329 
of Edinburgh, Sessio7i 1867 - 68 . 
when the idea occurred to me out there, the unusual size of 
calipers that would have been required, by applying to the scanty 
resources for civilized life existing in the Libyan desert. But the 
coffer sides were virtually so calipered, by the measures which T 
took both inside and outside, with such apparatus as I had with me ; 
and any one who is desirous of ascertaining, within small limits, 
what the sides of the coffer would actually caliper at the place 
indicated, has only to project my printed observations, and see. 
CUBIC CONTENTS OF THE COFFEE. 
My own chief object, however, was not so much to get the thick- 
ness of the coffer’s sides at one special point, as to ascertain the 
whole cubical contents of the original vessel. 
Now those small residual features just mentioned, and which I, by 
myself, have been chiefly instrumental in bringing to light, having 
been used by the Proceedings author out of my own pages, for the 
purpose for calumniating the ancient coffer, and implying (p. 252) 
that its cavity is “ of a form utterly unmeasurable in a correct way 
“ by mere lineal measurement,” and pronouncing it to be (p. 254), 
“ in simple truth, nothing more and nothing less than — an old and 
“ somewhat misshapen stone coffin,” — a duty devolves on me to 
show, both within what limits it can be measured in that lineal 
way ; and also, what remarkable purposes some of those apparent 
residual errors of figure, but really important adjustments of cubical 
size, do subserve. 
We take the vessel therefore, restored from modern breakages; 
fill up the ledge in the top of the sides, and then ascertain the 
cubical contents of the hollow, by multiplying together the mean 
of all the observed internal lengths, breadths, and depths. From 
hence we obtain 71,317 cubic Pyramid inches;* a quantity which 
is many thousands of inches different from the contents of any 
known sarcophagus of the burial kind at the Pyramids. 
When future observers shall have visited the Great Pyramid, and 
measured the coffer with still more care than I have done, — their 
results will afford a desirable test as to my limits of error. But 
meanwhile the coffer itself may testify something, by having (when 
* Mean length = 77-85; mean breadth = 26-70; and mean height = 
34-31 Pyramid inches. See “ Life and Work,” vol. iii. p. 154. 
