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of Edinburgh, Session 1867 - 68 . 
theoretical dimensions of this coffer — as published by Mr Jopling, 
a believer in its wonderful standard character — critically observes, 
“ Some very astonishing results were brought out in the play of 
arithmetical numerations.” 
(4.) The dilapidation of the Coffer. — Thirty years ago this stone 
coffer was pointed out and indeed delineated by Mr Perring 
as “ not particularly well polished,” and “chipped and broken 
at the edges.” Professor Smyth, in his late travels to Egypt, 
states that he found every possible line and edge of it chipped 
away with large chips along the top, both inside and outside? 
“ chip upon chip, wofully spoiling the original figure ; along 
all the corners of the upright sides too, and even along every 
corner of the bottom, while the upper south-eastern corner of the 
whole vessel is positively broken away to a depth and breadth of 
nearly a third of the whole.” Yet this stone vessel is professed to 
be the permanent miraculous standard of capacity measure for the 
world, and that it might serve this purpose it would be, according 
to Mr Taylor, “ formed of one block of the hardest kind of material, 
such as porphyry or granite, in order that it might not fall into de- 
cay ; ” for “ in this porphyry coffer we have (writes Professor Smyth 
in 1864) the very closing end and aim of the whole pyramid.” 
(5.) Alleged mathematical form of the Coffer erroneous.— But in 
regard to the coffer as an exquisite and marvellous standard of 
capacity to be revealed in these latter times, worse facts than these 
are divulged by the tables, &c., of measurements which Professor 
Smyth has recently published of this stone vessel or chest. His 
published measurements show that it is not at all a vessel, as was 
averred a few years ago, of pure mathematical form ; for externally 
it is in length an inch greater on one side than another; in breadth, 
half-an-inch broader at one point than at some other point; its 
bottom at some points is nearly a whole inch thicker than it is at 
some other parts ; and in thickness its sides vary in some points 
about a quarter of an inch near the top. “ But,” Professor Smyth 
adds, “ if calipered lower down, it is extremely probable that a 
notally different thickness would have been found there,” though it 
does not appear why they were not thus calipered. Further, ex- 
ternally “ all the sides” (says Professor Smyth) “ were slightly 
hollow, excepting the east side ; ” and the “ two external ends ” 
