18G ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



as the pyramids of Eg}*pt. It would scarcely be possible for even the least 

 curious and impressionable of men to gaze with his own eyes upon tho>e 

 mighty masses, or even listen to the descriptions of them which have been 

 given by numberless travellers, from the time of Herodotus down to the 

 present day, without, when the first feeling of almost stupefied admiration 

 had subsided, experiencing an irresistible impulse to ask the two questions 

 which, in his present volume, Mr. Taylor attempts to answer. And of all 

 possible methods of proceeding to the solution of these inevitable queries, 

 that adopted by Mr. Taylor is certainly the most thoroughly trustworthy 

 and reliable. It consists in placing, so to speak, the Great Pyramid itself in 

 the witness-box, and, step by step, eliciting its history from its own mouth. 

 Mr. Taylor has never himself visited the pyramids ; but he deduces his con- 

 clusions from a careful collation of the chief existing records on the subject, 

 from the earliest period down to the present time. So far from considering 

 his want of personal acquaintance with the object of his inquiry as likely to 

 be in any degree prejudicial to its success, he is inclined to regard this cir- 

 cumstance as a subject rather for congratulation than for regret. 



"With regard to the first of the two questions propounded by Mr. Taylor, 

 an immense majority of those who have inquired into the subject concur in 

 the opinion that the pyramids of Egypt were designed as the burial-places of 

 the kings by whom they were built. A long succession of travellers, from 

 Strabo and Diodorus Siculus to Dr. Robinson and the Rev. A. P. Stanley, 

 have agreed without hesitation in adopting this view. So long ago, however, 

 as the commencement of the present century, a different theory was started 

 by some of the scientific men who accompanied the French expedition to 

 Egypt, viz., that the three largest pyramids were constructed on certain 

 geometrical principles, and were intended to perpetuate the memory of the 

 standard by which they were built. This h3 r pothesis was very coldly received 

 at the time of its first suggestion, and it was not till the publication, in 1840, 

 of Colonel Howard Vyse's researches on the pyramids that it attracted public 

 notice to any appreciable degree; but it has at length found a zealous cham- 

 pion in Mr. Taylor, who, by a careful examination of all existing records on 

 the subject, endeavors to show that, when rightly understood, they tend, one 

 and all, to its complete confirmation. Although he seems inclined to extend 

 this theory to the two smaller pyramids of Gizeh, it is only in the case of the 

 Great Pyramid that he prosecutes his inquiries in detail. Obviously, the 

 first things to be done in such a case are to ascertain the exact dimensions 

 of the pyramid in its perfect state, and to reconcile, in some reasonable 

 manner, the conflicting measurements which have been assigned to it from 

 time to time by various observers. The latter of these two objects Mr. 

 Taylor effects with a great show of probability, by pointing out that it is 

 only within a recent period that the true base of the pyramid has been 

 reached, and that the smaller and earlier measurements were made at times 

 when the lower tiers of the edifice were more or less covered up with sand 

 and debris. With regard to the former point, it has long been suspected 

 that the present condition of the pyramid is far from being that in which it 

 was left by its builders, and that it was originally a perfect pyramid, with 

 sharp angles and terminating in a point. This suspicion received a strong 

 confirmation in 1799, when M. Le Pere and Colonel Coutelle, in surveying 

 the platform on which the pyramid was founded, discovered at both the 

 northeastern and northwestern angles a wide shallow socket, which seemed 

 to have been designed for the reception of a corner-stone; and it was finally 



