i8yi.] The Great Pyramid in Egypt. igi 



it not thereby be just so much further off from the ordinary 

 mathematical definition of a Pyramid, viz., a solid of such 

 and such a shape ? 



True is the objection in principle, though in practice 

 not felt to any sensible extent ; and because, in the first 

 place, all the hollow portions of the Great Pyramid put 

 together barely amount to i-2000th of its whole bulk ; and 

 in the second place, so far as specific gravity is concerned, 

 the effect is in part made up for by some of these same 

 interiors being lined, and others even filled, with granite, a 

 far heavier material than the very light nummulitic lime- 

 stone of the general mass. 



And here let it be noted for a moment, how the Great 

 Pyramid makes use of that remarkable material, granite ; 

 viz., in the very uniform temperature of its interior, and there 

 only ; where too it has lasted and preserved its anciently 

 polished surface admirably. When my friend St. John Day, 

 C.E., in a lecture to the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, 

 was recently describing the Mokattam limestone which the 

 Pyramid architect had chosen for its external covering, where 

 the changes of temperature between night and day, under 

 the radiations of sun and sky, are excessive — a practical con- 

 structor rose with exceeding positivism to say : — " Now, 

 I think that the architect was wrong there, and I am sure 

 that I could have advised him better; for I have come to 

 believe that all the strength of the earth consists in granite 

 Divinely put into it ; and when the town council the other 

 day took up a pavement that I had laid for them ten years 

 before with granite out of the quarries of his grace the 

 Duke of Argyle, it was found perfectly sound and good 

 after all that wear and tear." 



Mr. Day's answer, by merely relating facts from the 

 Pyramid, was as ready as if prepared beforehand : viz., that 

 the architect of the subsequent third Pyramid (decidedly, 

 too, an idolatrous and anti-great Pyramid man) had used 

 granite for the external casing of a large part of his Pyramid ; 

 and with the result now, or after the more certain and 

 crucial test of 3500 years, that the exposed granite surface 

 is so disintegrated or exfoliated, especially at the corners 

 and edges, that the once smooth-planed bevelled casing 

 blocks are now in shape like so many puddings, or even 

 embryo boulders ; and fail, in fragments, to tell the original 

 angle they were cut to, within many whole degrees. While 

 the peculiar limestone of the similarly external coating but 

 of the still more ancient Great Pyramid has had such a 

 special power of resisting atmospheric effects, that you may 



