I believe that the stones were got up to the building by way of the north side of each pyramid. The casing on the south, east, and west, was probably built up as the work proceeded, and the whole of these three faces were probably thus finished and completed while there was not a single casing stone set on the north side. Then the work would be closed up until there remained nothing but a great gap or notch, wide at the bottom, and narrowing to the apex. The work on the north side would then be closed from the sides and top, and the bottom casing stone about the centre of the north side, would be the last stone set on the building. These old builders were too expert not to have thus made use of all the shade which their own building would thus afford to a majority of the workmen.
Many of the obelisks were probably marks on pyramid lines of survey.
The pyramid indeed may have been a development of the obelisk for this purpose.
Their slanting sides might correspond with some of the nearly upright slant angles of the pyramids, in positions opposite certain lines. Reference to several of my figures will show how well this would come in.
Herodotus speaks of two obelisks at Heliopolis, and Bonwick tells us that Abd al Latif saw two there which he called Pharaoh's Needles. An Arab traveller, in 1190, saw a pyramid of copper on the summit of the one that remained, but it is now wanting. Pharaoh's Needles appear to have been situated about 20 miles NE. of the Gïzeh group, and their slope angles might have coincided with the apparent slope angles of Cephren or Cheops on the edge nearest the obelisk.
The ancient method of describing the meridian by means of the shadow of a ball placed on the summit of an obelisk points to a reasonable interpretation for the peculiar construction of the two pillars, Jachin and Boaz, which are said to have been situated in front of the Hebrew Temple at Jerusalem, and about which so much mysterious speculation has occurred.
They were no doubt used as sun-dials for the morning and afternoon sun by the shadow of the balls or "chapiters" thrown upon the pavement.
Without presuming to dispute the objects assigned by others for the galleries and passages which have been discovered in the pyramid Cheops, I venture to opine that they were employed to carry water to the builders. They are connected with a well, and the well with the Nile or canal. Whether the water was slided up the smooth galleries in boxes, or whether the cochlea, or water screw, was worked in them, their angles being suitable, it is impossible to conjecture; either plan would have been convenient and feasible.