3"2 The Great Pyramid of Egypt. [January, 



its foot) founded on a hill of compact nummulitic lime-stone, 

 at a level of about ioo feet above the alluvial soil of Egypt, 

 and to one side of it. 



The building is indeed an admirable example of a pro- 

 verbially surely n?c&-founded one ; for the following can still 

 be made out as the mode of proceeding adopted. The whole 

 of the original rugged top of the hill was cut away and 

 lowered symmetrically until sound rock was everywhere arrived 

 at ; and on that firm material, exquisitely levelled, the first 

 of the outer component stones of the Pyramid were laid ; 

 every stone being several feet long, broad, and high, but 

 admirably worked by grinding processes, after the ruder 

 cutting, to true mathematical figures; and with their joints 

 cemented, but almost inconceivably fine and close, or no 

 thicker than the vanishing thickness of " a sheet of silver 

 paper" While at the four ground corners of the whole 

 structure, shallow, but broad and level-floored sockets were 

 cut in the rock, anciently to receive the lower corner stones 

 of the outside casing ; and now, by the accomplished fact, 

 to form the fiducial reference-points for the original length 

 of the four base-sides of the building. 



In connection with one of these sockets nearly 12 feet square, 

 — said to me one morning at the place, Mr. Inglis, the working 

 engineer for Mr. Aiton — who had, with Arab help, just 

 cleared away all the rubbish and brushed out the last particle 

 of dust from the fair white floor of the ancient work, — " I 

 have tested the whole of the socket's floor with my spirit- 

 level, and can find no error in it." Remarkable testimony, 

 surely, to come 4000 years after the date of the work's 

 execution, and upon its being specially examined with 

 " instruments of precision " invented in so long after a day. 



9. The Testing Angle of the Great Pyramid. 



But how is the whole building — anyone may very properly 

 ask — as to subsidence of foundations or original errors ? 



The answer cannot be given so positively at present as it 

 may be on a future occasion, because the greater part of 

 every base side of the Great Pyramid is now covered up by 

 huge heaps of loose rubbish. The closest approach, perhaps, 

 yet made, was when I measured the angle of elevation of 

 each of the arris lines of the building with a large altitude- 

 azimuth instrument, the most powerful angular measurer 

 ever taken to the Pyramid : and while, too, this instrument 

 was plumbed accurately over the outer corner of each of the 

 fiducial corner sockets already described, its upper observing 

 signal was a specially prepared staff held at the top of the 



