258 Discoveries made in Egypt. 
other English gentlemen, who liberally engaged that whatever 
might be discoy -ered should be left to the disposal of Mr. Cavigtia ; 
end he on his part generously requested ‘* that every thing might 
be sent to the British Museum, as a testimony of his attachment 
to that country, under the protection of whose flag he had for 
many years navigated the ocean.’ 
An incidental remark of C: aviglia, that “ one ceases to see the 
pole-star at the spot where the main passage ceases to continue 
in the same inclination, and where one begins to mount,” has 
suggested to the Quarterly Reviewer the idea that possibly these 
passages were intended to answer some purpose in astronomy, 
whatever might be their other purposes; and we think.the idea 
is deserving of consideration. In the six pyramids that have been 
opened at Gizeh and Saccara, the entrance has been found at 
or near the centre, on the northern face, and the passage in all 
inclined downward. Greaves makes that of Cheops 26°, and 
Caviglia 27°, which he says is common to all the sloping passages 
in this pyramid. He found the same angle on opening the small 
pyramids to the south of that of Mycerinus, at the end of the 
passage of which were two chambers leading one out of the other, 
which were both empty. Belzoni [see our last number] estimates 
the angle of the sloping passages in the pyramid of Cephrenes at 
26°, <“* Now,” says the Reviewer, “ it 1s quite impossible that 
this coincidence could have been accidentals ; it must have been 
the work of design, executed for some special pur posers ai 8 
All the learning of the Egvptians was vested in their priests. 
Their knowledge of astrononiy is not merely hypothetical ..... 
When we find that all the learning of Thales, by which he was 
enabled to calculate eclipses and determine the solstitial and 
equinoctial points, was acquired from the Egyptians, 600 years- 
before the Christian era; that, at a later period, Eratosthenes, 
under the sanction of the Ptolemies, was enabled to measure the 
length of a degree of the meridian, and from it to deduce that of 
the circumference of the earth, to an extraordinary degree of ac- 
curacy, by the unerring principles of geometry; and that the 
day of the summer solstice was then, and probably much earlier, so 
nicely observed by means of a well duns at Svene, from whose sur- 
face (on that day) the sun’s disc was reflected entire, —we are com- 
pelled to concede to the ancient Egyptians a very ‘high degree cf 
astronomical knowledge.” To this we mayadd, that there had been 
a period when with them pis (2. e. Taurus] was the leader of 
the heavenly host, though, at the period when the Greeks first be- 
came acquainted with their astronomy, dmmon [The Ram] per- 
formed that office; and from this it < appears they must have been 
acquainted with the —e of the equinoxes, and, when ey 
verna 
