Min. 



Sec. 



I 



15 



I 



45 



I 



15 







45 



1871.] The Great Pyramid of Egypt. 33 



Pyramid, where modern breakages are at their smallest 

 limit, by the same Mr. Inglis just mentioned. 



The result then arrived at, after several hours' work, was, 

 that the correction to reduce each arris line to the mean of 

 the whole amounted to — on a run, be it remembered, of no 

 less than 700 feet of sub-aerial masonry — 



For the N.E. arris line = — 



„ N.W. „ = + 



„ S.E. „ = — 



„ S.W. „ = + 



While the mean absolute angle was 41 59' 45", which gives 

 for the angle of the middle of any side with the base, 



5i° Si' ""• . 



And as this angle, or something a few seconds only there- 

 from, and which was repeated in every stone anciently 

 forming the flanks of the Great Pyramid, is never attained 

 within a quarter of a degree, and sometimes not within 

 several degrees, by any other Egyptian Pyramid (though 

 there are three which come to within a single minute of 

 each other, so truly could, and did, the builders work when 

 they saw occasion for it), it may be looked on as the 

 characteristic angle of the Great Pyramid, enabling anyone 

 at once to distinguish any of its outer bevelled casing-stones 

 from those of all its neighbours. 



Now, in the British Museum, it is stated that there are 

 three casing-stones, presented to the nation by that vir 

 incomparabilis in Pyramidology, the late Colonel Howard 

 Vyse. I rushed, therefore, eagerly, in a passing visit last 

 year, and tried their angles of slope with a pocket clinometer, 

 when, Oh ! horror ! one of them gave 48*5°; another, 58*8°; 

 and another, 46'5°. 



At such angles they could not have belonged to the Great 

 Pyramid, and it was a serious libel on that exactest of 

 buildings to say so. But these angles, as measured, included, 

 with the angle of level cut by the primeval masons, the angle 

 of level arranged by the officers of the British Museum. 

 Wherefore, in a second attempt, eliminating their recent 

 handiwork by measuring the difference of angle of the bevelled 

 face of any stone from its own next worked surface of a 

 horizontal joint, behold, the angles came out, 52°, 52° 30', 

 and 51 30'; or, considering the fragmentary state of the 

 stones and the imperfections of my mere pocket clinometer, 

 quite close enough to show that they might all have come 

 from a pyramid of 51 51/ + x" ; and to prove that, the 

 ancient builders must have been at least five times, and 



VOL. VIII. (O.S.) — VOL. I. (N.S.) F 



