I.—DERIVATION OF THE TERM PYRAMID. (Page [219].)
Professor Smyth suggests the origin of the term Pyramid from the two Coptic words, "pyr," "division," and "met," "ten." This derivation, which he first heard of in Cairo, is, he believes, a significant appellation for a metrological monument such as the Great Pyramid, and coincides with its five-sided, five-cornered, etc., features (see anteriorly, p. 255) and decimal divisions. But surely a name, which in this metrological and arithmetical view of "powers and times of ten and five," meant division into ten, and which divisional metrological ideas applied, according to Professor Smyth, to one pyramid only, namely the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, was not likely to have been applied as a general term to all the other pyramidal structures in Egypt—not one of which had, according to Professor Smyth himself, anything whatsoever of this metrological or divisional character in their composition and object. It is not likely that all these structures should have been named from a series of qualities supposed to belong to one; but altogether hidden and concealed, in these early times, even in that one pyramid, being for the information of future times and generations.
In a similar spirit of exclusiveness, Mr. John Taylor derives the word pyramid from the two Greek words πυρος, wheat, and μετρον, measure—apparently in the belief that the coffer or sarcophagus within one pyramid (the Great Pyramid) was intended as a chaldron measure of wheat—though none of the sarcophagi, in any of the many other royal pyramidal sepulchres of Egypt, were at all intended for such standard measures; and although, according to Mr. Taylor's theory, the Greeks, too, who out of their own language applied the term of Pyramid, or Wheat-Measurer, to all these structures,—never dreamed of the Great Pyramid or of any other of them having locked up in one of its concealed chambers a supposed standard measure of capacity of wheat, water, etc., for all nations and all times.
Fifteen centuries ago, Ammianus Marcellinus derived the word pyramid from another Greek word [Greek: pyr], fire; because, as he argues, the Egyptian Pyramid rises to a sharp pointed top, like to the form of a fire or flame. This derivation, which, of course, excludes the mathematical idea of the sides of the pyramid being a series of flattened triangles that meet in a point at the apex, has been adopted by various authors.
Keats, the poor surgeon, but rich poet, who died at Rome at the early age of twenty-six, was buried in the beautiful Protestant Cemetery there, amid the ruins of the Aurelian Walls. His grave is surmounted by a pyramidal tomb, which Petrarch romantically ascribed to Remus, but which antiquarians generally accord, in conformity with the inscription which it bears, to Caius Cestius, a tribune of the people, who is remembered for nothing else than his sepulchre. In his elegy of Adonais, Shelley, in alluding to the resting-place of Keats beside this remarkable monument, brings in, with rare poetical power, the idea of the word pyramid being derived from πυρ, and signifying the shape of flame:—
And one keen pyramid with edge sublime,
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned
This refuge for his memory, doth stand
Life flame transformed to marble.[274]
If the word pyramid is of Greek origin, the suggestion of that able writer and scholar, Mr. Kenrick of York, is probably more true, viz. that the term πυραμις (from πυρος, wheat, and μελιτος, honey) was applied by the Greeks to a pointed or cone-shaped cake, used by them at the feasts of Bacchus (as shown on the table at the reception of Bacchus by Icarus; see Hope's Costumes, vol. ii. p. 224), and when they became acquainted with the Pyramids of Egypt, they, in this as in other instances, applied a term to a thing till then unknown, from a thing well known to them; in the very same way as they applied to the tall pointed monoliths peculiar to Egypt, the word obelisk—no doubt a direct derivation from the familiar Greek word οβελος, a spit.
For a learned discussion on various other supposed origins of the word pyramid, see Jomard, in the Description de l'Egypte, vol. ii. p. 213, etc.
II.—ARCHAIC CIRCLE AND RING SCULPTURES. (Page [222].)
Representations of incised cups, rings, circles, and spirals, are found on stones connected with other forms of ancient sculpture besides chambered barrows or cairns,—as on the lids of stone cists, megalithic circles, etc.; and, from this connection with the burial of the dead, these antique sculpturings were possibly of a religious character. In a work on "Archaic Sculpturings of Cups, Rings, etc. upon Stones and Rocks of Scotland, England, and other Countries," published last year by the author of the present communication, it was further argued that they were probably also ornamental in their character, in a chapter beginning as follows:—