RECENT MEASURES AT THE GREAT PYRAMID. 397 



This may have been one element connected with the reason ; that lowest 

 course of the room forms in fact a sort of larger coffer, or a tank containing 

 within itself the smaller coffer ; and the capacity of that course of the room, 

 being computed carefully, subject to the very peculiar and hitherto unnoticed 

 correction given to it by the original builders, is equal to fifty times the capacity 

 of the coffer, or comes out actually in numbers so divided, 71,292. 



There is even more testimony still, as to the distinguishing number 50, and 

 proof which I had certainly never expected to obtain, until it showed itself on 

 quite a different inquiry. The bulk of the mass of the Pyramid, as already men- 

 tioned, is composed of rectangular courses of masonry, rude but strong, and 

 though excessively irregular in their consecutive heights, still every course pre- 

 serves its own height admirably round and through the Pyramid, and keeps a 

 good horizontal level. I had measured the individual heights of all the several 

 courses with some accuracy, in going up and down the Pyramid, merely because 

 they were the literal stepping-stones towards obtaining the whole height ; and 

 have only recently ascertained that the fiftieth course from the ground has a 

 horizontal plane, which coincides with the floor on which the coffer stands in its 

 tank of fifty, in its chamber of five ; or, in other words, and looking to what went 

 before, the coffer is not only the right vessel, but it is still standing in the right 

 chamber ; and all the substance of the Pyramid was built in deference to, and 

 unison with that chamber and its internal symbolizations. 



It only remains, therefore, now to state the neat, and, so to speak pyramidal 

 form, in which a small standard of Pyramid weight may be most scientifically 

 described, and in noble reference to universal weight and capacity measure; 

 for if the whole coffer weight be divided by 50 times 50, yielding what may be 

 called a pound- weight of the Pyramid, it is representable anywhere, with the 

 utmost exactness, as five cubic inches of the earth's mean density. 



(C.) Standards of Heat. 



Of heat I shall merely attempt to say, on the present occasion, that the 

 theoretical idea is, that the temperature of that remarkable chamber of five in the 

 Pyramid, was intended to be a temperature of ^ ; i.e., ^ the distance from freezing 

 up towards boiling of water, amounting in Fahr. to 68°. 



But the moment the measure is taken at the Pyramid, it is found to be about 

 74° or 75°. The present circumstances of the room, however, are entirely abnor- 

 mal and in a way that should raise its temperature. Falling back therefore on 

 the mean temperature of the air taken night and day for the first four months of 

 the year at the foot of the hill, and also on the temperature of wells there, these 

 are both found 64°0 nearly ; increasing which by several degrees to reduce the 

 mean of these four months to the mean of the whole twelve, and deducting a 

 smaller correction for elevation to the level of the Pyramid, w r e attain a tem- 



VOL. XXIV. PART II. 5 P 



