1871.] The Great Pyramid in Egypt. 201 



half ago as being the length of the sacred cubit placed before 

 the children of Israel by Moses as the cubit " of the Lord 

 their God ;" but totally without the limits of the cubits of 

 profane Egypt, Babylon, Nineveh, and all known idolatrous 

 countries of the ancient world ; and, in the second place, 

 because such a length-standard is very remarkably introduced 

 into the chamber called the Queen's Chamber of the Great 

 Pyramid, by a massive and most unique, as well as striking, 

 arrangement of a portion of the architecture there, which 

 can have been brought about by no others than the original 

 builders. 



Taking, then, that 25*025 inch rod, and applying it to the 

 base side of the Great Pyramid, it shows no less appropriate 

 a quantity than the number of days in the year ; or another 

 most solar, most anthropological datum in astronomical 

 science ; seeing that it is the number of times the earth 

 revolves on its axis while it circulates round the sun, with a 

 radius vector already typified in the pyramid. At present, 

 indeed, the roughness of modern measures of the pyramid 

 prevents us saying with certainty whether siderial days or 

 solar days of the earth are indicated ; but both come so 

 decidedly within the limits of the best modern measures, 

 such as they are, that it would be hardly fair to hide what 

 seems so close to proof in the ancient building, merely 

 because modern measurement of it is disgracefully far behind. 



Again, let us take a new unit still, i.e., divide the 25*025 

 rod by 5, and by 5 again. A most eminently pyramid 

 division abstractly, and practically it is justified by the 

 pyramid itself; (1) because the chamber containing the 

 larger unit stands on the 25th course of masonry constitu- 

 ting the whole pyramid; and (2) because a division of 

 5 by 5 a g ani > of that very length, is shown in the so-called 

 ante-chamber to the King's Chamber. Each of these 

 chambers devotes one or more of their walls to memorialising 

 a division into 5 ; and it is in one of them that we see first, 

 the fifth part of 25*025 inches, and then the fifth of that 

 again, in the outside breadth, and then the thickness of the 

 so-called boss on the granite leaf. 



Now a little mark only five inches long and one inch 

 thick, would be a curiously difficult thing for total strangers 

 to find in a general way throughout the Great Pyramid ; it 

 would be" the prototype, indeed, of the confounding needle in 

 the farmer's bottle of hay. But there is no such difficulty at 

 the pyramid with this little boss; for it is taken away from the 

 Queen's Chamber, whose walls, being only in limestone, would 



VOL. VIII. (O.S.)— VOL. I. (N.S.) . 2 D 



