682 PROF. C. p. SMYTH ON THE REPUTED METROLOGICAL SYSTEM 



but in terms that now prevent their being listened to with patience : while, seeing 

 that some of them declare that the king's chamber was admirably sky-lighted, 

 when we know the interior to be absolute darkness ; and that its ceiling was 

 covered with inscriptions, when the whole of the finished interior is positively 

 without a stroke of inscription, — shows how little we can trust their statements, 

 either that a dead body having a golden breastplate, was found in the stone box, 

 with a sword of inestimable value, and a carbuncle the size of an egg, shining like 

 the light of day ; or, that the said box was full of gold in coin of very large size. 



Ages passed after Al Mamoun's essay, European travellers began to look in 

 at the Pyramids, and rather patronised the corpse notion : for the stone chest, or 

 marble hot-bath, or porphyry coffer, as it was variously called, was very much 

 in shape like the lower part of an Egyptian sarcophagus. 



But then in that case, why was it, the coffer, so entirely without ornament ; 

 why so utterly without inscription, when that would be the precise place where 

 Egyptians would have lavished their inscriptions; why without a cover, and 

 without any fixing places to receive a cover ; and then who ever heard of a corpse 

 being buried above, and so much as 140 feet above, the level of the ground : and. 

 lastly, if the room was intended for a corpse only, why was it so well ventilated, 

 by the two remarkable and effective air-channels (see Plate XXIV.) discovered 

 by Colonel Howard Vyse ? 



In short, the failings of the sepulchral theory were so many, as of themselves 

 to give rise to the idea with some philosophic minds who weighed everything 

 carefully (such as the French Academicians in 17.99, and Sir Gardner Wilkinson 

 in 1858), that no body of a king had ever been deposited in that porphyry cofier. 

 The Academicians even boldly expressed a belief that the said coffer might pro- 

 bably have been intended for something entirely different ; or, for a standard of 

 linear measure. This idea, however, they were not able to prove ; and even the 

 very memory of it seemed to be lost within a few years after, by reason of the 

 excessive applause which followed the discovery of hieroglyphical interpretation. 



Hieroglyphics, however, have done nothing for the explanation of the porphyry 

 coffer, because indeed it has no hieroglyphics, and in the meanwhile Mr Taylor 

 comes out with a new and striking idea, — * 



The porphyry coffer, says he, is a standard measure, not of length, but of 

 capacity and weight; it was the original of all corn measures; the Pyramid itself 

 receiving its name from otjoj wheat and /mit^ov measure ; and the so-called "Quarters," 

 in which the British farmer, up to the present day, measures his wheat, are accu- 

 rately quarters of the cubical contents of the porphyry coffer in the King's Chamber 

 of the Great Pyramid. 



* While at press, I am informed of the existence of a rare pamphlet, but have not yet been able 

 to see it. The. Originc and j4ntiquitie of our English Weights and Measures discovered by their near 

 agreement ■ with such standards, that are now found in one of the Egyptian Pyramids. London. 

 1706. Anonymous : and reprinted in 17-15, with the authorffhip attributed to Professor Greaves, of 

 Oxford, who died in 1652. 



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