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.