Professor Smyth holds the Great Pyramid to be in its emblems, and intentions and work "superhuman;" as "not altogether of human origination; and in that case whereto" (he asks) "should we look for any human assistance to men but from Divine inspiration?" "Its metrology is," he conceives, "directed by a higher Power" than man; its erection "directed by the fiat of Infinite Wisdom;" and the whole "built under the direction of chosen men divinely inspired from on high for this purpose."
If of this Divine origin, the work should be absolutely perfect; but, as owned by Professor Smyth, the structure is not entirely correct in its orientation, in its squareness, etc. etc.—all of them matters proving that it is human, and not superhuman. It was, Professor Smyth further alleges, intended to convey standards of measures to all times down to, and perhaps beyond, these latter days, "to herald in some of those accompaniments of the promised millennial peace and goodwill to all men." Hence, if thus miraculous in its forseen uses, it ought to have remained relatively perfect till now. But "what feature of the pyramid is there" (asks Professor Smyth) "which renders at once in its measurements in the present day its ancient proportions? None." If the pyramid were a miracle of this kind, then the Arabian Caliph Al Mamoon so far upset the supposititious miracle a thousand years ago—(of course he could not have done so provided the miracle had been truly Divine)—when he broke into the King's Chamber and unveiled its contents; inasmuch as the builders, according to Professor Smyth, intended to conceal its secrets for the benefit of these latter times, and for this purpose had left a mathematical sign of two somewhat diagonal lines or joints in the floor of the descending passage, by which secret sign or clue[273] some men or man in the far distant future, visiting the interior, should detect the entrance to the chambers; and which secret sign Professor Smyth himself was, as he believes, the first "man" to discover two years ago. The secret, however, thus averred to be placed there for the detection of the entrance to the interior chambers in these latter times, has been discovered some 1000 years at least too late for the evolution of the alleged miraculous arrangement. And in relation to the Great Pyramid, as to other matters, we may be sure that God does not teach by the medium of miracle anything that the unaided intellect of man can find out; and we must beware of erroneously and disparagingly attributing to Divine inspiration and aid, things that are imperfect and human.
The communication concluded by a series of remarks, in which it was pointed out that at the time at which the Great Pyramid was built, probably about 4000 years ago, mining, architecture, astronomy, etc., were so advanced in various parts of the East as to present no obstacle in the way of the erection of such magnificent mausoleums, as the colossal Great Pyramid and its other congener pyramids undoubtedly are.
FOOTNOTES:
[233] See on other proposed significations and origins of the word pyramid, Appendix, No. I.
[234] In the plain of Troy, and on the higher grounds around it, various barrows still remain, and have been described from Pliny, Strabo, and Lucia down to Lechevalier, Forchhammer, and Maclaren. In later times, Choiseul and Calvert have opened some of them. Homer gives a minute account of the obsequies of Patroclus and the raising of his burial-mound, which forms, as is generally believed, one of those twin barrows still existing on the sides of the Sigean promontory, that pass under the name of the tumuli of Achilles and Patroclus. Pope, in translating the passage describing the commencement of the funeral pyre, uses the word pyramid. For
... "those deputed to inter the slain,
Heap with a rising pyramid the plain."
Professor Daniel Wilson, in alluding, in his Prehistoric Annals, vol. i. p. 74, to this account by Homer of the ancient funeral-rites, and raising of the funeral-mound, speaks of the erection of Patroclus' barrow as "the methodic construction of the Pyramid of earth which covered the sacred deposit and preserved the memory of the honoured dead."
[235] Colonel Pownall, while describing in 1770 the barrow of New Grange, in Ireland, to the London Society of Antiquaries, speaks of it as "a pyramid of stone." "This pyramid," he observes, "was encircled at its base with a number of enormous unhewn stones," etc. "The pyramid, in its present state, is but a ruin of what it was," etc. etc. See Archæologia, vol. vi. p. 254; and Higgins' Celtic Druids, p. 40, etc.