[Footnote 233: See on other proposed significations and origins of the
word pyramid, APPENDIX, No. I.]
[Footnote 234: In the plain of Troy, and on the higher grounds around
it, various barrows still remain, and have been described from Pliny,
Strabo, and Lucia down to Lechevalier, Forchhammer, and Maclaren. In
later times, Choiseul and Calvert have opened some of them. Homer gives
a minute account of the obsequies of Patroclus and the raising of his
burial-mound, which forms, as is generally believed, one of those twin
barrows still existing on the sides of the Sigean promontory, that pass
under the name of the tumuli of Achilles and Patroclus. Pope, in
translating the passage describing the commencement of the funeral pyre,
uses the word pyramid. For
... "those deputed to inter the slain,
Heap with a rising _pyramid_ the plain."
Professor Daniel Wilson, in alluding, in his _Prehistoric Annals_, vol.
i. p. 74, to this account by Homer of the ancient funeral-rites, and
raising of the funeral-mound, speaks of the erection of Patroclus'
barrow as "the methodic construction of the Pyramid of earth which
covered the sacred deposit and preserved the memory of the honoured
dead."]
[Footnote 235: Colonel Pownall, while describing in 1770 the barrow of
New Grange, in Ireland, to the London Society of Antiquaries, speaks of
it as "a pyramid of stone." "This pyramid," he observes, "was encircled
at its base with a number of enormous unhewn stones," etc. "The pyramid,
in its present state, is but a ruin of what it was," etc. etc. See
_Archaeologia_, vol. vi. p. 254; and Higgins' _Celtic Druids_, p. 40,
etc.]
[Footnote 236: In his _Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_, Dr. Daniel
Wilson states (vol. i. p. 87), that "the Chambered Cairn properly
possesses as its peculiar characteristic the enclosed catacombs and
galleries of megalithic masonry, branching off into various chambers
symmetrically arranged, and frequently exhibiting traces of constructive
skill, such as realise in some degree the idea of the regular pyramid."
He speaks again of the stone barrows or cairns of Scotland as
"monumental pyramids" (vol. i. p. 67); of the earth barrow being an
"earth pyramid or tumulus" (p. 70); of Silbury Hill as an "earth
pyramid" (p. 62): and in the same page, in alluding to the large
barrow-tomb of the ancient British chief or warrior, he states, "in its
later circular forms we see the rude type of the great pyramids of
Egypt." The same learned author, in his work on _Prehistoric Man_,
refers to the great monuments of the American mound-builders as "earth
pyramids" (p. 202), "huge earth pyramids" (p. 205), "pyramidal
earth-works" (p. 203); etc.]
[Footnote 237: In his _History of Scotland_, Mr. Burton speaks of the
barrows of New Grange and Maeshowe (Orkney), as erections which "may
justly be called minor pyramids" (vol. i. p. 114).]
[Footnote 238: In mentioning the great numbers of sepulchral barrows
spread over the world, Sir John Lubbock observes--"In our own island
they may be seen on almost every down; in the Orkneys alone it is
estimated that two thousand still remain; and in Denmark they are even
more abundant; they are found all over Europe from the shores of the
Atlantic to the Oural Mountains; in Asia they are scattered over the
great steppes from the borders of Russia to the Pacific Ocean, and from
the plains of Siberia to those of Hindostan; in America we are told that
they are numbered by thousands and tens of thousands; nor are they
wanting in Africa, where the pyramids themselves exhibit the most
magnificent development of the same idea; so that the whole world is
studded with these burial-places of the dead."--_Prehistoric Times_, p.
85. See similar remarks in Dr. Clarke's _Travels_, 4th edition, vol. i.
p. 276, vol. ii. p. 75, etc.]
[Footnote 239: Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson thinks that the pyramids of
Sakkara are probably older than the other groups of these structures, as
those of Gizeh or the Great Pyramid erected during the fourth dynasty of
kings.--See Rawlinson's _Herodotus_, vol. ii. chap. viii. Manetho
assigns to Uenophes, one of the monarchs in the first dynasty, the
erection of the Pyramids of Cochome. See Kenrick's _Ancient Egypt_, ii.
p. 112, 122, 123; Bunsen's _Egypt_, ii. 99, etc.]
[Footnote 240: On these Archaic forms of sculpture, see APPENDIX, No.
II. In many barrows the gallery in its course--and in some as it enters
the crypt--is contracted, and more or less occluded by obstructions of
stone, etc., which Mr. Kenrick likens to the granite portcullises in the
Great Pyramid. See his _Ancient Egypt_, vol. i. p. 121.]
[Footnote 241: Mr. Birch, however--and it is impossible to cite a higher
authority in such a question--holds the cartouches of Shufu and Nu Shufu
to refer only to one personage--namely, the Cheops of Herodotus; and,
believing with Mr. Wilde and Professor Lepsius, that the pyramids were
as royal sepulchres built and methodically extended and enlarged as the
reigns of their intended occupants lengthened out, he ascribes the
unusual size of the Great Pyramid to the unusual length--as testified by
Manetho, etc.--of the reign of Cheops; the erection of a sepulchral
chamber in its built portion above being, perhaps, a step adopted in
consequence of some ascertained deficiency in the rock chamber or
gallery below. Indeed, the subterranean chamber under the Great Pyramid
has, to use Professor Smyth's words, only been "begun to be cut out of
the rock from the ceiling downwards, and left in that _unfinished_
state." (Vol. i. 156.) Mr. Perring, who--as engineer--measured, worked,
and excavated so very much at the Pyramids of Gizeh, under Colonel
Howard Vyse, held, at the end of his researches, that "the principal
chamber" in the Second Pyramid is still undetected. See Vyse's _Pyramid
of Gizeh_, vol. i. 99.]
[Footnote 242: The Mexican Pyramid of Cholula has a base of more than
1420 feet, and is hence about twice the length of the basis of the Great
Pyramid of Gizeh. See Prescott's _Conquest of Mexico_, book iii. chap.
i., and book v. chap. iv.]
[Footnote 243: Herodotus states that the Egyptians detested the memories
of the kings who built the two larger Pyramids, viz., Cheops and
Cephren; and hence, he adds, "they commonly call the Pyramids after
Philition, a shepherd, who at that time fed his flocks about the place."
They thus called the Second, as well as the Great Pyramid, after him
(iii. Sec. 128); but, according to Professor Smyth, the Second Pyramid,
though architecturally similar to the first, and almost equal in size,
has nothing about it of the "superhuman" character of the Great
Pyramid.]
[Footnote 244: The extracts within inverted commas, here, and in other
parts, are from--(1.) Mr. John Taylor's work, entitled _The Great
Pyramid--Why was it Built, and Who Built it?_ London, 1859; and (2.)
Professor Smyth's work, _Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid_,
Edinburgh, 1864; (3.) his later three-volume work, _Life and Work at the
Great Pyramid_, Edinburgh, 1867; and (4.) _Recent Measures at the Great
Pyramid_, in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for
1865-66.]
[Footnote 245: Professor Smyth has omitted to state--what, after all, it
was perhaps unnecessary to state--that one set of these measurements,
which he has tabulated and published, viz., that given by Dr. Whitman,
was taken for him "by a British officer of engineers;" as, when Dr.
Whitman visited Gizeh, he did not himself examine the interior of the
Great Pyramid.--See Colonel Vyse's work, vol. ii. p. 286.]
[Footnote 246: "Its contents," says Mr. Taylor (p. 299), "are equal in
cubic inches to the cube of 41,472 inches--the cubit of Karnak--viz., to
71,328 cubic inches." Elsewhere (p. 304) he states--"The Pyramid coffer
contains 256 gallons of wheat;"--"It also contains 256 gallons of water,
etc."]
[Footnote 247: At a later meeting of the Royal Society, on 20th April,
Professor Smyth explained that, among the numerous instruments he
carried out, he was not provided with calipers fit for this
measurement.]
[Footnote 248: See plate iii. Fig. 1, in his great folio work on the
_Pyramids of Gizeh from Actual Survey and Admeasurement_, Lond. 1839.
"The sarcophagus is," he remarks, "of granite, not particularly well
polished; at present it is chipped and broken at the edges. There are
not any remains of the lid, _which was however_, fitted on in the same
manner as those of the other pyramids."]
[Footnote 249: "The western side," observes Professor Smyth, "of the
coffer is, through almost its entire length, rather lower than the other
three, and these have _grooves_ inside, or the remains of grooves once
cut into them, about an inch or two below their summits, and on a level
with the western edge; _in fact_, to _admit a sliding sarcophagus cover
or lid_; and there were the remains of three fixing pin-holes on the
western side, for fastening such cover into its place." (Vol. i. p.
85.)]
[Footnote 250: For age, etc., of Al Hakm, see Dr. Rieu in APPENDIX No.
III.; and Jomard on length of the Sarcophagus, No. IV.]
[Footnote 251: In the original Arabic, the expression is "birdlike (or
hieroglyphic) characters writ with a reed."]
[Footnote 252: See Greaves' _Works_, vol. i. p. 61 and p. 115. In
Colonel Vyse's works are adduced other Arabian authors who allude to
this discovery of a body with golden armour, etc., etc., in the
sarcophagus of the King's Chamber; as Alkaisi, who testifies that "he
himself saw the case (the cartonage or mummy-case) from which the body
had been taken, and that it stood at the door of the King's Palace at
Cairo, in the year 511" A.H. (See _The Pyramids of Gizeh_, vol. ii. p.
334). See also to the same effect _Abon Szalt_, p. 357; and Ben Abd Al
Rahman, as cited in the _Description de l'Egypte_, vol. ii. p. 191. "It
may be remarked," observes Dr. Sprenger in Colonel Vyse's work, "that
the Arabian authors have given the same accounts of the pyramids, with
little or no variation, for above a thousand years." (Vol. ii. p. 328.)
See further APPENDIX, p. 270.]
[Footnote 253: See APPENDIX, No. VII.]
[Footnote 254: Our great Scottish architect, Mr. Bryce, believes that,
with these data given, any well-informed master-mason or clerk of works
could have drawn or planned and superintended the building.]
[Footnote 255: See Newton's _Essay_, in Professor Smyth's work, vol. ii.
360; and Sir Henry James' masterly _Memorandum on the Length of the
cubit of Memphis_, in APPENDIX, No. V.]
[Footnote 256: Sir Isaac Newton says--"In the precise determination of
the cubit of Memphis, I should choose to pitch upon the length of the
chamber in the middle of the pyramid." Greaves gives this length 34.38 =
20 cubits of 20.628 inches.]
[Footnote 257: Yet this, the Memphian cubit, "need not" (somewhat
mysteriously adds Professor Smyth), "and actually is not, by any means
the same as the cubit _typified_ in the more concealed and _symbolised_
metrological system of the Great Pyramid."]
[Footnote 258: Godfrey Higgins, in his work on _The Celtic Druids_,
shows how, among the ancients, superstitions connected with numbers, as
the days of the year or the figures 365, have played a prominent part.
"Amongst the ancients" (says he) "there was no end of the superstitious
and trifling play upon the nature and value of numbers. The first men of
antiquity indulged themselves in these fooleries" (p. 244). Mr. Higgins
points out that the old Welsh or British word for Stonehenge, namely
Emrys, signifies, according to Davies, 365; as do the words Mithra,
Neilos, etc.; that certain collections of the old Druidic stones at
Abury may be made to count 365; that "the famous Abraxas only meant the
solar period of 365 days, or the sun," etc. "It was all judicial
astrology.... It comes" (adds Mr. Higgins) "from the Druids."]
[Footnote 259: See this table in Professor Smyth's _Life and Work at the
Great Pyramid_, vol. ii. p. 458. The table professes to give some of Sir
Isaac Newton's data regarding the Sacred Cubit by changing the
measurements which Sir Isaac uses of the Roman foot and inch into
English inches. But all the figures and measurements are transferred
into English inches by a different rule from that which Sir Isaac
himself lays down--viz., that the English foot is 0.967 of the Roman
foot; and, consequently, _in every one of the instances given_ in Mr.
Smyth's table, the lengths in English inches of these data of Sir Isaac
Newton are assuredly _not_ their lengths in English inches as understood
and laid down by Newton himself.]
[Footnote 260: The fourth line in the table presents a most fatal and
unfortunate error in a special calculation to which the very highest
importance is professed to be attached. This fourth line gives the
measurement of the Sacred Cubit as quoted by Newton from Mersennus, who
laid down its length as 25.68 inches of Roman measurement. Professor
Smyth changes this Roman measurement into 24.91 English inches, and then
erroneously enters these same identical Roman and English measurements
of Mersennus--viz., 24.91 and 25.68--not as _one_ identical quantity,
which they are--but as _two_ different and contrasting quantities; and
further, he tabulates this strange mistake as one of the "methods of
approach" for gaining a correct idea of the Sacred Cubit. Never,
perhaps, has so unhappy an error been made in a work of an arithmetical
and mathematical character.]
[Footnote 261: Thus, after deducing the length of the cubit of Memphis
from the length of the King's Chamber, Sir Isaac Newton observes:--"From
hence I would infer that the Sacred Cubit of Moses was equal to 25 unciae
of the Roman foot and 6/10 of an _uncia_." (See his _Dissertation on the
Sacred Cubit_, as republished in Professor Smyth's _Life and Work at the
Great Pyramid_, vol. ii. p. 362.) Again, at p. 363, Sir Isaac speaks of
"the cubit which we have concluded to have been in the time of Moses
25-60/100 inches" of the Roman foot; and at p. 365, in closing his
Dissertation, he remarks--"The Roman cubit therefore consists of 18
unciae, and the Sacred Cubit of 25-3/5 unciae, of the Roman foot." In
other words, according to Sir Isaac Newton, the Sacred Cubit of 25.60
inches of the Roman foot is equal to 24.75 British inches; for, as he
calculated, the Roman foot "was equal to 967/1000 the English foot."
(See p. 342.) This is the measurement of the Roman foot laid down by Sir
Isaac Newton in his Dissertation, and the only standard of it mentioned
in Professor Smyth's _Life and Work at the Great Pyramid_; yet in that
work Professor Smyth calculates Sir Isaac's Sacred Cubit to be 24.82
instead of 24.75 British inches. In doing so, he has calculated the
English foot as equal to .970 of the Roman foot; but was he entitled to
do so when using Sir Isaac's own data, and when employing Sir Isaac's
own calculated conclusion as to the length of the Sacred Cubit? In the
published _Proceedings_ of the Royal Society, in consequence of
following the calculation by Professor Smyth of Sir Isaac Newton's
conclusion from Sir Isaac's own data as to the length of the Sacred
Cubit, it was erroneously spoken of as 24.82, instead of 24.75 British
inches.]
[Footnote 262: This word "extraordinarily," was, by a clerical or
printer's error, spelled "extraordinary" in the _Proceedings_ of the
Royal Society; and a friend who looked over the printed proof, and
suggested two or three corrections, placed the word (sic) on the margin
after it, from whence it slipped into the text:--accidents to be much
regretted, as, from Professor Smyth's remarks to the Society on the 20th
April, they had evidently given him much, but most unintentional
offence.]
[Footnote 263: At the close of a subsequent meeting of the Royal
Society, on the 20th April 1868, Professor Smyth gave away a printed
Appendix to his three-volume work, in which he has acknowledged the
erroneous character--as pointed out in this communication--of his
all-important table, p. 22, on the length of the Sacred Cubit, by
withdrawing it, and offering one of a new construction and character,
but without being able to make the length of the cubit come nearer to
his theory. See further, APPENDIX, No. VI]
[Footnote 264: _Traite de la Grandeur et de la Figure de la Terre._
Amsterdam edition (1723), p. 195.]
[Footnote 265: _Tables Portatives de Logarithmes._ Paris, 1795, p. 100.]
[Footnote 266: The same idea of using the earth's axis as a standard of
length has been suggested also by Professor Hennessy of Dublin, and by
Sir John Herschel. See _Athenaeum_ for April 1860, pp. 581 and 617.]
[Footnote 267: The diameter of the earth in latitude 30 deg. is really about
20 miles longer than the polar axis. But Mr. Taylor obviously did not
know the nature of the spheroidal arcs of the meridian, and so falls
into the most inconsistent assertions respecting the length of this
particular diameter. Thus, in pp. 75 and 87, he asserts the diameter in
latitude 30 deg. to be 500,000,000 inches [that is = 7891.414 miles], which
is 7.756 miles _less_ than the polar axis--_the least_ diameter of all;
whereas, in p. 95, he states this diameter in lat. 30 deg. to be 17.652
miles _greater_ than the polar axis.]
[Footnote 268: "The diameter of the earth, according to the measures
taken at the Pyramids, is 41,666,667 English feet, or 500,000,000
inches." (See _The Great Pyramid_, p. 75.) "Dividing this number by
20,000,000 we obtain the measure of 25 (English) inches for the Sacred
Cubit" (p. 67).]
[Footnote 269: "When" (says Mr. Taylor, p. 91) "the _new_ Earth was
measured in Egypt after the Deluge, it was found that it exceeded the
diameter of the _old_ Earth by the difference between 497,664,000 inches
and 500,000,000 inches; that is, by 2,336,000 inches, equal to 36.868
miles."]
[Footnote 270: _Alleged Sacred Character of the Scottish Yard or Ell
Measure._--Professor Smyth tries to show (iii. 597), that if Britain
stands too low in his metrological testing of the European kingdoms and
races, its "low entry is due to accepting the yard for the country's
popular measure of length." But long ago the "divine" origin of the
Scottish ell--as in recent times the divine origin of the so-called
pyramidal cubit and inch--was pleaded rather strenuously. For when, in
the 13th century, Edward I. of England laid before Pope Boniface his
reasons for attaching the kingdom of Scotland to the Crown of England,
he maintained, among other arguments, the justice and legality of this
appropriation on the ground that his predecessor King Athelstane, after
subduing a rebellion in Scotland under the auspices of St. John of
Beverley, prayed that through the intervention of that saint, it "might
be granted to him to receive a visible and tangible token by which all
future ages might be assured that the Scots were rightfully subject to
the King of England. His prayer was granted in this way: Standing in
front of one of the rocks at Dunbar, he made a cut at it with his sword,
and left a score which proved to be the _precise_ length of an ell, and
was adopted as the regulation test of that measure of length." This
legend of the "miraculously created ellwand standard" was afterwards
duly attested by a weekly service in the Church of St. John of Beverley.
(See Burton's _History of Scotland_, ii. 319.) In the official account
of the miracle, as cited by Rymer, it is declared that during its
performance the rock cut like butter or soft mud under the stroke of
Athelstane's sword. "Extrahens gladium de vagina percussit in cilicem,
quae adeo penetrabilis, Dei virtute agente, fuit gladio, quasi eadem hora
lapis butirum esset, vel mollis glarea; ... et usque ad presentem diem,
evidens signum patet, quod Scoti, ab Anglis devicti ac subjugata;
monumento tali evidenter cunctis adeuntibus demonstrante." (Foedera,
tom. i. pars ii. 771.)]
[Footnote 271: Elsewhere (p. 45) Mr. Taylor corroborates Sir Isaac
Newton's opinion that the _working_ cubit by which the Pyramid was built
was the cubit of Memphis.]
[Footnote 272: The interior of any Scottish cottage, where the inside of
the thatched or slated roof is left exposed by uncovered joists within,
contains, on the same principle, six sides, and a seventh or the floor.]
[Footnote 273: "The _clue_ was not prepared for any immediate successors
of the builders, but was intended, on the contrary, to endure to a most
remote period. And it has so endured and served such a purpose even down
to those our own days." (Professor Smyth's _Life and Work at the Great
Pyramid_, vol. i. p. 157.) "The builders, or planners rather, of the
Great Pyramid, did not leave their building without sure testimony to
its chief secret; for there, before the eyes of all men for ages, had
existed these _two diagonal joints_ in the passage floor, pointing
directly and constantly to what was concealed in the roof just opposite
them, and no one ever thought of it. Practically, then, we may say with
full certainty that these two floor marks were left there to guide _men_
who, it was expected, would come subsequently, earnestly desiring, on
rightly-informed principles, to look for the entrance to the upper parts
of the Pyramid." (Vol. i. p. 156-7.) At p. 270 Professor Smyth again
alludes to this supposed mark, made up by two diagonal joints in the
passage floor, as evading the notice of all visitors, except "those very
few, or perhaps even that _one only man_, who had been previously
instructed to look for a certain almost microscopic mark on the
floor."]