[256] Sir Isaac Newton says—"In the precise determination of the cubit of Memphis, I should choose to pitch upon the length of the chamber in the middle of the pyramid." Greaves gives this length 34·38 = 20 cubits of 20·628 inches.
[257] Yet this, the Memphian cubit, "need not" (somewhat mysteriously adds Professor Smyth), "and actually is not, by any means the same as the cubit typified in the more concealed and symbolised metrological system of the Great Pyramid."
[258] Godfrey Higgins, in his work on The Celtic Druids, shows how, among the ancients, superstitions connected with numbers, as the days of the year or the figures 365, have played a prominent part. "Amongst the ancients" (says he) "there was no end of the superstitious and trifling play upon the nature and value of numbers. The first men of antiquity indulged themselves in these fooleries" (p. 244). Mr. Higgins points out that the old Welsh or British word for Stonehenge, namely Emrys, signifies, according to Davies, 365; as do the words Mithra, Neilos, etc.; that certain collections of the old Druidic stones at Abury may be made to count 365; that "the famous Abraxas only meant the solar period of 365 days, or the sun," etc. "It was all judicial astrology.... It comes" (adds Mr. Higgins) "from the Druids."
[259] See this table in Professor Smyth's Life and Work at the Great Pyramid, vol. ii. p. 458. The table professes to give some of Sir Isaac Newton's data regarding the Sacred Cubit by changing the measurements which Sir Isaac uses of the Roman foot and inch into English inches. But all the figures and measurements are transferred into English inches by a different rule from that which Sir Isaac himself lays down—viz., that the English foot is 0·967 of the Roman foot; and, consequently, in every one of the instances given in Mr. Smyth's table, the lengths in English inches of these data of Sir Isaac Newton are assuredly not their lengths in English inches as understood and laid down by Newton himself.
[260] The fourth line in the table presents a most fatal and unfortunate error in a special calculation to which the very highest importance is professed to be attached. This fourth line gives the measurement of the Sacred Cubit as quoted by Newton from Mersennus, who laid down its length as 25·68 inches of Roman measurement. Professor Smyth changes this Roman measurement into 24·91 English inches, and then erroneously enters these same identical Roman and English measurements of Mersennus—viz., 24·91 and 25·68—not as one identical quantity, which they are—but as two different and contrasting quantities; and further, he tabulates this strange mistake as one of the "methods of approach" for gaining a correct idea of the Sacred Cubit. Never, perhaps, has so unhappy an error been made in a work of an arithmetical and mathematical character.
[261] Thus, after deducing the length of the cubit of Memphis from the length of the King's Chamber, Sir Isaac Newton observes:—"From hence I would infer that the Sacred Cubit of Moses was equal to 25 unciæ of the Roman foot and 6/10 of an uncia." (See his Dissertation on the Sacred Cubit, as republished in Professor Smyth's Life and Work at the Great Pyramid, vol. ii. p. 362.) Again, at p. 363, Sir Isaac speaks of "the cubit which we have concluded to have been in the time of Moses 25-60/100 inches" of the Roman foot; and at p. 365, in closing his Dissertation, he remarks—"The Roman cubit therefore consists of 18 unciæ, and the Sacred Cubit of 25-3/5 unciæ, of the Roman foot." In other words, according to Sir Isaac Newton, the Sacred Cubit of 25·60 inches of the Roman foot is equal to 24·75 British inches; for, as he calculated, the Roman foot "was equal to 967/1000 the English foot." (See p. 342.) This is the measurement of the Roman foot laid down by Sir Isaac Newton in his Dissertation, and the only standard of it mentioned in Professor Smyth's Life and Work at the Great Pyramid; yet in that work Professor Smyth calculates Sir Isaac's Sacred Cubit to be 24·82 instead of 24·75 British inches. In doing so, he has calculated the English foot as equal to ·970 of the Roman foot; but was he entitled to do so when using Sir Isaac's own data, and when employing Sir Isaac's own calculated conclusion as to the length of the Sacred Cubit? In the published Proceedings of the Royal Society, in consequence of following the calculation by Professor Smyth of Sir Isaac Newton's conclusion from Sir Isaac's own data as to the length of the Sacred Cubit, it was erroneously spoken of as 24·82, instead of 24·75 British inches.
[262] This word "extraordinarily," was, by a clerical or printer's error, spelled "extraordinary" in the Proceedings of the Royal Society; and a friend who looked over the printed proof, and suggested two or three corrections, placed the word (sic) on the margin after it, from whence it slipped into the text:—accidents to be much regretted, as, from Professor Smyth's remarks to the Society on the 20th April, they had evidently given him much, but most unintentional offence.
[263] At the close of a subsequent meeting of the Royal Society, on the 20th April 1868, Professor Smyth gave away a printed Appendix to his three-volume work, in which he has acknowledged the erroneous character—as pointed out in this communication—of his all-important table, p. 22, on the length of the Sacred Cubit, by withdrawing it, and offering one of a new construction and character, but without being able to make the length of the cubit come nearer to his theory. See further, Appendix, No. VI
[264] Traite de la Grandeur et de la Figure de la Terre. Amsterdam edition (1723), p. 195.
[265] Tables Portatives de Logarithmes. Paris, 1795, p. 100.