266 



• KNOWLEDGE * 



[Jas. 27, 188;; 



to higher Icvols, tliey must inevitably have lost the perfec- 

 tion of their orii-ntntion, unless thoy had lind such means 

 of keeping tlnir work eorreot us we (ind thc-y had. This 

 heing so, tlie chances being ])ractioally infinite against tlicir 

 first obtaining, and afterwards retaining, such accuracy of 

 orientation, without long, slant passages, sucli as we find 

 within tlie Pyniinid, we are logically justified in saying it 

 is r'Ttaiii that the pasiuiges witc used in that way, and 

 were intended originally to subserve that purpose. 



The case is somewhat altered when we reach the point 

 C, where the ascending passage ceases to bo of the same 

 small square section as the descending one. Up to this 

 jwint its purpose Ls obvious. But so far as mcn^ orientation 

 was concerned, there seems no reason why it should not 

 have retsiined the same section to a higher level. It is 

 true that the nearer it approached to the central line, LF,* 

 the less effective its directive value ; but certainly this 

 value would not be increased by increasing the size of the 



they hod considered this plane for the same reason that the 

 modem astronomer considers it — viz., liecause this is the 

 ](lane in wliicli all the heavenly bodies culminate, or attain 

 the middle and highest j)oint of their pa-ssage from the 

 eastern to the western liorizon. They might have had 

 only a fancy for exact orientation, though one can hardly 

 t<'ll why they should. Still, men of different races have 

 taken .strange fancie.s, and, unlikely though it seems, this 

 might have been such an one, just as the building of colossal 

 tombs seems to have been. 



At the point C, however, all doubt ceases. The astro- 

 nomical nature of the builders' jiurposc becomes here as 

 clear and certain as already the astronomical nature of 

 their methods has been. For from here upwards the small 

 ascending passage is changed to one of great height, so as 

 to command a long vertical space of the heavens, precisely 

 as a modern astronomer sets his transit circle to sweep the 

 vertical meridian. Tlie floor, however, of the ascending 



passage, whether in a vertical or a horizontal direction ; 

 and from and after the point C it is increased in both 

 directions. 



Now, wo are certain that the I)uiklors of the Pyramid 

 wanted to orient it very carefully, simply because we find 

 that they did so. We do not know >rl,,/ they did. But it 

 seems antecedently unlikely that «// tliey wanted was to 

 get the Pyramid perfectly four-S(]uarc to the cardinal points. 

 The natural idea is, that being, as we see by their work 

 tliey were, astronomers of great skill, they had an astro- 

 nomical purpose of .vonie sort They liad thus far Ijoen 

 working with manifest reference to the meridional plane, 

 just as an astronomer of our own time would ; and it looks 

 very much, even from what we have already seen, as though 



• Tin's lino in not verticnlly below the vertex, V, but central, in 

 tho senRo of beinpr t)io vertical lino wfioro the horizontal north and 

 soutli lino from the nscondin^ and desconding; passages crosses tlie 

 east and west plane through tho vertex. 



passage, and e\en its sides, are carried on unchanged in 

 direction, right up to D, where tho central vertical (see 

 preceding note) meets the ascending gallery. So that from 

 B to D, except where the horizontal passage CL to the so- 

 called Queen's Chamber is carried oft", the floor of ascending 

 passage and gallerj- formed a perfectly uniform slant plane. 

 And here let us pause to inquire — seeing that the 

 astronomical purpose of the passages is made manifest — 

 what shape an astronomer, who was also an architect, 

 would give to the great ascending slit, as it were, through 

 which the transits of tlie heavenly i)odies were to be 

 watched. As an astronomer, he would like it to be very 

 high and relatively narrow ; but as an architect, he 

 would see tJiat the vertical section could not have 

 such a shape as A BCD in Fig. 2 ; for then, not only 

 would the side walls, AB, JiC, be unstable, but 

 the observer would not be comfortably situated. Yet, as 

 an astronomer, he would know that such a shape as is 



