ig8 The Great Pyramid in Egypt. [April, 



tabular view of pyramids already given, that not one of the 

 others has this angle or anything near it ; no angle 

 either for which any superior mental idea has ever been 

 proposed. The builders of those other and subsequent 

 pyramids copied the Great Pyramid in all that they saw or 

 they thought important ; but plainly the scientific secrets, 

 as reasons of its construction, were not known to the 

 ordinary idolatrous Egyptians of even the most ancient 

 days. Of course they could not fail, if copying at all, to 

 reproduce the square base and four triangular flanks, whence 

 they may lay claim to quinary arrangements and decimal 

 arithmetic, which, in fact, the old Egyptians had. But the 

 angle of the Great Pyramid ! No, they never hit that ! 

 Nor even imagined that there was anything important 

 therein ! For over and above the utterly diverse bullf 

 angles of so many of the subsequent pyramids, there may 

 be seen still, even in the best cut hieroglyphics and Royal 

 cartouches of pyramid-building kings of ancient Memphis, 

 little figures standing for pyramids and most ridiculously 

 out in their angles; being, generally, tall and slim or any- 

 where between 6o° and 8o°, and this by artists who could 

 touch off the precise outline of any of a hundred varieties of 

 animals to most speaking likeness and almost microscopic 

 exactitude. 



So far as shape is concerned, then, all these other 

 pyramids came no nearer to the Great Pyramid than do 

 monkeys to man made in the image of God. Monkeys 

 have at least as good, if not better, five fingered hands than 

 man ; but soul and immortal spirit and capacity for religious 

 impressions — where are they ? 



Besides, however, its correct solution of the universal 

 7r problem, and its claim, considering also its primeval date, 

 to school respect on that account — the Great Pyramid is 

 further, and even thereby, an instrument for holding up 

 to man, through every age, a certain thing in creation 

 which he, with all his powers, cannot evenly decimalise, 

 strive he though never so wildly. And yet, viewed sub- 

 missively according to nature's laws, — the very self-same 

 principle gives the building a claim to distinguish and typify 

 some other numbers, especially 3 and 7,* besides the 5's and 

 io's of its radical formation, which lead to some~ singularly 

 instructive consequences. 



* See postscript by W. Petrie to vol. iii. of my " Life and Work at the Great 

 Pyramid." 



