New Measures of the Great Pyramid, by a New Measurer (1884)
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NEW MEASURES
OF THE
GREAT PYRAMID
BY A NEW MEASURER.
DESCRIBED AND TESTED BY
C. PIAZZI SMYTH.
California Regional acility
Morton Edgar 27 Aytown Road 224 West Regent St Glasgow Scotland.
S. Allen Warner
NEW MEASURES
THE GREAT PYRAMID,
BY A NEW MEASURER.
"And thou;——my son, know thou the God of 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: if thou seek Him He will be found of thee; but if thou forsake Him, He will cast thee off for ever."--1 Chron. xxviii. 9.
NEW MEASURES
BY A NEW MEASURER.
Described and Tested by
C. PIAZZI 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.
London: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY ROBERT BANKS, RACQUET COURT, FLEET ST.
March, 1884.
NEW MEAUSURES
"How say ye unto Pharaoh, I am the son of the wise, the son of ancient kings? Where are they? Where are thy wise men? and let them tell thee now, and let them know, what the Lord of hosts hath purposed upon Egypt."—Isa. xix. 11, 12.
The 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,
This Little Book,
DESCRIPTIVE OF SOME NEW INFORMATION ON THE GRAND SUBJECT WHICH THE MEMBERS HAVE SO MUCH AT HEART.
Es Dedicated
BY ONE WIIO 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,
Es Dedicated most Respectfully,
BY THEIR DEVOTED FELLOW-LABOURER,
C. PIAZZI SMYTH,
Astronomer-Royal for Scotland,
AND FOR THIS CAUSE, EX. F.R.S., LONDON.
Edinburgh, March 25, 1884.
" And besides this, giving all diligence, 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 make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." 2 Peter i. 5-8.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
NEW AUTHORS ON THE GREAT PYRAMID.
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 1.—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 PART IV.
HISTORY, SACRED AND PROFANE.
CHAPTER 1.—Of the respect due to Ancient Classical Authors... PAGE
,, 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
PART 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., U.S.A. ... 87
APPENDICES.
APP. 1.—Prospective American Expedition to Re-measure the Great Pyramid... ... ... ... ... 101
,, 2.—Rev. 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 OF 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, vicepresident, 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. PIAZZI SMYTH.
(PAGE 2 OF 1864.)
"In the short interval between the printing and publication 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 ways 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 O 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:— "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 archæology 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 September 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 exactitude 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 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.
Two New Authors on the Great Pyramid.
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, "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—to the effect that I had discreditably brought out results 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 anything 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 extraordinary 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?
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 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 occupation, 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 once with thanks, whether they are in addition to, or to be employed in place of, mine. And if there are others of them where I 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 mensurations. Mensurations rather hastily assumed by some persons to be both absolutely perfect and utterly irrefutable, chiefly because they hope that their author has succeeded by such means in accomplishing his and their long cherished purpose, of both killing and burying 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 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 acknowledge 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 insight into early human history; though finding extraordinary veneration 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 Pyramid looks when illuminated by the light of this new authority, subjected only occasionally to a word of the very mildest doubt, or simplest question.
PART II. Exterior of the Great Pyramid.
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 Vyse'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′ + 2′ ; and this includes John Taylor's π 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 single other Pyramid throughout Egypt 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.
But Petrie claims that the Megdam Pyramid has this 77
Said angle was also constructed at the Great Pyramid with a degree of perfection and solidity in its "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 confirming 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, 011 and 014 wide. Hence the mean thickness of the joints there is 020; and therefore the mean variation of the cutting 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' straightedges 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 1⁄500 inch, or, in fact, into contact, and the mean opening of the joint was but 1⁄50 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 measurement 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.
Department of the Egyptian Government , in 1924-1925 , uses the French metric system in his survey measurements of the Great Grainmids Case . See Paper 39 of the Survey Department .
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 sundried bricks, of any of the subsequent Egyptian Pyramids, 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.
X These castip-stones together with 17 others ( 19 in all ) were again uncovered by Mr L. D. Covington during the last fortnight of May, 1909. Five of these stones ( at the extreme West ) are much broken ; but those previously uncovered by Col. Howard Vyse, still preserve their fine even appearance.
xx I took some photographs of large Caesar-stones at the foot of one of the Pyramids of Sakkara , in July, 1909. They seem well made , but I did not examine them closely . Morton Edgar.
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 it to the surface of a certain hitherto rather problematic bit of raised pavement, openly seen as yet only on 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 enormous rubbish heaps lying now, and for a thousand years past, upon these sides,—their level has been carried by calculation round the whole Pyramid, in 1925-1926 when I had all four Sockets cleaved of debris, I found that while the N.E.
and S.E. Sockets are cut in the rock, the S.W. Socket is not cut in the rock but in large invert stones (4% of them), and the N.W. Socket is cut partly in rock (mostly in rock) partially in invert stones . M.E. 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 previously, 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 fiducial 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 gone."
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 difficulties, 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: suppose 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.
9084.325588 Pyr. ins.
9093.41900 Brit. ins.
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, according 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 precession 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 surface, they converged so nearly, so near even to mixing up with the unavoidable errors of modern measurement, as in conjunction with other features of the 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 9,126, or 9,140 inches. 9140 Brit. is base-length if calculated as on the deepest floor
Now there are precisely such 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. 206 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, subThe W.
limit of the S.W. socket is defined by a line , or rotten , a ridge ) , which is on the same level as the general trimmed rock level under the Platform on which the Carving stones rest . Patricie is right here .
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 explanatory of those socket corrections, something further will be found, from a most independent and unbiassed source—viz., the Rev. H. G. Wood's (Sharon, Pennsylvania, 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, excellent things which he, Mr. F. P., has performed, touching a different class of questions at the Great Pyramid—questions too most violently disputed hitherto by both Egyptologists and rationalists, and 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.
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 Pyramid 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 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 Petukhann, 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, "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 posthumous character of the first Boolak Museum inscribed stone; but this more extensive and learned condemnation 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 Gizeh 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 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 reasoners; who, therefore, would not allow that it interfered in any way with the long-finished Great Pyramid, being the Northernmost 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 and who, objecting to build for himself a fourth pyramid 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 Roash.
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, of 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 of the Delta Northward, North-westward, and Northeastward, 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 privileged 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 irregularity of the peribolus walls, it would not seem likely that any connection had been planned."
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 had proved, society said, the fixity of the earth's axis of rotation within its own substance "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 correctly 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 unassisted 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.
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 supposed destructive illumination by a new measurer, awaits us.
PART III. Interior of the Great Pyramid.
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 bit of pavement on the North side, and not the socket-corners of the base, as the one and only level to be always referred to.
For when he does that, he of course brings out, in 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 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 foundation, 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 Simpson'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 endeavours 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 length.
CHAPTER II.
UNFINISHED SUBTERRANEAN CHAMBER ANTAGONISES EGYPTOLOGICAL THEORIES OF MODERN TIMES.
FIRST, for instance, in this department comes that most strange fact, so subversive of Professor Lepsius' and other Egyptologists' favourite "law of Pyramid building"—viz., that in place of the Subterranean 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 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 doctrinaires.
CHAPTER III.
THE SYSTEM OF PASSAGES EQUALLY ANTAGONISES THEM.
BUT the Sloping Passage, some 4,000 and more inches long, leading down to that only commenced, never finished, subterranean room, was beautifully built at its upper, outer, end. Furnished, too, at 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 themselves 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 supplying 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, notwithstanding 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 girdlestones 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, (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 subterranean 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.
CHAPTER IV.
ASSERTED ERRORS IN C. P. S.'S GREAT PYRAMID PASSAGE MEASURES.
My angular measures of these remarkable constructions, 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 2,173 inches been mistakenly reported as 2,170.
Though a most useful and in itself salutary correc tion, that new figure is fortunately of no subvertive influence to anything theoretically important; especially Gesr. Pass.
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 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 world 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 community 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.
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diff. 11.8044 CHAPTER V.
THE SAME TOUCHING THE KING'S CHAMBER MEASURES.
LET us now proceed to the chief work of the whole interior—vix., 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 mediæval 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 funereal 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 find the 9,140 socket-defined length usefully and practically 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."
CHAPTER VI.
THE COFFER MEASURES.
THE grand attack, however, on behalf of Egyptology 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; and may even have been used, whether directly or symbolically, for and as such, in the mediæval times of the Egyptian people, it is yet a very remarkable mensuration-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 ornaments. 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 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 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 assumption 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 {580}1 more and the contents probably {1000}1 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; 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?
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