1873-] Notices of Books. 513 



trophies of science and art, philosophy, history, and literature, 

 both sacred and profane, dwarfing utterly in their age all the 

 remains that have come down to us from all the " five great 

 empires of the East." 



Next, let us take an example of ignorance of Pyramid surface 

 facts of a very important class. In his chapter 14, the author 

 arrives at the conclusion, that " the Great Pyramid was never 

 cased," or coated with the much talked of sheet of smooth, 

 bevilled casing stones ; and because, he says, there is not only 

 no such casing now to be seen, but no fragments even of it ; 

 none of the prismatic edges or corners of the stones, which 

 would have been knocked off at the place, if the casing stones 

 had been pulled down by the early Caliphs, and carried away to 

 build Cairo, as Arab tradition reports > was done. Of such 

 fragments M. Dufeu has the hardihood to declare — 



On n'apercoit pas la moindre indication, la moindre trace de 

 debris de nature a rtveler un pareil travail ; — 

 and again — 



rien de cela ne s'apercoit. 

 Yet I, having carefully examined in 1865 the four enormous 

 heaps of rubbish on the four sides of the Great Pyramid, have 

 found them almost entirely made up of fragments of the 

 peculiarly white Mokattam limestone employed for the casing 

 stones ; and have further been rewarded by finding many of the 

 "prismatic" corners and edges of casing stones, and nothing but 

 casing stones, giving under measurement the very characteristic 

 and crucial angle of the slope of the sides of the Great 

 Pyramid. A collection of these angular fragments I had the 

 honour of presenting, in 1867, to the Royal Society of Edin- 

 burgh, where they may be seen in a special case in their 

 Museum : while only last year the interesting present was made 

 to me, by my friend Mr. Waynman Dixon, C.E., who 

 was then at the Great Pyramid, of an almost complete casing 

 stone, which he had found amongst the rubbish on the north 

 side of the Great Pyramid's base, together with large fragments 

 of several others. Mr. W. Dixon's completer specimen 

 measures 25 inches long, 21 high, 30 thick, has the outer 

 bevilled slope of 51 , 51'+, and is now in the official residence 

 of the Astronomer Royal for Scotland : a solid witness to the 

 absolute folly of M. Dufeu's assertion, and a proof of his utter 

 ignorance of the most essential facts connected with the exterior 

 of the Great Pyramid. 



But now for more curious things touching the interior. 



In chapter 17, the author discusses the coffer or sarcophagus, 

 in the king's chamber inside the Great Pyramid. In so doing, 

 he speaks of it as " a box ;" considers it to be a representation, 

 by means of outside and inside measures, arbitrarily multiplied 

 and divided by him, merely of the length of the profane 



