iSyi.] The Great Pyramid in Egypt. 187 



of the hill before the eastern face of the Pyramid, so as to 

 have a joining of all their axes when produced in one central 

 point, and there giving up, to the alt-azimuth instrument 

 which interrogated them in 1865 a.d., the angle 51 51' 35" 

 for the foot, and 76 18' 3*7", or within a minute or two 

 thereof, for the summit angle of the Great Pyramid. 



5. Size of the Great Pyramid. 



What so easy, at first sight, as to determine the lengths 

 of the four sides of a square base, marked off neatly by 

 corner sockets, or even by ruled lines on a flat and almost 

 polished surface of white rock ; and yet it has not been 

 done by modern men in this case even up to the present 

 time? 



But let the reader please to remember, that though two of 

 the sockets were indeed discovered so long ago as in the year 

 1799, by the French savants under Bonaparte, the other two 

 were only brought to light by Messrs. Aiton and Inglis, and 

 partly by myself, in 1865. And, even then, though all the 

 four sockets themselves were, at that time, for some days, 

 bared at once, and brushed quite clear and clean of all dust ; 

 yet, when a would-be measurer stood at, or upon, or within 

 one of them, instead of finding the line from that socket to 

 the next one smooth, level, and proper for laying his measur- 

 ing rods upon, — behold a long hill of rough, ruined, stone 

 rubbish near sixty feet high, occupying the middle part of 

 the line, and a similar one on each of the other three 

 lines. 



Who, especially if limited in time and means, could 

 measure accurately over such obstacles as those ? Certainly 

 the men who have tried it have not covered themselves with 

 glory. For Mr. Inglis's measure of the mean of the four 

 sides in 1865 came out 911a British inches; and that of the 

 ordnance officers in 1869 came out 9130 British inches; 

 while the much more careful and elaborate measure of the 

 French savants of 1799, — on only one side, indeed, but of the 

 assumed square, and where they had two terminal sockets to 

 measure between, — was 9163 inches ; and the repetition of 

 the same by Colonel Howard Vyse and Mr. Perring in 1837 

 gave 9168 inches. 



Now, all these numbers cannot be correct, nor even each 

 of them for its own date ; for base lines, so marked in solid 

 rock, are not elastic and variable through enormous limits. 

 What, then, is the one and only real, true, and definite 

 length of the mean of the four sides, as it is in nature and 

 fact, to an accuracy let us say of a tenth of an inch ? 



