206 The Great Pyramid in Egypt. [April, 



Why, does not the very youngest assistant in every 

 modern observatory know, and know it as well as he knows 

 black from white, that a pole star transit by itself is not the 

 way to get an exact knowledge of the time! No, indeed, he 

 seeks the very opposite, or an equatorial star, for such a pur- 

 pose. And this broad principle is equally applicable to any 

 tube, whether erected for actual observation, or merely for 

 memorialising purposes, as was indeed the case in the 

 Great Pyramid ; where the passages, after being grandly 

 constructed in such a totally diverse manner from the rest 

 of the building, that they would be identifiable while any 

 of it lasted — were immediately filled up with close fitting 

 plugs of stone the whole way, and had their outer ends 

 concealed until the days of dilapidation began. 



Then, again, there chimed in with this pole-star-for-time 

 difficulty — at least in my eyes and on the score of the 

 respect due from every one living to the dead lion we were 

 all standing upon — the further anomalous query, viz., that 

 even if so bad a star for time purposes as a pole star had 

 been adopted by the Pyramid architect, why did he take 

 even that star in its weaker position, or at its lower, instead 

 of its upper and brighter, culmination ? 



I do not pretend to say how other persons have contrived, 

 with a clear conscience, to get over this double difficulty 

 with merely an expression of contempt for all the know- 

 ledge of the best men in the world 4000 years ago, and 

 the assertion that such fellows, barely developed in that 

 early age out of primitive savagedom, were only thinking 

 about " the best angle for sliding stones down the passage." 

 But the rule of conduct which my Pyramid investigations 

 had long since forced on me suggested, first the simple 

 and very different answer, — " Because when that a Draconis 

 star was crossing the meridian below the pole, another and 

 more important star must have been crossing the same plane 

 above the pole," and then set me inquiring about it. 



Now the more important star for chronological purposes 

 could be only an equatorial, or at least a zodiacal, star; a 

 meridian combination of which, with a pole star for position 

 reference, would be as powerful a method for fiducial time 

 observation as any one could devise in the present day. 

 But was there anything of the kind available at either of 

 those two epochsj viz., 3400 B.C. or 2170 B.C. ? 



At 3400 B.C. there was no such combination, and a 

 Draconis had to pass the meridian below the pole in barren 

 state. But in 2170 B.C., see, and as the exact companion 

 required, that zodiacal cluster, so dear to human sympa- 



