PRECESSION: AND THE PYRAMIDS 



459 



ffallerv floor. It comes out 36° 10'. Now at the winter solstice the 

 sun was 30° -{-24:° from tlie zenith or 54°, that is, 36° from the hori- 

 zon, the angle just found. In midwinter then the sun shone just to the 

 bottom of the effective gallery, as at mid-summer it had marked its 

 top. Between these two extremes the shadow must always fall. Thus 

 the gallery's floor exactly included every possible position of the sun's 

 shadow at noon from the year's beginning to its end. ^Ye thus reach 

 this remarkable result that the gallery was a gigantic gnomon or sun- 

 dial telling, not like ordinary sun-dials the hour of the day, but on a 

 more impressive scale, the seasons of the year. 



That the gallery itself extends below the point where the central 

 incline drops vertically to permit of entrance to the Queen's Tomb with 

 its ramps notched, as above, does not vitiate the deduction, for observ- 

 ers could not generally be placed on benches with their legs hanging 

 down, however they might be so located on emergency. The recognition 

 of this function of the gallery is not new, being, I believe, due to Proc- 

 tor, but the exact coincidence of the limits of the efi'ective gallery with 

 those of the sun has, to my knovvledge, never been pointed out. 



Such, then, was the use of the enter- 

 ing passage, and such the design of the 

 Great Gallery. Grand as was communion 

 there with the sky by day, it must have 

 been sublime at night — alone with the 

 stars in the heart of that superb monu- 

 ment of stone. About the year B.C. 3430 

 it was further heightened by a spectacle 

 which could not be Mdtnessed now. Cal- 

 culation shows that the great star a Cen- 

 tauri, the brightest and nearest to us of 

 all the fixed stars, shone then at its upper 

 culmination night after night down the 

 hushed and polished vault of the Great 

 Gallery. 



a Centauri now hardly peeps above 

 the pyramid's horizon at its highest, and 

 in a few more years will never rise there 

 at all until, thousands of years hence, the 

 pole in its majestic precessional march 

 raises it into view once more. 



In a peculiar sense the pyramid was 

 the man for whose use it was built. Pri- 

 marily its purpose was to cast his horo- 

 scope through life, and then when his davs 

 were ended it became his tomb. He was v™c"l.''"™„?.:"-r;oo»H 



