198 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
2. On some points in the Metrology of the Great Pyramid, 
By Professor C. Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer Eoyal for 
Scotland. 
This paper was an attempt to submit to a severe and searching 
examination, the very new and apparently important ideas con- 
tained in the work, published four years ago by Mr John Taylor of 
London, and entitled “ The Great Pyramid ; why was it Built ? ” To 
this end, the original authorities for measures of the Pyramid, had 
been extensively referred to, from Professor John Greaves in the 
17th century, down to Colonel Howard Vyse and Dr Lepsius in the 
19th ; and their various and sometimes conflicting numerical state- 
ments had vbeen computed with all due attention to scientific 
accuracy, as well as every endeavour to eliminate both personal 
and other sources of error in the observations. 
The result of this proceeding has been most eminently favour- 
able to all the more important and cogent of Mr Ta}dor’s conclu- 
sions ; not only as to the probability of a common origin in pre- 
historic times for the hereditary weights and measures of all 
nations, but as to there having been something more than mere 
human intelligence concerned in their establishment ; and also, to 
the Great Pyramid, besides having been earlier in date, being, in 
all the spirit of its construction, completely separated from all the 
other Pyramids, as well as from everything usually thought typical 
of Egypt, or peculiar to the Pharaonic, or any other, dynasty of 
the Egyptians ; and entirely devoid, in its finished parts, of even 
the remotest and most distant allusion to any form of idolatrous 
worship ever practised by any nation of antiquity whatever. 
The calculations were prepared in full, and an astonishing series 
of coincidences upon coincidences given, both as to the relations 
truly connecting the dimensions of the Great Pyramid, with the 
latest geodesically-determined numbers for the size and figure of the 
earth ; to the original founding of the standard of that Pyramid’s 
linear measure on the one and only absolutely correct scientific re- 
ference which the earth contains — viz., the axis of rotation ; to the 
connecting of its ancient measures of capacity and weight with the 
weight, or what goes, with the size, to make the weight, of the 
