were made by Prof. C. Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer-Royal for Scotland, who went there at his own expense and remeasured the interior, and also much of the exterior the most remarkable of all the measurers that have ever been to the Pyramid, and the most accurate, having taken with him the finest instruments of precision known, particularly in astronomy. In all these measures the lengths of the baseline have varied by different measurers from 9,110 inches to 9,168 inches, Piazzi Smyth having settled upon 9,140 inches, as being the true theoretical base, which gave, by multiplying by 4, one hundred times the number of days and fractions of a day in the year, nearly. Howard Vyse and the French savants agreed in 9,168 inches as the right base at the lowest socket, but now comes William Flinders Petrie, a young engineer, who also went to the Pyramid of his own accord, and took new measures, and declares that the base sides are not either as found by the French, or by Howard Vyse, or by Piazzi App.No.I.] THE GKEAT PYRAMID. 103 Smyth, or by any one else that preceded him ; but one thing he does prove, that the level of the South-east socket gives y,139'871 inches^ which, is precisely what the mathema- ticians of the Society for Preserving and Perfecting "Weights and Measures, have declared it ought to be at one particular marked depth^ "All these measures and measurements, with the ex- ception of the French, have been made by private enterprise. To overthrow the base line is to overthrow all the theories built upon the Pyramid's size and proportions. Mr. Petrie has been sustained by the Koyal Society of London, which society is inimical to Piazzi Smyth, and it has helped Mr. Petrie to publish his book, having given him 500 dollars for that purpose. Mr. Petrie has likewise attempted to over- throw many of the theories of Piazzi Smyth, and set up therefor new ones of his own. In the midst of all these conflicting questions of length and breadth, and height and depth, there arises in the minds of the members of the International Institute for Preserving and Perfecting Weights and Measures, the importance of having a commission go to the Pyramid with abundant means, not only to settle all these vexed questions of measures once for all, but to excavate and lay bare the foundations all about the Pyramids and the Sphinx, and probably to disclose for the first time for 3,000 years, the appearance of the ground thereabout possibly to unearth many objects of archaeological value, which will enable the students of this stupendous monument to arrive at the truth, and making it disclose the truths which it has for so many thousand years held concealed in its prophetic slopes. The members of the Institute generally do not believe in the tomb theory. They are too well aware of the mathematical, astronomical, chronological, and cosmical knowledge that it contains. The French have measured it, the Italians have had a *~~S ~ . measure there/' the English, more particularly, have measured it, but no American^ expedition has ever yet been sent out, and we believe that a monument, which is the symbol of the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States, should also have the attention of the citizens of the United States, and therefore believe that it is important that a com- mission should be sent out from here, taking also one man from England, and one from France, wherein the Society has members, comprising not less than five scientific men equipped with the necessary instruments and tools, both for boring and for lighting, and once for all determine in a proper and thorough way, all questions upon which there is now any difference of opinion. The object is worthy, not only of the philanthropy of our citizens, but is worthy of the attention of our Government, because we feel that this monument is the work of our forefathers, and that we are the undoubted descendants of those who built that Pyramid, and that it is our duty to investigate and understand the wisdom contained therein. " One of the most earnest men on this subject in our country, the former Governor and Chief Justice of Iowa, ex-Governor Lowe, a member of our society, at one time asked me, as President of the Society, if I would make all my preparations to go to Egypt, taking such persons with me as I might, feel disposed to take, provided the means were obtained. I assented, with the understanding that a leave of absence could be granted me. He shortly after- ward wrote me, previous to the breaking out of the war in Egypt, that he thought that the means could certainly be secured, and asked me to make my preparations to start, but the war came on and the opportunity did not present itself at that time, but the mind of this gentleman had always been fixed upon the importance of carrying oat this idea, and almost his dying words were that we should jot App.No. I.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 105 fail under any circumstances to accomplish it. He hoped that the Government of the United States would also feel it of sufficient importance to make an appropriation for the purpose as a scientific object. Other members of the society have urged it, and now comes an astronomer in England who offers one of the best telescopes in the world and his own services (and he is vouched for by the Astronomer-Royal as being a most competent person), free of expense, only requiring us to transport it and himself from England to Egypt and back, thus insuring us one member of the expe- dition from England, without other cost than transportation. Mr. Chauncey Andrews, one of our members, a very wealthy Youngstown gentleman, sent me word that he would be glad to aid in raising the money for this purpose, upon which I wrote him a letter which was published in the newspapers at the time. It was subsequent to the publication of this, that a gentleman of Cleveland offered to be one of ten raise 100,000 dollars for this purpose.-*W ?* -*&~f a To many persons it will be an enigma why we should go and measure an Egyptian monument why we should be so anxious to raise funds to go to that far-off country to measure a Pyramid built certainly not less than 4,000 years ago. But let them note for a moment that the weights and measures which have been handed down to us from thousands of years ago by our forefathers, and which are not, as Professor Bar- nard, of Columbia College, says of them, the result of ' accident or caprice,' but are the true cosmical relations in their original units, which we possess, and which are interwoven into every relation of our lives and work, are now proposed to be utterly subverted and a system not yet 100 years old intro- duced in their stead, which is not truly cosmical, as admitted by themselves, although at first supposed to have been so. Let them note that France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Egypt, Turkey, and now Mexico every country overcome H ~^ o&) ' -^ S?J.* *^^*,^ : ^,' 4L&*'*~'{ ~*-^^-^ No. II. REV. DR. ALEX. ^TACKA? ON'THE**^ ^-^=2, 1 or PROPHECY IN THE YEAR 1882, IN A LETTER TO C. PIAZZI SMYTH. ('Reprinted from the Banner o/ Israel cf August 8th._1883.) ^ I CONTINUE to feel a very deep interest ineverything relating to the Great Pyramid, and read all I can lay my hands on that has any bearing on the subject. There is a Major here, who is also an enthusiast in all things belonging to the Pyramid. He has lately lent me a couple of little volumes, which I have just finished reading viz., (1) "The Tower of Egypt; or, The Types and Chronology of the Great Pyramid." By A. R. G. London: Partridge & Co.; (2) "The Origin and Significance of the Great Pyramid." By C. Staniland Wake. London: Reeves & Turner. They are able, and eloquently written; this they have in common, but they wholly differ in everything else. The former work is by a devout believer in Scripture, and also in the divine origin of the Pyramid. He professes to have made very important discoveries, especially in the Grand Gallery, and to have found a most important new "key," which he believes will lead to many more. It is not for me to hazard an opinion on the merits of these quasi discoveries; but I do consider that his book will require a full notice in the forthcoming new edition of " Our Inheritance." The other book, though displaying extensive learning, is by a man who readily believes anything and everything that . anyone has said against the supernatural m the Great * ^ Pyramid, but who is deaf as an adder to all that has been proved in support of its high origin. Its astronomical, or, rather, its astrological character, is graciously allowed. But, much blinder than Pharaoh's magicians, he cannot see in this marvellous monument " any trace of the finger of God." His final result is, that it is an ancient astrological temple, " erected in honour of the god Seth, the Agathodsemon of the ancient world." The plain English of this is, that instead of being "an altar to the Lord in the land of Egypt," as so many devout and learned investigators take it to be, it is, in fact, a grand temple erected to the devil! "-- > S- To me it has always been a cause of rejoicing that those who believe in the sacred and scientific nature of the Great Pyramid believe also in the Bible; while very many of those who hold it up to modern ridicule, do at the same time doubt the Scriptures, which, according to our divine Master, " cannot be broken." But as the end of the age is drawing near, the world is fast preparing for the advent of the Man of Sin, "whose coming is after the working of Satan; . . . and for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie" (2 Thess. ii. 11). The whole of this wonderful chapter was in my mind while perusing this very wicked little book. He who really sowed these tares in the field is not Mr. Staniland Wake, but an older adversary, ' ' who, in spite of your exposure of him in the BANNER and elsewhere, still considers himself, to this day, unanswered. The year 1882 has now come and gone, and yet nothing- so very great has happened as to mark the end of the Christian Age. This, however, though it affords merriment to our opponents, has not in the least shaken my faith in the Pyramid. The absence of such an event rather confirms my faith in it; for I find that, in the sacred history, no single event marked the end of one age and the commencement of App.No.U.] THE GREAT PYRAMID. 109 another. In every case, 1 find a sort of neutral period separating each^ new jispensation froaLtbat whichj)recedes_ \i^ This, in plain fact, accords with what we observe daily in Nature. The ligkL of day does not, instantaneonsly 8ucgefid_the darkness of night; for between night and day the all-wise Creator has interposed the morning dawn, beginning with the faintest glimmer of light, then gradually and slowly increasing it till the glorious sun exhibits its full-orbed splendour. Again, when contemplating the rainbow, one can easily count seven distinct_colours; but however narrowly such a one looks, he will not succeed in discerning any actual line separating one colour from that nearest to it on either side. There is, indeed, no such line, for the different colours graduajly^nd^ gracefully merge intojeach_oth_er. It is pre- cisely similar in regard to the seven dispensations the Edenic, the Antediluvian, the Noachian, the Patriarchal, the Levitical, the Christian, and the Millennial. In every case, they silently and imperceptibly glide into one another. For example, if I were asked in what year, or on what day, the Christian dispensation began, I could not tell. It might be supposed to commence with the incarnation of our Lord, or with His birth His baptism His death His resurrec- tion His ascension or the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. The thirty-three years during which all these events transpired cannot be said, with any truth, to belong properly and only to the Christian dispensation, for they are all, except the first and the last, events in our Lord's earthly life, and we know that our Lord was " a Minister of the circumcision " i.e., of the legal economy, and not of the dispensation of the Spirit. Yet they all have a direct bearing on the present age, and, in fact, prepared for it. So much so, indeed, that if any one of the events referred to were absent, the dispensation of the Spirit could not possibly 110 NEW MEASUKES OF [App. No. II. have been ushered in. These thirty-three ,/vears formed, therefore, the twilight, or early dawn, separating the long night of the legal economy from the glorious Gospel day, and cannot be reckoned as an essential part of either, by and in itself alone. They all occur in the neutral zone formerly mentioned; the incarnation forming the earliest and all but invisible streak of the dawn, and the day of Pentecost the auspicious moment when the sun of the Gospel day began to emerge from beneath the horizon. Now, to come to the Great Pyramid, and keeping our illustration in mind, my notion is that the year 1882 marks the commencement of the neutral zone. It was a year big with events in the world's history. The real magnitude, however, of those events cannot as yet be determined. I refer to the Phcenix-park murders, the Irish Coercion Act, the massacre of Christians in Alexandria, the subsequent bombarding of that city, the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, issuing in the virtual Protectorate of England, with a governing and resident army, over the land of the Pyramids, the end of the Sultan's control there, and the final extinction, by the Italian civil power, of the very last scrap of the once p. universal temporal dominion of the Popes of E,ojn, le next event may be the arrival of the day when the fbspel of the Kingdom shall have been preached in all nations, as a testimony on God's part, and a protest against the enmity of the world, but not issuing in the conversion of the nations. lie alone knows the future; but it seems /3~f **''/' clear fromHScnpture that the next event after that will be ^^^ the coming of the Lord for His own, in order to rescue them (Sxr vt~'7'~- from the " great tribulation " that will then immediately set />R 9 1990 NON-RENEV\ABLE JUN 28 i9bU . DUE 2 WKS AY 1 9 1995 REC'D LD-UI DUE 2 WKS FROM UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000 048 599 5 Univ Sc I