386 PROFESSOR C. PIAZZI SMYTH'S ACCOUNT OF 



come upon newer formations, probably the latest of the pleistocene, where the 

 hill surface is, in places, richer in well-preserved and almost fresh-looking 

 cardiums and other shells than any modern sea-beach. 



Throughout all these various ages of hills, however, it is important for our 

 present purposes to know, especially as confuting some theories of the Pyramids, 

 that there is no trace of igneous or metamorphic action of any kind or degree ; 

 and though large quantities of granite, greenstone, basalt, and diorite are con- 

 stantly found lying about (and of which the table holds a few specimens), they 

 can all be traced up to various monuments in the neighbourhood, whereto they 

 were brought by ancient industry from distances of many hundreds of miles. 



Secondly, and in a similarly general manner only, I would mention, — that it 

 was easy to perceive that the Pyramids, with all their mysterious grandeur of a 

 prehistoric age, are surrounded by tombs, often fully as old as themselves ; the 

 whole region is, in fact, an enormous burying-ground, used over and over again 

 by several of the earlier dynasties of Egyptian polity ; and since their time 

 plundered, emptied, and ransacked to the last degree by later-empire Egyptians, 

 Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and at last by modern Europeans, causing 

 all one's steps occasionally to be amongst smashings of coffins and bones of men. 



Yet though found among them, and often used for the same purposes, the 

 Pyramids, as a class, are distinguished from tombs proper ; for while the interiors . 

 of these are covered with writing, carving, and painting, replete with description 

 and story upon nearly every particle of their surface, there is nothing of that kind, 

 excepting of course the quarry marks on concealed fragments, to be met with 

 inside the Pyramids. In the interior of the Great Pyramid, indeed, which differs 

 even more than the others, and in a most pointed and peculiar manner from any 

 known sepulchral arrangements, its own grand and solemn walls either speak not 

 at all, or in the pure and highly-fraught language of proportions of geometrical 

 surfaces and mathematical angles. 



In the interpretation of such signs, hierology and literary Egyptology give us 

 no assistance ; classical authors are entirely misleading, and there is nothing for 

 it in our case and times, but to attack with the instruments and methods of 

 modern science, and as a scientific problem, the great practical work which 

 bridges, at least, the last four thousand years of the world ; and brings us in these 

 latter days, face to face with men who thought great thoughts and acted nobly, 

 more than a thousand years before Homer wrote or Agamemnon ruled. 



In this view, Sir, my examinations and proceedings took the form, first, of 

 measures of length, by means of the various rods and scales now exhibited on the 

 table and about the room. — Second, of measures of angle, by means of the sextant 

 apparatus, circular clinometer, and alt-azimuth instrument before you — And, 

 third, of measures of heat, by means of a variety of thermometers. 



The individual observations made with all these instruments are numerous 



