In their mode of building, the various pyramids of Gizeh, etc., are all similar, and the Great Pyramid does not specially differ from the others. "There is nothing" (observes Professor Smyth) "in the stone-upon-stone composition of the Great Pyramid which speaks of the mere building problem to be solved there, as being of a different character, or requiring inventions by man of absolutely higher order than elsewhere." But the Great Pyramid has been imagined to contain some hidden symbols and meanings. For "it is the manner of the Pyramid" (according to Professor Smyth) "not to wear its most vital truths in prominent outside positions."
Alleged Metrological Object of the Great Pyramid.
By several authorities the largest[242] of the group of pyramids at Gizeh, or "Great Pyramid," has been maintained—and particularly of late by Gabb, Jomard, Taylor, and Professor Smyth—not to be a royal mausoleum, but to be a marvellous metrological monument, built some forty centuries ago, as "a necessarily material centre," to hold and contain within it, and in its structure, material standards, "in a practicable and reliable shape," "down to the ends of the world," as measures of length, capacity, weight, etc., for men and nations for all time—"a monument" (in the language of Professor Smyth) "devoted to weights and measures, not so much as a place of frequent reference for them, but one where the original standards were to be preserved for some thousands of years, safe from the vicissitudes of empires and the decay of nations." Messrs. Taylor and Smyth further hold that this Great Pyramid was built for these purposes of mensuration under Divine inspiration—the standards being, through superhuman origination and guidance, made and protected by it till they came to be understood and interpreted in these latter times. For, observes Professor Smyth, "the Great Pyramid was a sealed book to all the world until this present day, when modern science, aided in part by the dilapidation of the building and the structural features thereby opened up—has at length been able to assign the chief interpretations." Professor Smyth has, in his remarkable devotedness and enthusiasm, lately measured most of the principal points in the Great Pyramid; and for the great zeal, labour, and ability which he has displayed in this self-imposed mission, the Society have very properly and justly bestowed upon him the Keith Medal. But the exactitude of the measures does not necessarily imply exactitude in the reasoning upon them; and on what grounds can it be possibly regarded as a metrological monument and not a sepulchre, is legitimately the subject of our present inquiry. In such an investigation springs up first this question—
Who was the Architect of the Great Pyramid?
Mr. Taylor ascribes to Noah the original idea of the metrological structure of the Great Pyramid. "To Noah" (observes Mr. Taylor) "we must ascribe the original idea, the presiding mind, and the benevolent purpose. He who built the Ark, was of all men the most competent to direct the building of the Great Pyramid. He was born 600 years before the Flood and lived 350 years after that event, dying in the year 1998 B.C. Supposing the pyramids were commenced in 2160 B.C. (that is 4000 years ago), they were founded 168 years before the death of Noah. We are told" (Mr. 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 mankind, based upon the measure of the earth." Professor Smyth, computing by another chronology, rejects the presence of Noah, and makes a shepherd—Philition, slightly and incidentally alluded to in a single passage by Herodotus[243]—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, etc.
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 Roman 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. "For," argues Mr. Taylor, "the porphyry coffer in the King's Chamber was intended to be a standard measure of capacity and weights for all nations; and all chief nations did originally receive their weights and measures from thence."
The works of these authors show, in numerous passages and extracts,[244] that, in their belief, the great object for which the whole pyramid was created, was the preservation of this coffer as a standard of measures, and the "whole pyramid arranged in subservience to it." The accounts of it published by Mr. Taylor, and in Mr. Smyth's first work, further aver that the coffer is, internally and externally, a rectangular figure of mathematical form, and of "exquisite geometric truth," "highly polished, and of a fine bell-metal consistency" (p. 99). "The chest or coffer in the Great Pyramid" (writes Mr. Taylor in 1859) "is so shaped as to be in every part rectangular from side to side, and from end to end, and the bottom is also cut at right angles to the sides and end, and made perfectly level." "The coffer," said Professor Smyth in 1864, "exhibits to us a standard measure of 4000 years ago, with the tenacity and hardness of its substance unimpaired, and the polish and evenness of its surface untouched by nature through all that length of time."
But later inquiries and observations upset entirely all these notions and strong averments in regard to the coffer. For—