book v

. chap. iv.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 256: Sir Isaac Newton says--"In the precise determination of the cubit of Memphis, I should choose to pitch upon the length of the chamber in the middle of the pyramid." Greaves gives this length 34·38 = 20 cubits of 20·628 inches.]

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

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

[Footnote 259: See this table in Professor Smyth's _Life and Work at the Great Pyramid_, vol. ii. p. 458. The table professes to give some of Sir Isaac Newton's data regarding the Sacred Cubit by changing the measurements which Sir Isaac uses of the Roman foot and inch into English inches. But all the figures and measurements are transferred into English inches by a different rule from that which Sir Isaac himself lays down--viz., that the English foot is 0·967 of the Roman foot; and, consequently, _in every one of the instances given_ in Mr. Smyth's table, the lengths in English inches of these data of Sir Isaac Newton are assuredly _not_ their lengths in English inches as understood and laid down by Newton himself.]

[Footnote 260: The fourth line in the table presents a most fatal and unfortunate error in a special calculation to which the very highest importance is professed to be attached. This fourth line gives the measurement of the Sacred Cubit as quoted by Newton from Mersennus, who laid down its length as 25·68 inches of Roman measurement. Professor Smyth changes this Roman measurement into 24·91 English inches, and then erroneously enters these same identical Roman and English measurements of Mersennus--viz., 24·91 and 25·68--not as _one_ identical quantity, which they are--but as _two_ different and contrasting quantities; and further, he tabulates this strange mistake as one of the "methods of approach" for gaining a correct idea of the Sacred Cubit. Never, perhaps, has so unhappy an error been made in a work of an arithmetical and mathematical character.]

[Footnote 261: Thus, after deducing the length of the cubit of Memphis from the length of the King's Chamber, Sir Isaac Newton observes:--"From hence I would infer that the Sacred Cubit of Moses was equal to 25 unciæ of the Roman foot and 6/10 of an _uncia_." (See his _Dissertation on the Sacred Cubit_, as republished in Professor Smyth's _Life and Work at the Great Pyramid_, vol. ii. p. 362.) Again, at p. 363, Sir Isaac speaks of "the cubit which we have concluded to have been in the time of Moses 25-60/100 inches" of the Roman foot; and at p. 365, in closing his Dissertation, he remarks--"The Roman cubit therefore consists of 18 unciæ, and the Sacred Cubit of 25-3/5 unciæ, of the Roman foot." In other words, according to Sir Isaac Newton, the Sacred Cubit of 25·60 inches of the Roman foot is equal to 24·75 British inches; for, as he calculated, the Roman foot "was equal to 967/1000 the English foot." (See p. 342.) This is the measurement of the Roman foot laid down by Sir Isaac Newton in his Dissertation, and the only standard of it mentioned in Professor Smyth's _Life and Work at the Great Pyramid_; yet in that work Professor Smyth calculates Sir Isaac's Sacred Cubit to be 24·82 instead of 24·75 British inches. In doing so, he has calculated the English foot as equal to ·970 of the Roman foot; but was he entitled to do so when using Sir Isaac's own data, and when employing Sir Isaac's own calculated conclusion as to the length of the Sacred Cubit? In the published _Proceedings_ of the Royal Society, in consequence of following the calculation by Professor Smyth of Sir Isaac Newton's conclusion from Sir Isaac's own data as to the length of the Sacred Cubit, it was erroneously spoken of as 24·82, instead of 24·75 British inches.]

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 267: The diameter of the earth in latitude 30° is really about 20 miles longer than the polar axis. But Mr. Taylor obviously did not know the nature of the spheroidal arcs of the meridian, and so falls into the most inconsistent assertions respecting the length of this

## particular diameter. Thus, in pp. 75 and 87, he asserts the diameter in

latitude 30° to be 500,000,000 inches [that is = 7891·414 miles], which is 7·756 miles _less_ than the polar axis--_the least_ diameter of all; whereas, in p. 95, he states this diameter in lat. 30° to be 17·652 miles _greater_ than the polar axis.]

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

[Footnote 269: "When" (says Mr. Taylor, p. 91) "the _new_ Earth was measured in Egypt after the Deluge, it was found that it exceeded the diameter of the _old_ Earth by the difference between 497,664,000 inches and 500,000,000 inches; that is, by 2,336,000 inches, equal to 36·868 miles."]

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

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

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

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

APPENDIX.

I.--DERIVATION OF THE TERM PYRAMID. (_Page_ 219.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II.--ARCHAIC CIRCLE AND RING SCULPTURES. (_Page_ 222.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

III.--ERA OF THE ARABIAN HISTORIAN, IBN ABD AL HAKM. (_Page_ 236.)

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

IV.--LENGTH OF THE SARCOPHAGUS IN THE KING'S CHAMBER. (_Page_ 236.)

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

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

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

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

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

34·380 feet = 20 cubits. 17·190 " = 10 cubits. 12 ------- 206·280 inches = 10 cubits, and 20·628 " = 1 cubit of Memphis;

and Newton himself says, at p. 360, vol. ii. _Life at the Pyramids_,--

"The cubit of Memphis of 1·719 English feet," 12 ------ or 20·628 inches,

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

But Newton goes on to say in the same page, the cubit "double the length of 12-3/8 English inches (=24·75 inches) will be to the cubit of Memphis as 6 to 5."

Therefore, if we add 1/5 to 20·628 inches, 4·126 ------ we have 24·754

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

Newton's determinations are therefore--

Length of Sacred Cubit 24·754 inches. " Cubit of Memphis 20·628 "

The cubit measured by Mersennus (_see_ p. 362, vol. ii. _Life at the Pyramids_) was 23-1/4 Paris inches, and Mr. Greaves estimated the Paris foot as equal to 1·068 of the English foot; therefore 23·25 + 1·068=24·831 was the length of this cubit, if we take Greaves' proportion of the Paris to the English foot; but by the more exact determination of the proportion of the Paris to the English foot made at the Ordnance Survey Office, Southampton, it is found to be as 1 to 1·06576 and 23·25 + 1·06576=24·780 English inches, which differs only in excess ·026 from the length of the Sacred Cubit determined by Newton.

The double Royal Cubit of Karnak, which is in the British Museum, was found by Sir Henry James to measure 41·398 inches; the length of the single cubit was therefore 20·699 inches, and differs only in excess ·071 inches from the length of the cubit of Memphis, as determined by Newton.

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

we add 1/5 or = 4·140 to the length of the Karnak cubit = 20·699, ------ we have 24·839 for the Sacred Cubit.

The one measured by Mersennus = 24·780 and the ------ mean of the two = 24·810, whilst the length derived by Newton was = 24·754, showing ------ a difference of only ·056 between the ======

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

The method adopted by Professor P. Smyth, to find the length of the Sacred Cubit, in p. 458, vol. ii. _Life at the Pyramids_, is also wrong in principle. He has no right to take the means between the limits of approach, or to say that the Sacred Cubit was, according to Sir Isaac Newton, 25·07 inches, when, as I have shown in his own words, Sir Isaac says it was 24·754 inches.

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

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

In the course of this communication to the Royal Society, Professor Smyth did not allude to or rescind the erroneous table and calculations from Sir Isaac Newton regarding the Sacred Cubit, printed and commented upon in some of the preceding pages (see _ante_, p. 244, etc.) But, at the end of the subsequent discussion he handed round, as a printed "Appendix" to his three volume work, a total withdrawal of this table, etc., and in this way so far confessed the justice of the exposition of his errors on this all-vital and testing point in his theory of the Sacred Cubit, as given in p. 243, etc., of the present essay. He attributes his errors to "an unfortunate misprinting of the calculated numbers;" and (though he does not at all specialise what numbers were thus misprinted) he gives from Sir Isaac Newton's Dissertation on the Sacred Cubit a new and more lengthened table instead of the old and erroneous table. For this purpose, instead of selecting as he did, without any attempted explanation in his old table, _only five_ of Sir Isaac Newton's estimations or "methods of approach," he now, in his new table, takes _seven_ of them to strike out new "means." The simple "mean" of all the seven quantities tabulated--as calculated, in the way followed, in his first published table--is 25·47 British inches; and the "mean" of all the seven means in the Table is 25·49 British inches. Unfortunately for Professor Smyth's theory of the Sacred Cubit being 25·025 British inches, either of these numbers makes the Sacred Cubit nearly half a British inch longer than his avowed standard of length--an overwhelming difference in any question relating to a _standard_ measure. What would any engineer, or simple worker in metal, wood, or stone, think of an alleged _standard_ measure or cubit which varied so enormously from its own alleged length? But, surely, such facts and such results require no serious comment.

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

VII.--METROLOGICAL TABLES AND TESTS OF THE EUROPEAN RACES. (_See_ p. 238.)

Professor Smyth believes that among the nations of Europe the metrology used will be found closer and closer to the Hebrew and "Pyramid" standards, according to the amount of Ephraimitic blood in each nation. He further inclines to hold, with Mr. Wilson, that the Anglo-Saxons have no small share of this Israelitish blood, as shown in their language, and in their weights and measures, etc. After giving various Tables of the metrological standards of different European nations, Professor Smyth adds, "It is not a little striking to see all the Protestant countries standing first and closest to the Great Pyramid; then Russia, and her Greek, but freely Bible-reading church; then the Roman Catholic lands; then, after a long interval, and last but one on the list, France with its metrical system--voluntarily adopted, under an atheistical form of government, in place of an hereditary pound and ancient inch, which were not very far from those of the Great Pyramid; and last of all Mahommedan Turkey." Subsequently, when speaking of British standards of length, etc., Professor Smyth remarks,--"But let the island kingdom look well that it does not fall; for not only has the 25·344 inch length not yet travelled beyond the region of the Ordnance maps,--but the Government has been recently much urged by, and has partly yielded to, a few ill-advised but active men, who want these invaluable hereditary measures (preserved almost miraculously to this nation from primeval times, for apparently a Divine purpose) to be instantly abolished _in toto_,--and the recently atheistically-conceived measures of France to be adopted in their stead. In which case England would have to descend from her present noble pre-eminence in the metrological scale of nations, and occupy a place almost the very last in the list; or next to Turkey, and in company with some petty princedoms following France, and blessed with little history and less nationality. 'How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!' might be then, indeed, addressed to England with melancholy truth. Or more plainly (Professor Smyth adds), and in words seemingly almost intended for such a case, and uttered with depressing grief of heart, 'O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself!'" (Professor Smyth's _Life and Work at the Great Pyramid_, 1867, vol. iii. p. 598.)

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

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

END OF VOL. I.

_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh._

End of Project Gutenberg's Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1, by James Y. Simpson