THE PLACING OF THE GREAT PYRAMID. 57 



have argued in support of the conclusion that the stones 

 were probably pieces of magnetic iron from meteorites, 

 worn as divining talismans by the priests of Cybele, who 

 supposed them to contain souls which had fallen from 

 heaven. 1 



I have already alluded to the lack of evidence tending 

 to show that the Egyptians of the Pharaonic period had 

 knowledge of the lodestone, whence it necessarily follows 

 that they could have known nothing of the compass. 

 Nevertheless, upon a contrary assumption, it has been 

 frequently maintained that the orientation of the Great 

 Pyramid is such as to indicate, with reasonable proba- 

 bility, that the compass needle was used in establishing 

 the positions of its faces. 2 



The difficulty with this supposition is that the Pyramid 

 is, in fact, placed with too great accuracy for the work to 

 be done even by the best modern compass. Its sides face 

 astronomically the north, south, east and west; not to the 

 cardinal points of the compass, but to the azimuthal direc- 

 tion of the earth's axis and to a line at right angles thereto. 

 The compass, however, is subject to variations, due to reg- 

 ular daily, monthly, yearly and centennial changes in the 

 earth's magnetic field, which controls it. Hence, the 

 task of figuring backward the probable position of the 

 needle at the time of the building of the Pyramid a 

 period which is in doubt might well cause despair in 

 the most skillful investigator of terrestrial magnetism; 

 for, in the least interval which has elapsed, the needle has 

 probably swung over large angles from the true north, 

 back and forth many times. But, granting such a possi- 

 bility, still it may be safely questioned whether the most 

 accomplished surveyor or topographical engineer of to-day 

 could run the lines of the pyramid faces, by the aid of the 

 best modern compass, with no greater error than 19' 58", 



1 Ennemoser : History of Magic, II., 27. 

 2 Gliddon : Otia ^gyptiaca, London, 1849. 



