184 The Great Pyramid in Egypt. [April, 



chorographical pointer, on the grandest dimensions, to the 

 said building's eternal place of standing on " the utmost 

 bound of the everlasting hills," during all human history. 



Nay, indeed, there is even yet more of hard scientific fact 

 to distinguish the position; for, on recently summing up the 

 areas and positions of all the land-surface of the entire 

 globe,* it has been found that the general superficial 

 centre thereof (i.e., of the land surface or that which 

 mainly constitutes the greatness of human empire and 

 the numerical strength of nations), such centre, — when 

 measured both in latitude and longitude, and defined 

 also by the crossing of the longest line of land surface in 

 latitude and the longest in longitude, — comes, in either way, 

 close to the same identical Great Pyramid site. No other 

 natural position, therefore — if required now to be sought for 

 whereon to establish a central anthropological monument 

 for all the human race through all historical ages — could be 

 found, other or better than this remarkable one in Lower 

 Egypt on which the Great Pyramid is already, and has been 

 so long, established with such care and precision in all 

 particulars. 



4. Shape of the Great Pyramid. 



The levelling of the rocky hill top and the production 

 thereby of a white and smooth flat surface of a half chalky but 

 compact limestone, was of course a famous preparation for 

 laying off any mathematical figure with exactitude, even 

 when of the grandest dimensions ; and it was done. 



At the north-east, south-east, and north-west angles of 

 the huge square base of this pyramid, the corners are 

 marked by flat-floored, shallow, rectangular sockets to hold 

 the colossal corner foundation-stones of the whole building. 

 But at the south-west angle, where, too, the socket, though 

 dug for through the modern superincumbent rubbish in vain 

 by Mr. Inglis (Mr. Aiton's assistant) and his Arabs, including 

 amongst them two " sheiks of the pyramid," was only at 

 length discovered when I lent them the aid of the late 

 John Taylor's theory, by measuring his computed angle 

 from the less dilapidated summit of the building, and 

 showing them thereby on the ground below, where the 

 outside corner of ancient times ought to be. There, then, 

 when that long-lost socket was thus re-discovered in April, 

 1865, after a repose of goo years, was its floor, cut methodi- 

 cally into the fair white rock, and levelled so accurately as 



* See " On an Equal Surface Proje&ion for Maps of the World," by 

 C. Piazzi Smyth. Published by Edmonston and Douglas : Edinburgh, 1870. 



