334 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
actually, with time, alter its size : — alter it too so hugely, that the 
granite swells out sometimes to a length of 144 inches, sometimes 
sinks down to 78 inches only, while still preserving the same 
general rectangular box-like figure. 
Whether other persons may be inclined to maintain that hard 
red granite can undergo such changes, I do not stop to inquire. 
I only vouch that I saw no inclinations to it, on comparing my 
measures, taken at the beginning of my stay at the Great Pyramid, 
or in J anuary, with my last on leaving it in April. Moreover I firmly 
believe that any or all my twenty-five predecessors, if, — instead of, 
as with the generality of them, remaining in the coffer room only 
a few minutes on a single occasion, — if they had visited it day after 
day, for hours each time, and during several months of the year, — 
and if they had taken the same pains that I did, to compare their 
measuring scales accurately with the Government standard yard of 
36 British inches, — they would have very nearly brought out as 
their result for the coffer’s cubic contents (before breakage had been 
effected or a ledge had been cut into it), the same quantity which 
I have found, viz., 71,250 cubic pyramid inches ;* and that equally, 
whether they look on the coffer as a burial sarcophagus only, or a 
a measure of capacity, or both combined. 
If 7 consider the coffer chiefly as a measure of capacity, — though 
freely confessing that some subsidiary depositing of a mummied 
corpse in state, may once have been performed there,— it is because, 
after having found that the amount of cubic space, both in length, 
breadth, but more especially in depth, is much greater than would 
have been positively required for a mere coffin purpose, — consider- 
ably greater too, in depth, than in the manifestly burial sarcophagi of 
other pyramids, — it yet tallies exactly with an expression deducible, 
— on what has otherwise been called “ Pyramid principles,” — from 
the size and weight of the whole earth, for appropriately represent- 
ing a grand standard of capacity, and weight, measures. The 
very essence of the question turns, in fact, on whether there be a 
neat and close correspondence between the one practically measured, 
and this other theoretically computed, quantity. 
What then has not been my surprise to find the Proceedings' 
* A pyramid linear inch = 1-001 British inch. 
