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Proceedings of the Royal Society 
Dr Whitman 14,000 below this professed standard. On the other 
hand, the measurements of Colonel Howard Vyse make it more 
than 100, those of Dr Wilson more than 500, and those of the French 
academicians who accompanied the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt, 
about 6000 cubic inches above the theoretical size which Professor 
Smyth has latterly fixed on. 
(3.) Its theoretical measure varied. — The actual measure of the 
coffer has varied in the hands of all its twenty-six measurers. But 
even its theoretical measure is varied also, for the size which the 
old coffer really ought to have as “ a grand capacity standard,” is 
strangely enough not a determined quantity. In his last work 
(1867), Professor Smyth declares, as just stated , its proper theo- 
retical cubic capacity to be 71,250 pyramidal cubic inches. But in 
his first work (1864), he declared something different, for “ we 
elect,” says he, “to take 70,970*2 English cubic inches (or 70,900 
pyramidal cubic inches) as the true, because the theoretically 
proved contents of the porphyry coffer, and therefore accept these 
numbers as giving the cubic size of the grand standard measure 
of capacity in the Great Pyramid.” But again, Mr John Taylor, 
who, previously to Professor Smyth, was the great advocate of the 
coffer being a marvellous standard of capacity measure for all 
nations, ancient and modern, declares its measure to be neither 
the above quantities, but 71,328 cubic inches, or a cube of the 
ancient cubit of Karnak.* A vessel cannot be a measure of capacity 
whose own standard theoretical size is thus declared to vary some- 
what every few years by those very men who maintain that it is 
a standard. But whether its capacity is 71,250, or 70,970, or 
71,328, it is quite equally held up by Messrs Taylor and Smyth 
that the Sacred Laver of the Iraelites, and the Molten Sea of the 
Scriptures, “ also conform and correspond to its (yet undetermined) 
standard with all conceivable practical exactness;” though the 
standard of capacity to which they thus “ conform and correspond ” 
is itself a size or standard which has not been yet fixed with any 
exactness. Professor Smyth, in speaking of the calculations and 
* “ Its contents,” says Mr Taylor (p. 299), “ are equal in cubic inches to 
the cube of 41,472 inches — the cubit of Karnak — viz., to 71,328 cubic inches.” 
Elsewhere (p. 304) he states — “ The Pyramid coffer contains 256 gallons of 
wheat ;” — “ It also contains 256 gallons of water, &c.” 
