210 The Great Pyramid 'i% Egypt. [April, 



There is, indeed; and though the instrument thereof 

 be shrouded in the eternal darkness of the most central 

 interior, yet it signifies far and wide its ruling importance 

 by spreading a certain type of its nature throughout the 

 entire substance of the whole building, even to its very ex- 

 terior, and equally on the four sides ; accomplishing it thus. 



In the highest, innermost, most granite-built, most 

 regularly fashioned, and final chamber of the Great 

 Pyramid, there is a long, hollow, lidless, rectangular box 

 admirably carved out of a single block of hard red granite. 

 It is the only piece of furniture in the room, and is quite 

 loose, or stands freely, and may be pushed about hither and 

 thither on the flat granite floor ; and has been known to 

 the world sometimes as a "sarcophagus " for burial purposes, 

 and sometimes as a "vase," "coffer," " laver," "font;" 

 and at last as a grand standard of capacity and weight 

 measure, — the cubic contents of the interior showing the 

 former, and the weight of water, at a certain temperature, 

 required to fill it, the latter. John Taylor, too, went even 

 a step further than his predecessors, in proving that the 

 contents of the vessel were equal to those of the laver of 

 the Hebrews, and its 4th part the same as the so-called 

 quarter of early Saxon metrology, — but a quarter of what 

 the oldest existing tradition had allowed to escape. 



There is much in all this requiring independent mechanical 

 proof before its full force can be appreciated. 



First, for instance, if the vessel be loose, and the door 

 high enough to allow of its passing in and out (and as the 

 said door does by just a fraction of an inch), how are we to feel 

 assured that such a portable thing has not been brought in at 

 some long subsequent time, and not by the original builders ? 



In this way : — 



The height of said coffer is to the length of two sides of 

 its base as 1 to 3*141, &c.,* i.e., it is a it proportioned coffer 

 in a 7r proportioned Pyramid ; a shape which applies to the 

 Great Pyramid alone: while further still, the cubic contents 

 of the interior, most carefully measured, t are i-5oth of 

 those of an anciently and accurately marked off portion of 

 the lower granite course of the chamber, itself containing 

 the said coffer. That vessel, therefore, being found, — when 

 tested by ideas which were never ventilated until the last 

 few years, — to be so eminently appropriate in shape, as 



* See St. John V. Day's " Papers on the Great Pyramid," p. — ; also p. 13 

 of his "Plates and Notes on Structures called Pyramids:" Edmonston and 

 Douglas, Edinburgh. 



f See " Life and Work," vol. iii., p. 154 and 167. 



