1 87 1.]' The Great Pyramid in Egypt. 183 



eyes, standing in front of the GreatPyramidandlookingnorth- 

 ward over the flat country which is spread out diverging 

 before it, as if for its pathway to larger power. But the 

 good fortune was reserved to Mr. Henry Mitchell, Chief 

 Hydrographer on the United States Coast Survey, to show 

 further, from maps and charts, that the position of the Great 

 Pyramid is at the very centre of origin of both the mathe- 

 matical figure, and even physical formation, of the whole 

 delta-land as an angular go sector in shape ; also that the 

 Great Pyramid's central meridian line, or the plane of its 

 one entrance-passage continued, forms the meridian line of 

 all Lower Egypt, marking precisely the longitude of 

 the northernmost and culminating point of its regularly 

 curved northern coast; while the N.W. and N.E. diagonals 

 of the building produced, similarly define the two sides of 

 the delta, stretching though they do far beyond eye-shot 

 from even the summit of the building ; and all the fan-like 

 system of streams which irrigate that most fertile of level 

 lands, all, when viewed from without, point convergingly 

 towards the Great Pyramid as their one centre of command. 



Mr. Mitchell, indeed, working from the convex curve of 

 the northern coast-line on the charts to find the centre of 

 formation thereof, some 120 miles inland, confesses that his 

 arcs and radii do not pretend to distinguish between the 

 Great Pyramid and its immediate fellows on the hill of 

 Jeezeh, though that general group they do determine. But 

 the moment we visit the hill itself, thus centralised, there is 

 not a particle of doubt left then as to which is the master 

 building there, viz., the Great Pyramid, — for it alone, as just 

 described, stands over the sector's circle's centre, and 

 possesses the one commanding prospect, extending, without 

 interruption, from its very foot inimitably away towards the 

 north, and north-east, and north-west. 



Even further still, too, as Mr. William Petrie has lately 

 shown by careful calculation, — the actual, i.e. the adjusted, 

 height of the hill around the base of the Great Pyramid, 

 also marks for Physical Geography that precise hypsometrical 

 level to which the whole ocean surface would rise, if every 

 particle of presently sub-aerial land were to be distributed 

 over the bottom of the sea ; and which surface of such 

 terraqueous globe is that to which geodesists should refer 

 all their measures for the true and full size of the earth. 



" Never," therefore most truly may Mr. Mitchell exclaim, 

 " never was there any building founded by man on so im- 

 portant a physical site," or with the whole surrounding 

 country serving in all its natural features merely as a 



