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



Zodiacal, and therefore the chronological part of the interior structure, as con- 

 trasted with all those Polar-pointings we have previously met with on the 

 Northern side of the Pyramid. While the gallery itself subtends from a typical 

 point (See Plate XXVI. ), the Zodiac angle of the time. 



If then chronology be intended in the Grand Gallery, and its height represent 

 7 units of that species, these units must be days, for in no department of 

 metrology, is the natural unit marked out so clearly, accurately, and lastingly, 

 as the time unit is by the rotation of the earth on its axis. The Grand Gallery 

 then, as its first symbolization, represents a week of days ; or embodies in the 

 most magnificent masonry in the Pyramid, the Divine arrangement of days 

 into periods of weeks ; an arrangement not followed by the Egyptians, but con- 

 sidered most eminently and primitively sacred by Moses and the Jewish nation. 



Nor is this the only support which the Pyramid gives to so remarkable a con- 

 clusion ; for, besides the Grand Gallery, another passage leads off from that 

 chronological point D, on Plate XXVI., viz., the horizontal passage communicating 

 with the Queen's Chamber, and bears a similar import. The distance from D, 

 for instance, to the Great Step, — which rises from the floor of the horizontal pas- 

 sage to that of the Grand Gallery, and, corrected for the angle = 100 inches, or 

 = ^J-5^th of the entire perimeter of the Pyramid, and therefore signifies a day, — 

 as also the depressed portion of the floor of the passage at its southern end ; each 

 of these specified parts goes seven times into the whole length of the passage : 

 approximately perhaps only, but very nearly indeed, if we take the mean of 

 Colonel Howard Vyse's measures and the hypothesis of our Plate XXVI. While 

 the Queen's Chamber itself, whose floor-measures are commensurable with 

 those marked portions of the passage, adds a third testimony to the same end, and 

 is safe from the small errors of measurement, being, in fact, a room with seven 

 sides ; and the only room in the whole Pyramid of which the same can be said. 



After this it is hardly worth while to delay over the circumstance of the 7 

 overlappings of each side wall of the Grand Gallery (see Plate XXVII. fig. 8), 

 combined with the 26 remarkable holes in the ramp of the Western wall, and 

 26 -I- 2 in the Eastern wall, indicating an intention of chronology still further, 

 by showing a year divided into two weeks of months ; i.e., even months of 26 

 days each, excepting the last one, which requires 07ie day to be added in an 

 ordinary year, and two in a leap-year : the three hollow years and one full one 

 of a leap-year period being further indicated by the fittings, or fillings of the 

 ante-chamber at the head of said Grand Gallery ; or, to the 30 overlapping stones 

 of the ceiling, and the 30 times and a portion (if the French, and Howaed Vyse, 

 numbers can be depended on), with which the long step at the head of the Grand 

 Gallery goes into the length of that passage, as typifying also the ordinary secular 

 months of 12 to the year. 



It is hardly necessary, indeed, to allude to these additional confirmations, 



