248 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
Taylor continues) “that Noah was a ‘preacher of righteousness/ 
but nothing could more illustrate this character of a preacher of 
righteousness after the Flood than that he should be the first to 
publish a system of weights and measures for the use of all man- 
kind, based upon the measure of the earth.” Professor Smyth, 
computing by another chronology, rejects the presence of Noah, 
and makes a shepherd — Philithion, alluded to by Herodotus* — the 
presiding and directing genius of the structure, holding him to be 
a Cushite skilled in building, and under whose inspired direction 
the pyramid rose, containing within it miraculous measures and 
standards of capacity, weight, length, heat, &c. 
The Coffer in the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid an 
Alleged Standard for Measures of Capacity. 
A granite coffer, stone box, or sarcophagus standing in that 
interior cell of the pyramid called the King’s Chamber, is held 
by Messrs Taylor and Smyth to have been hewn out and placed 
there as a measure of capacity for the world, so that the ancient 
Hebrew, Grecian, and Homan measures of capacity on the one 
hand, and our modern Anglo-Saxon on the other, are all derived 
directly or indirectly from the parent measurements of this granite 
vessel. 
Various extracts f were read from the works of these authors, show- 
ing that, in their belief, the great object for which the whole pyra- 
mid was created, was the preservation of this coffer as a standard 
of measures. Further published accounts from Mr Taylor and 
from Mr Smyth’s first work were adduced, averring that the coffer 
represented without and within a rectangular figure of mathemati- 
* Herodotus states that the Egyptians detested the memories of the kings 
who built the two larger Pyramids, viz., Cheops and Cephren ; and hence, he 
adds, “ they commonly call the Pyramids after Philithion, a shepherd, who at 
that time fed his flocks about the place.” They thus called the second, as 
well as the Great Pyramid, after him (iii. § 128). 
t The extracts within inverted commas, here and in other parts, are from — 
(1.) Mr John Taylor’s work entitled “The Great Pyramid — Why was it Built, 
and Who Built it?” London, 1859; and (2.) Professor Smyth’s work, “Our 
Inheritance in the Great Pyramid,” Edinburgh, 1864 ; (3.) his later three- 
volume work, “ Life and Work at the Great Pyramid,” Edinburgh, 1867; and 
(4.) “ Recent Measures at the Great Pyramid ” in the Transactions of the 
Royal Society of Edinburgh for 1865-66. 
