202 The Great Pyramid in 'Egypt. [April, 



be too soft to retain so small a fiducial mark, and is intro- 

 duced into the ante-chamber at the commencement of the 

 granite constructions of the interior; and there, too, it is 

 found projecting from the polished surface of a remarkable 

 granite block, which is not only theoretically important from 

 being on the junction point of several of the most signal con- 

 struction lines of the pyramid, but practically is singularly 

 prominent there, because it stands right across the one and 

 only passage way to the further interior; and in a manner 

 which nothing yet known fully explains, though every 

 traveller or explorer is painfully aware of the fact, that no 

 man can enter the ultimate and so-called King's Chamber 

 without bowing his head low to pass under this said stone. 



Armed, then, with this new unit, or the twenty-fifth part 

 of the sacred cubit of Israel and the Great Pyramid, we 

 measure the diagonals of the base of the whole structure, 

 and find them amount to 25870, more or less ; i.e., at the 

 rate of such unit to a year — the number of years, as well as it 

 is known at present, in the grand celestial cycle called the 

 " Precession of the Equinoxes." 



Yet what has the Great Pyramid to do with the Preces- 

 sion of the Equinoxes, our readers may fairly ask ; and we 

 are enabled to answer them instantly, "A very great deal — 

 both constructively, astronomically, and anthropologically ; 

 or as follows." 



4. Of the Chronology of the Great Pyramid. 



Not unfrequently may be traced two ideas dominating so 

 nearly the same parts of the pyramid, that at first sight 

 anyone might well pause before accepting either one or the 

 other, and certainly not both of them, as having been really 

 intended. Yet a closer examination usually shows, that while 

 both ideas belong appropriately to successive steps in the 

 same line of thought, the practical influences of each on the 

 building remain totally distinct in their mechanical realisa- 

 tion. 



Thus the pure geometry of the pyramid's figure, if proved 

 at all, remains just as completely proved, after there has 

 also been subsequently shown to have been a practical 

 astronomy at work there likewise, settling the orientation of 

 the self-same figure ; i.e., directing the sides of its base upon 

 the cardinal points of the earth and sky. 



That such geographical astronomy was no accident is 

 abundantly shown from the excellence of the resulting 

 emplacement ; the mean error coming out, when measured 

 by myself with the Playfair alt-azimuth instrument — (1) on 



