512 Notices of Books. [Oftuber, 



those of the English scientific and sacred theory; and his 

 methods of proceeding are distinguished far more by ignorance 

 than knowledge, of the absolute local and monumental facts. 



The very title of M. Dufeu's book is a senseless antagonism 

 to Pyramidal measured and known data, when he therein speaks 

 of "the four Pyramids of Gizeh;" for who, after once seeing 

 the Pyramids of Gizeh (Jeezeh), would ever think of speaking of 

 them as four, when there are three large ones and two sets of 

 three small ones each, or nine altogether ? One, he might speak 

 of, because one of them is larger and better than all the rest ; or 

 two, he might name, because the second one is so nearly as 

 high as the first that many old Arab authors alluded to them as 

 " the pair ; " and three he might talk of because the third, 

 though by no means so large as either the first or the second, is 

 yet far larger than all the others, stands in a line with the first and 

 second, and is thought by some authors to have been even more 

 expensive than them in construction, on account of the large 

 quantity of granite employed in its casing, making it through all 

 history " the coloured Pyramid." But the moment any one 

 passes beyond this third one, he must, to be truthful, either 

 mention the six small ones, little mites of things though they 

 be, or none at all. 



And then behold the "science" of the book! M. Dufeu 

 asserts that the Great Pyramid commemorates its own lon- 

 gitude ! But how, and from what, and why ? 



By taking the profane cubit of Egypt, dividing it into 

 360 little parts, and representing in those previously unheard of 

 and unused terms, an unimportant feature of the unfinished, 

 subterranean chamber of the Great Pyramid, adding, multiplying, 

 and dividing by other arbitrary numbers representing the rise of 

 some Nile inundations at some time or other, the author at 

 last gets a number which, he says, enables him to state that the 

 longitude of the Great Pyramid was 152 38' 20" from a certain 

 point in the 44th degree of latitude ; but whether that latitude 

 was in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere, and whether the 

 meridian was east or west of the Great Pyramid, he finds 

 nothing to define. So there are four points to choose amongst ; 

 and as three of them fall in deep ocean water, but the fourth 

 happily alights on land in the American continent, in the 

 Oregon district — the author adopts that point, and exclaims 

 " therefore America had been discovered and known by them (the 

 Pyramid builders) before the foundation of the Great Pyramid 

 of Gizeh, 6735 years ago" (see page 210). Yet the excellent 

 M. Dufeu never seems to have considered that if the longitude 

 of the Great Pyramid was measured from a point in America 

 and not that point in America from the Great Pyramid, if there 

 was any longitude measuring at all — America should have been 

 a more civilised, advanced, and developed country than Egypt, 

 in that very early day, and have left behind it some marvellous 



