244 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
tion to the great barrow of Dowth in Ireland ; and again, when 
writing — in his work on the Beauties of the Boyne (1849) — an 
account of the great old barrows of Dowth, New G-range, &c., 
placed on its banks above Drogheda, he describes at some length 
the last of these mounds (New Grange), stating that it “ consists ” 
of an enormous cairn or “ hill of small stones, calculated at 
180,000 tons weight, occupying the summit of one of the natural 
undulating slopes which enclose the valley of the Boyne upon the 
north. It is said to cover nearly two acres, and is 400 paces in 
circumference, and now about 80 feet higher than the adjoining 
natural surface. Various excavations (he adds) made into its sides 
and upon its summit, at different times, in order to supply materials 
for building and road-making, have assisted to lessen its original 
height, and also to destroy the beauty of its outline.” Like the 
other analogous mounds and pyramids placed there and elsewhere, 
New Grange has a long megalithic gallery, of above 60 feet in 
length, leading inward into three dome-shaped chambers or crypts. 
After describing minutely, and with a master-hand, the construc- 
tion of these interior parts, and the carvings of circles, spirals, &c., 
upon the enormous stones of which they are built, Sir William 
Wilde goes on to observe : — “ We believe with most modern 
investigators into such subjects, that it was a tomb, or great 
sepulchral Pyramid, similar in every respect to those now standing 
by the banks of the Nile, from Dashour to Gizeh, each consisting 
of a great central chamber containing one or more sarcophagi, 
entered by a long stone-covered passage. The external aperture 
was concealed, and the whole covered with a great mound of 
stones or earth in a conical form. The early Egyptians, and the 
Mexicans also, possessing greater art and better tools than the 
primitive Irish, carved, smoothed, and cemented their great 
pyramids ; but the type and purpose is all the same. . . . How 
far anterior to the Christian era its date should be placed, would 
be a matter of speculation ; it may be of an age coeval, or even 
anterior, to its brethren on the Nile.” Other pyramidal barrows at 
Maeshowe, Gavr Inis, &c., were referred to and illustrated; showing 
that a gigantic sepulchral cairn was in its mass an unbuilt pyramid, 
or, in other words, that a pyramid was a built cairn. 
