1871.] -The Great Pyramid in Egypt. 179 



anything more than mouldering heaps of rudest stones, to 

 have been built somewhat in cyclopean sport, as flights of 

 audacious, mocking steps, some three to four feet high, each 

 cf them. 



To describe these appearances fully, and, for their own 

 sake alone, would be merely to deal in the poetic, or 

 picturesque, and such telling effects as ruin and decay 

 invariably import into the architectural works of man. But 

 this sort of thing has been done often enough before ; unfor- 

 tunately proves nothing; and is not our true business here. 

 We have come, if for anything, to search for traces of the 

 original formsbefore all this dilapidation began. Such traces, 

 too, there are ; many, perhaps, still entombed in the rubbish 

 of latter ages, and only to be opened up to the attentions of 

 the scientific measurer by extensive excavations, too costly 

 for him to undertake ; but numerous are the traces of exact- 

 ness still remaining above ground, if men would only seek 

 them out earnestly. This, however, a few persons have of 

 late begun to do; whence it has already arrived, that our 

 knowledge of the original condition of the pyramid is much 

 more advanced now than it was only a few years ago. 



Every one knows the usual mathematical definition 

 of a pyramid, viz., a solid whose base is a regular recti- 

 linear plane figure, and whose sides are plane triangles, 

 having all their vertices meeting together in a point above 

 the base, called the vertex of the pyramid." 



Give, then, to the base of such a conception four, rather 

 than any other number of sides, and you have at once (with 

 only a possible variation in the angle of slope of said sides) 

 the very figure which you saw so bright, so clear, so 

 inimitably defined, so blocked out in the solid, and yet so 

 delicately brought up to a summit point, in the distant view. 

 But now that you are close to it, on the hill of Jeezeh, the 

 scientific question that arises is, to what degree of accuracy 

 was the practical realisation of such theoretical idea really 

 carried out, when on the vast scale of the Great Pyramid ? 

 And our answer must evidently depend, not on the general 

 ruined heaps lying about, but on those exact traces of the 

 original which, as I have said, are to be found in no incon- 

 siderable number by those who seek for them aright. 



3. Situation of the Great Pyramid. 



Perhaps the first point in the general problem to which 

 we should direct our attention is that of location or 

 situation. 



I have already, in Part I., set forth that the Great 



