Chapter V: Is the Great Pyramid of Gizeh a Metrological (8)

"This little pebble (adds Adamnan) was afterwards preserved among the treasures of the king, retained its miraculous property of floating in water, and through the mercy of God effected the cure of sundry diseases. And, what is very wonderful, when it was sought for by those sick persons whose term of life had arrived it could not be found. An instance of this occurred the very day king Brude died, when the stone, though sought for with great diligence, could not be found in the place where it had been previously left."[224]

In the Highlands of Scotland there have been transmitted down, for many generations, various curing or charm-stones, used in the same manner as that of Columba, and reckoned capable, like his, of imparting to the _water in which they were immersed_[225] wondrous medicinal powers. One of the most celebrated of these curing-stones belongs to Struan Robertson, the chief of the Clan Donnachie. I am indebted to the kindness of Mrs. Robertson, for the following notes regarding the curing-stone, of which her family are the hereditary proprietors. Its local name is

_Clach-na-Bratach, or Stone of the Standard._

"This stone has been in possession of the Chiefs of Clan Donnachaidh since 1315.

"It is said to have been acquired in this wise.

"The (then) chief, journeying with his clan to join Bruce's army before Bannockburn, observed, on his standard being lifted one morning, a glittering something in a clod of earth hanging to the flagstaff. It was this stone. He showed it to his followers, and told them he felt sure its brilliant lights were a good omen and foretold a victory--and victory was won on the hard-fought field of Bannockburn.

"From this time, whenever the clan was 'out,' the Clach-na-Bratach accompanied it, carried on the person of the chief, and its varying hues were consulted by him as to the fate of battle. On the eve of Sheriffmuir (13th November 1715), of sad memory, on Struan consulting the stone as to the fate of the morrow, the large internal flaw was first observed. The Stuarts were lost--and Clan Donnachaidh has been declining in influence ever since.

"The virtues of the Clach-na-Bratach are not altogether of a martial nature, for it cures all manner of diseases in cattle and horses, and formerly in human beings also, if they drink the water in which this charmed stone has been thrice dipped by the hands of Struan."

The Clach-na-Bratach is a transparent, globular mass of rock crystal, of the size of a small apple. (See accompanying woodcut, Fig. 17.) Its surface has been artificially polished. Several specimens of round rock-crystal, of the same description and size, and similarly polished, have been found deposited in ancient sepulchres, and were formerly used also in the decoration of shrines and sceptres.

Another well-known example of the Highland curing-stone is the

_Clach Dearg, or Stone of Ardvoirloch._

This stone is a clear rock-crystal ball of a similar character, but somewhat smaller than the Clach-na-Bratach, and placed in a setting (see Fig. 18) of four silver bands or slips. The following account of the Ardvoirloch curing-stone is from the pen of one of the present members of that ancient family:--

"It has been in the possession of our family from _time immemorial_, but there is no writing about it in any of the charters, nor even a tradition as to _when_ and _how_ it became possessed of it. It is supposed to have been brought from the _East_, which supposition is corroborated by the fact of the silver setting being recognised as of Eastern workmanship. Its healing powers have always been held in great repute in our own neighbourhood, particularly in diseases of cattle. I have even known persons come for the water into which it has been dipped from a distance of forty miles. It is also believed to have other properties which you know of.

"These superstitions would have existed up to the present day, had I not myself put a stop to them; but six years ago, I took an opportunity to do away with them, by depositing the stone with some of the family plate in a chest which I sent to the bank. Thus, when applied to for it (which I have been since then), I had the excuse of not having it in my possession; and when the Laird returns from India, it is hoped the superstition may be forgotten, and "the stone" preserved only as a very precious _heirloom_.

"I may mention that there were various forms to be observed by those who wished to benefit by its healing powers. The person who came for it to Ardvoirloch was obliged to draw the water himself, and bring it into the house in some vessel into which this stone was to be dipped. A bottle was filled and carried away; and in its conveyance home, if carried into any house by the way, the virtue was supposed to leave the water; it was therefore necessary, if a visit had to be paid, that the bottle should be left outside."

Other charm-stones enjoyed, up to the present century, no small medical reputation among the inhabitants of the Highlands. In some districts, every ancient family of note appears to have affected the possession of a curing-stone. The Campbells of Glenlyon have long been the hereditary proprietors of a charm-stone similar to those that I have already mentioned. It consists of a roundish or ovoidal ball, apparently of rock-crystal, about an inch and a half in diameter, and protected by a silver mounting. To make the water in which it was dipped sufficiently medicinal and effective, the stone, during the process, required to be held in the hand of the Laird. The Bairds of Auchmeddan possessed another of these celebrated northern amulets. The Auchmeddan Stone is a ball of black-coloured flint, mounted with four strips of silver. A legend engraved on this silver setting--in letters probably of the last century--states that this "Amulet or charm belonged to the family of Baird of Auchmeddan from the year 1174." In the middle of the last century, this amulet passed as a family relic to the Frasers of Findrack, when an intermarriage with the Bairds occurred.

Curing-stones seem to have formerly been by no means rare in this country, to the south also of the Highland Borders. In a letter written by the distinguished Welsh archaeologist Edward Lhwyd, and dated Linlithgow, December 17, 1699, he states that betwixt Wales and the Highlands he had seen at least fifty different forms of the party-coloured glass bead or amulet known under the name of Adder-beads or Snake stones.[226] In Scotland he found various materials used as healing amulets, particularly some pebbles of remarkable shape and colour, and hollow balls and rings of coloured glass. "They have also," he says, "the _Ombriae pellucidae_, which are crystal balls or hemispheres, or depressed ovals, in great esteem for curing of cattle; and some on May-day put them into a tub of water, and besprinkle all their cattle with that water, to prevent being elf-struck, bewitched, etc."

In the Lowlands, the curing-stone of greatest celebrity, and the one which has longest retained its repute, is

_The Lee Penny._

In the present century this ancient medical charm-stone has acquired a world-wide reputation as the original of the _Talisman_ of Sir Walter Scott, though latterly its therapeutic reputation has greatly declined, and almost entirely ceased.[227] The enchanted stone has long been in the possession of the knightly family of the Lockharts of Lee, in Lanarkshire. According to a mythical tradition, it was, in the fourteenth century, brought by Sir Simon Lockhart from the Holy Land, where it had been used as a medical amulet, for the arrestment of haemorrhage, fever, etc. It is a small dark-red stone, of a somewhat triangular or heart shape, as represented in the adjoining woodcut (Fig. 19). It is set in the reverse of a groat of Edward IV., of the London Mint.[228]

When the Lee Penny was used for healing purposes, a vessel was filled with water, the stone was drawn once round the vessel, and then dipped three times in the water. In his _Account of the Penny in the Lee_, written in 1702, Hunter states, that "it being taken and put into the end of a cloven stick, and washen in a tub full of water, and given to cattell to drink, infallibly cures almost all manner of deseases. The people," he adds, "come from all airts of the kingdom with deseased beasts."

One or two points in its history prove the faith that was placed in the healing powers of the Lee Penny in human maladies of the most formidable type. About the beginning of last century, Lady Baird of Saughtonhall was attacked with the supposed symptoms of hydrophobia. But on drinking of, and bathing in, the water in which the Lee Penny had been dipped, the symptoms disappeared; and the Knight and Lady of Lee were for many days sumptuously entertained by the grateful patient. In one of the epidemics of plague which attacked Newcastle in the reign of Charles I., the inhabitants of that town obtained the loan of the Lee Penny by granting a bond of L6000 for its safe return. Such, it is averred, was their belief in its virtues, and the good that it effected, that they offered to forfeit the money, and keep the charm-stone.

About the middle of the seventeenth century the Reformed Protestant Church of Scotland zealously endeavoured, as the English Church under King Edgar had long before done, to "extinguish every heathenism, and forbid well-worshippings, and necromancies, and divinations, and enchantments, and man-worshippings, and the vain practices which are carried on with various spells, and with elders, and also with other trees, and with stones, etc."[229] They left, however, other practices, equally superstitious, quite untouched. Thus, while they threatened "the seventh son of a woman" with the "paine of Kirk censure," for "cureing the cruelles (scrofulous tumours and ulcers),"[230] by touching them, they still allowed the reigning king this power (Charles II. alone "touched" 92,000 such patients);[231] and the English Church sanctioned a liturgy to be used on these superstitious occasions. Again, the Synod of the Presbyterian Church of Glasgow examined into the alleged curative gifts of the Lee Penny; but, finding that it was employed "wtout using onie words such as charmers and sorcerers use in their unlawfull practisess; and considering that in nature there are mony things seen to work strange effects, q^{r}of no human witt can give a reason, it having pleasit God to give to stones and herbes special virtues for the healing of mony infirmities in man and beast, advises the brethern to surcease their process, as q^{r}in they perceive no ground of offence: And admonishes the said Laird of Lee, in the useing of the said stone to tak heed that it be used hereafter w^t the least scandal that possiblie may be."[232]

[Footnote 217: _Natural History_, Book xxx. chapters i. ii.]

[Footnote 218: "What we are going to say," observes Pliny, "is marvellous, but it may easily be tested by experiment. If a person repents of a blow given to another, either by hand or with a missile, he has nothing to do but to spit at once into the palm of the hand which has inflicted the blow, and all feeling of resentment will be instantly alleviated in the person struck. This, too, is often verified in the case of a beast of burden, when brought on its haunches with blows: for, upon this remedy being adopted, the animal will immediately step out and mend its pace. Some persons, also, before making an effort, spit into the hand in the manner above stated, in order to make the blow _more_ heavy."--Pliny's _Natural History_, xxviii. Sec. 7.]

[Footnote 219: _Natural History_, Book xxx. Sec. 4. Archaeologists are now fully aware of "the accord" of the ancient inhabitants of Britain with those of Persia and the other eastern branches of the Aryan race in many other particulars, as in their language, burial customs, etc. According to some Indian observers, stone erections, like our so-called Druidical circles, cromlechs, etc., are common in the East. Is it vain to hope that amid the great and yet unsearched remains of old Sanscrit literature, allusions may yet be found to such structures, that may throw more light upon their uses in connection with religious, sepulchral, or other services?]

[Footnote 220: Grimm thinks that the formulae of Marcellus partake more of the Celtic dialects of the Irish, and consequently of the Scotch, than of the Welsh. As one of the shortest specimens of Marcellus's charm-cures, let me cite, from Pictet, the following, as given in the _Ulster Journal of Archaeology_, vol. iv. p. 266:--"Formula 12. He who shall labour under the disease of watery (or blood-shot) eyes, let him pluck the herb Millefolium up by the roots, and of it make a hoop, and look through it, saying three times, '_Excicumacriosos_;' and let him as often move the hoop to his mouth, and spit through the middle of it, and then plant the herb again." "I divide," observes Pictet, "the formula thus: _exci cuma criosos_, and translate it, 'See the form of the girdle.'" After a long and learned disquisition on the component words Pictet adds--"The process of cure recommended in this formula is of a character altogether symbolical. Girdles (_cris_), which we shall meet with again in formula No. 27, seem to have performed an important part in Celtic medicine. By making the eye look through the circle formed by the plant, a girdle, as it were, was put round it; and it is for this reason that the formula says, see the form (or model) of the girdle. The action of spitting afterwards through the little ring expressed symbolically the expulsion of the pain." The so-called Celtic word-charms in the formulae of Marcellus are usually longer than the above; as, "_Tetune resonco bregan gresso_;" "Heilen prossaggeri nome sipolla na builet ododieni iden olitan," etc. etc.]

[Footnote 221: On this subject I elsewhere published, two years ago, the following remarks:--"The medical science and medical lore of the past has become, after a succession of ages, the so-called folk-lore and superstitious usages of times nearer our own. Up to the end of the last century, patients attacked with insanity were occasionally dipped in lakes and wells, and left bound in the neighbouring church for a night. Loch Maree, in Ross-shire, and St. Fillan's Pool, in Perthshire, were places in which such unfortunate patients were frequently dipped. Heron, in his _Journey through Scotland_ in the last century, states that it was affirmed that two hundred invalids were carried annually to St. Fillan's for the cure of various diseases, but principally of insanity. The proceedings at this famous pool were in such cases an imitation of the old Greek and Roman worship of AEsculapius. Patients consulting the AEsculapian priest were purified first of all, by bathing in some sacred well; and then having been allowed to enter into and sleep in his temple, the god, or rather some priest of the god, came in the darkness of the night and told them what treatment they were to adopt. The poor lunatics brought to St. Fillan's were, in the same way, first purified by being bathed in his pool, and then laid bound in the neighbouring church during the subsequent night. If they were found loose in the morning, a full recovery was confidently looked for, but the cure remained doubtful when they were found at morning dawn still bound. I was lately informed by the Rev. Mr Stewart of Killin, that in one of the last cases so treated--and that only a few years ago--the patient was found sane in the morning, and unbound; a dead relative, according to the patient's own account, having entered the church during the night, and loosened her both from the ropes that bound her body and the delusions that warped her mind. It was a system of treatment by mystery and terrorism that might have made some sane persons insane; and hence, perhaps, conversely, some insane persons sane. Mr. Pennant tells us that at Llandegla, in Wales, where similar rites were performed for the cure of insanity, viz., purification in the sacred well, and forced detention of the patient for a night in the church, under the communion-table, the lunatics or their friends were obliged to leave a cock in the church if he were a male, and a hen if she were a female--an additional circumstance in proof of the AEsculapian type of the superstition. But perhaps, after all, the whole is a medical or mythological belief, older than Greece or Rome, and which was common to the whole Aryan or Indo-European race in Asia before they sent off, westward, over Europe, those successive waves of population that formed the nations of the Celt and Teuton, of the Goth, and Greek, and Latin. The cock is still occasionally sacrificed in the Highlands for the cure of epilepsy and convulsions. A patient of mine found one, a few years ago, deposited in a hole in the kitchen floor; the animal having been killed and laid down at the spot where a child had, two or three days previously, fallen down in a fit of convulsions."--See the _Medical Times and Gazette_ of Dec. 8, 1860, p. 549.]

[Footnote 222: See, for example, Kemble's work on the Anglo-Saxons, vol. i. p. 528, for various Teutonic medical superstitions and cures.]

[Footnote 223: A very intelligent patient from the North Highlands, to whom I happened lately to speak on this subject, has written out the following instances that have occurred within her own knowledge:--"Twenty years or more ago, in the parish of Nigg, Ross-shire, there was a lad of fifteen ill with epilepsy. To cure him, his friends first tried the charm of mole's blood. A plate was laid on the lad's head; the living mole was held over it by the tail, the head cut off, and the blood allowed to drop into the plate. Three moles were sacrificed one after the other, but without effect. Next they tried the effect of a bit of the skull of a suicide, and sent for this treasure a distance of from sixty to one hundred miles. This bit of the skull was scraped to dust into a cup of water, which the lad had to swallow, not knowing the contents. This I heard from a sister of the lad's. There was a 'strong-minded' old woman at Strathpeffer, Ross-shire whose daughter told me that the neighbours had come to condole with the mother after she had fallen down in a fit of some kind. They strongly advised her to bury a living cock in the very place where she had fallen, to prevent a return of the ailment. A woman in Sutherlandshire told me that she knew a young man, ill of consumption, who was made to drink his own blood after it had been drawn from his arm. This same woman was ill with a pain in her chest, which she could get nothing to relieve; so her father sent off for 'a knowing man,' who, when he saw the girl, repeated some words under his breath, then touched the floor and her shoulder three times alternately, and with alleged success."]

[Footnote 224: In the first chapter of Adamnan's work, the miracle is again alluded to as follows:--"He took a white stone (_lapidem candidum_) from the river's bed, and blessed it for the cure of certain diseases; and that stone, contrary to the law of nature, floats like an apple when placed in the water."]

[Footnote 225: For other instances of waters rendered medicinal by being brought in contact with saint's bones--such as St. Marnan's head, with St. Conval's chariot, etc. etc., see Dalyell's _Superstitions of Scotland_, p. 151, etc. Sibbald's _Memoirs of the Edinburgh College of Physicians_, p. 39.]

[Footnote 226: See _Philosophical Transactions_ for the year 1713, p. 98. For instances of curing-stones in the Hebrides, see Martin's _Western Isles_, p. 134, 166, etc.]

[Footnote 227: I was lately told by the farmer at Nemphlar, in the neighbourhood of Lee, that in his younger days no byre was considered safe which had not a bottle of water from the Lee Penny suspended from its rafters. Even this remnant of superstition seems to have died out during the present generation.]

[Footnote 228: I state this on the high numismatic authority of my friend, Mr. Sim. Sir Walter Scott describes the coin as a groat of Edward I.]

[Footnote 229: Kemble's _Anglo-Saxons_, vol. i. p. 527, etc.]

[Footnote 230: See a case of this prohibition in the _Ecclesiastical Records of the Presbytery of St. Andrews_ for September 1643. "It is manifest by experience," says Upton, "that the seventh male child by just order, never a girle or wench being borne betweene, doth heall only with touching, by a natural gift, the king's evil; which is a speciall gift of God, given to kings and queens, as daily experience doth witnesse." See Upton's Notable Things (1631), p. 28. Charles I. when he visited Scotland in 1633, in Holyrood Chapel, on St. John's day, "heallit 100 persons of the cruelles, or kingis eivell, yong and olde."--Dalyell's _Superstitions_, p. 62.]

[Footnote 231: See the "_Charisma Basilicon_" (1684) of John Browne, "Chirurgion to His Majesty," for a full and charming account of the whole process and ceremonies of the royal "touch," the prayers used on the occasion, and due proofs of the alleged wondrous effects of this "sanative gift, which hath (says Dr. Browne) for above 640 years been confirmed and continued in our English Princely line, wherein is not so much of their Majesty shown as of their Divinity," and which is only doubted by "Ill affected men and Dissenters."]

[Footnote 232: See the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for December 1787.]

IS THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GIZEH A METROLOGICAL MONUMENT?

The following observations form a corrected Abstract, from No. 75 of
the _Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh_, of a
communication made to that Society on the 20th January 1868, and
entitled _Pyramidal Structures in Egypt and elsewhere; and the
Objects of their Erection_. Some additional points are dwelt upon in
the Notes and Appendix. As stated at the time, the communication was
not at all spontaneous, but enforced by the previous criticisms of
Professor Smyth.

There are many proposed derivations of the word Pyramid. Perhaps the origin of the name suggested by the distinguished Egyptologist, Mr. Birch, from two Coptic words, "_pouro_," "ing," and "_emahau_," or "_maha_," "tomb,"--the two in combination signifying "the king's tomb,"--is the most correct. "_Men_," in Coptic, signifies "monument," "memorial;" and "_pouro-men_," or "king's monument," may possibly also be the original form of the word.[233]

Various English authors, as Pope,[234] Pownall,[235] Professor Daniel Wilson,[236] Burton,[237] had long applied the term pyramid to the larger forms of conical and round sepulchral mounds, cairns, or barrows--such as are found in Ireland, Brittany, Orkney, etc., and also in numerous districts of the New and Old World;[238] and which are all characterised by containing in their interior chambers or cells, constructed usually of large stones, and with megalithic galleries leading into them. In these chambers (small in relation to the hills of stone or earth in which they were imbedded) were found the remains of sepulture, with stone weapons, ornaments, etc. The galleries and chambers were roofed, sometimes with flags laid quite flat, or placed abutting against each other; and occasionally with large stones arranged over the internal cells in the form of a horizontal arch or dome. In his travels to Madeira and the Mediterranean (1840), Sir W. Wilde details in interesting terms his visit to the pyramids of Egypt; and in describing the roof of the interior chambers of one of the pyramids at Sakkara,[239] he remarks on the analogy of its construction to the great barrow of Dowth in Ireland; and again, when writing--in his work on the _Beauties of the Boyne_ (1849)--an account of the great old barrows of Dowth, New Grange, etc., placed on its banks above Drogheda, he describes at some length the last of these mounds (New Grange),--stating that it "consists" of an enormous cairn or "hill of small stones, calculated at 180,000 tons weight, occupying the summit of one of the natural undulating slopes which enclose the valley of the Boyne upon the north. It is said to cover nearly two acres, and is 400 paces in circumference, and now about 80 feet higher than the adjoining natural surface. Various excavations (he adds) made into its sides and upon its summit, at different times, in order to supply materials for building and road-making, having assisted to lessen its original height, and also to destroy the beauty of its outline." Like the other analogous mounds and pyramids placed there and elsewhere, New Grange has a long megalithic gallery, of above 60 feet in length, leading inward into three dome-shaped chambers or crypts. After describing minutely, and with a master-hand, the construction of these interior parts, and the carvings of circles, spirals, etc.,[240] upon the enormous stones of which the gallery and crypts are built, Sir William Wilde goes on to observe:--"We believe with most modern investigators into such subjects, that it was a tomb, or great sepulchral Pyramid, similar in every respect to those now standing by the banks of the Nile, from Dashour to Gizeh, each consisting of a great central chamber containing one or more sarcophagi, entered by a long stone-covered passage. The external aperture was concealed, and the whole covered with a great mound of stones or earth in a conical form. The early Egyptians, and the Mexicans also, possessing greater art and better tools than the primitive Irish, carved, smoothed, and cemented their great pyramids; _but the type and purpose is all the same_.... How far anterior to the Christian era its date should be placed would be a matter of speculation; it may be of an age coeval, or even anterior, to its brethren on the Nile."

Other pyramidal barrows at Maeshowe, Gavr Inis, etc., were referred to and illustrated; showing that a gigantic sepulchral cairn was in its mass an unbuilt pyramid; or, in other words, that a pyramid was a built cairn.

SEPULCHRAL CHARACTER, ETC., OF THE EGYPTIAN PYRAMIDS.

All authors, from the Father of History downwards, have generally agreed in considering the pyramids of Egypt as magnificent and regal sepulchres; and the sarcophagi, etc., of the dead have been found in them when first opened for the purposes of plunder or curiosity. The pyramidal sepulchral mounds on the banks of the Boyne were opened and rifled in the ninth century by the invading Dane, as told in different old Irish annals; and the Pyramids of Gizeh, etc., were reputedly broken into and harried in the same century by the Arabian Caliph, Al Mamoon,--the entrances and galleries blocked up by stones being forced and turned, and in some parts the solid masonry perforated. The largest of the Pyramids of Gizeh--or "the Great Pyramid," as it is generally termed--is now totally deprived of the external polished limestone coating which covered it at the time of Herodotus's visit, some twenty-two centuries ago; and "now" (writes Mr. Smyth) "is so injured as to be, in the eyes of some passing travellers, little better than a heap of stones." But all the internal built core of the magnificent structure remains, and contains in its interior (besides a rock chamber below) two higher built chambers or crypts above--the so-called King's Chamber and Queen's chamber--with galleries and apartments leading to them. The walls of these galleries and upper chambers are built with granite and limestone masonry of a highly-finished character. This, the largest and most gigantic of the many pyramids of Egypt, had been calculated by Major Forlong (Asso. Inst. C. Engrs.), as a structure which in the East would cost about L1,000,000. Over India, and the East generally, enormous sums had often been expended on royal sepulchres. The Taj Mahal of Agra, built by the Emperor Shah Jahan for his favourite queen, cost perhaps double or triple this sum; and yet it formed only a portion of an intended larger mausoleum which he expected to rear for himself. The great Pyramid contains in its interior, and directly over the King's Chamber, five entresols or "chambers of construction," as they have been termed, intended apparently to take off the enormous weight of masonry from the cross stones forming the roof of the King's Chamber itself. These entresols are chambers, small and unpolished, and never intended to be opened. But in two or three of them, broken into by Colonel H. Vyse, a most interesting discovery was made about thirty years ago. The surfaces of some of the stones were found painted over in red ochre or paint, with rudish hieroglyphics--being, as first shown by Mr. Birch, quarry marks, written on the stones 4000 years ago, and hence, perhaps, forming the oldest preserved writing in the world. These accidental hieroglyphics usually marked only the number and position of the individual stones. Among them, however, Mr. Birch discovered two royal ovals, viz., Shufu (the Cheops of Herodotus) and Nu Shufu--"a brother" (writes Professor Symth) "of Shufu, also a king and a co-regent with him." Most, if not all, of the other pyramids are believed to have been erected by individual kings during their individual or separate reigns. If these hieroglyphics proved that _two_ kings were connected with the building of the Great Pyramid, that circumstance would perhaps account for its size and the duplicity and position of its sepulchral chambers.[241]

The pyramid standing next the Great Pyramid, and nearly of equal size, is said by Herodotus to have been raised by the brother of Cheops. The other pyramids at Gizeh are usually regarded as later in date. But the exact era of the reign or reigns of their builders has not as yet been determined, in consequence of the break made in Egyptian chronology by the invasion of the Shepherd Kings.

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--

* * * * *

(1.) _The Coffer, though an alleged actual standard of capacity-measure, has yet been found difficult or impossible to measure._--In his first work, "Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid," Professor Smyth had cited the measurements of it, made and published by twenty-five different observers, several of whom had gone about the matter with great mathematical accuracy.[245] Though imagined to be a great standard of measure, yet all these twenty-five, as Professor Smyth owned, varied from each other in their accounts of this imaginary standard in "every element of length, breadth, and depth, both inside and outside." Professor Smyth has latterly measured it himself, and this twenty-sixth measurement varies again from all the preceding twenty-five. Surely a measure of capacity should be measureable. Its mensurability indeed ought to be its most unquestionable quality; but this imagined standard has proved virtually unmeasurable--in so far at least that its twenty-six different and skilled measurers all differ from each other in respect to its dimensions. Still, says Professor Smyth, "this affair of the coffer's precise size is _the question of questions_."

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(2.) _Discordance between its actual and its theoretical measure._--Professor Smyth holds that _theoretically_ its capacity ought to be 71,250 "pyramidal" cubic inches, for that cubic size would make it the exact measure for a chaldron, or practically the vessel would then contain exactly four quarters of wheat, etc. Yet Professor Smyth himself found it some 60 cubic inches less than this; while also the measurements of Professor Greaves, one of the most accurate measurers of all, make it 250 cubic inches, and those of Dr. Whitman 14,000 _below_ this professed standard. On the other hand, the measurements of Colonel Howard Vyse make it more than 100, those of Dr. Wilson more than 500, and those of the French academicians who accompanied the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt, about 6000 cubic inches _above_ the theoretical size which Professor Smyth has latterly fixed on.

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(3.) _Its theoretical measure varied._--The _actual_ measure of the coffer has varied in the hands of all its twenty-six measurers. But even its _theoretical_ measure is varied also; for the size which the old coffer really _ought_ to have as "a grand capacity standard," is, strangely enough, not a determined quantity. In his last work (1867), Professor Smyth declares, as just stated, its proper theoretical cubic capacity to be 71,250 pyramidal cubic inches. But in his first work (1864), he declared something different, for "we _elect_," says he, "to take 70,970.2 English cubic inches (or 70,900 pyramidal cubic inches) as the true, because the theoretically _proved_ contents of the porphyry coffer, and therefore accept these numbers as giving the cubic size of the grand _standard_ measure of capacity in the Great Pyramid." Again, however, Mr. Taylor, who, previously to Professor Smyth, was the great advocate of the coffer being a marvellous standard of capacity measure for all nations, ancient and modern, declares its measure to be neither of the above quantities, but 71,328 cubic inches, or a cube of the ancient cubit of Karnak.[246] A vessel cannot be a measure of capacity whose own standard theoretical size is thus declared to vary somewhat every few years by those very men who maintain that it is a standard. But whether its capacity is 71,250, or 70,970, or 71,328, it is quite equally held up by Messrs Taylor and Smyth that the Sacred Laver of the Israelites, and the Molten Sea of the Scriptures, also conform and correspond to its (yet undetermined) standard "with _all_ conceivable practical exactness;" though the standard of capacity to which they thus conform and correspond is itself a size or standard which has not been yet fixed with any exactness. Professor Smyth, in speaking of the calculations and theoretical dimensions of this coffer--as published by Mr. Jopling, a believer in its wonderful standard character--critically and correctly observes, "Some very astonishing results were brought out in the play of arithmetical numerations."

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(4.) _The dilapidation of the Coffer._--Thirty years ago this stone coffer was pointed out, and indeed delineated by Mr. Perring, as "_not_ particularly well polished," and "chipped and broken at the edges." Professor Smyth, in his late travels to Egypt, states that he found every possible line and edge of it chipped away with large chips along the top, both inside and outside, "chip upon chip, woefully spoiling the original figure; along all the corners of the upright sides too, and even along every corner of the bottom, while the upper south-eastern corner of the whole vessel is positively broken away to a depth and breadth of nearly a third of the whole." Yet this broken and damaged stone vessel is professed to be the _permanent_ and perfect miraculous standard of capacity-measure for the world for "present and still future times;" and, according to Mr. Taylor--that it might serve this purpose, "is formed of one block of the hardest kind of material, such as porphyry or granite, _in order_ that it might _not_ fall into decay;" for "in this porphyry coffer we have" (writes Professor Smyth in 1864) "the very closing end and aim of the whole pyramid."

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(5.) _Alleged mathematical form of the Coffer erroneous._--But in regard to the coffer as an exquisite and marvellous standard of capacity to be revealed in these latter times, worse facts than these are divulged by the tables, etc., of measurements which Professor Smyth has recently published of this stone vessel or chest. His published measurements show that it is not at all a vessel, as was averred a few years ago, of pure mathematical form; for, externally, it is in length an inch greater on one side than another; in breadth half-an-inch broader at one point than at some other point; its bottom at one part is nearly a whole inch thicker than it is at some other parts; and in thickness its sides vary in some points about a quarter of an inch near the top. "But," Professor Smyth adds, "if calipered lower down, it is extremely probable that a _notably_ different thickness would have been found there;"--though it does not appear why they were not thus calipered.[247] Further, externally, "all the sides" (says Professor Smyth) "were slightly hollow, excepting the east side;" and the "two external ends" also show some "concavity" in form. "The outside," (he avows) "of the vessel was found to be by no means so perfectly accurate as many would have expected, for the length was greater on one side than the other, and _different_ also according to the height at which the measure was made." "The workmanship" (he elsewhere describes) "of the _inside_ is in advance of the outside, but yet _not_ perfect." For internally there is a convergence at the bottom towards the centre; both in length and in breadth the interior differs about half-an-inch at one point from another point; the "extreme points" (also) "of the corners of the bottom not being perfectly worked out to the intersection of the general planes of the entire sides;" and thus its cavity seems really of a form utterly unmeasurable in a correct way by mere linear measurement--the only measure yet attempted. If it were an object of the slightest moment, perhaps liquid measurements would be more successful in ascertaining at least as much of the mensuration of the lower part of the coffer as still remains.

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(6.) _Coffer cut with ledges and catch-holes for a lid, like other sarcophagi._--More damaging details still remain in relation to the coffer as "a grand standard measure of capacity," and prove that its object or function was very different. In his first work Professor Smyth describes the coffer as showing no "symptoms" whatever of grooves, or catchpins or other fastenings or a lid. "More modern accounts," he re-observes, "have been further precise in describing the smooth and geometrical finish of the upper part of the coffer's sides, _without any_ of those grooves, dovetails, or steady-pin-holes which have been found elsewhere in true polished sarcophagi, where the firm fastening of the lid is one of the most essential features of the whole business." Mr. Perring, however, delineated the catchpin-holes for a lid in the coffer thirty years ago.[248] On his late visit to it Professor Smyth found its western side lowered down in its whole extent to nearly an inch and three-quarters (or more exactly, 1.72 inch), and ledges cut out around the interior of the other sides at the same height. Should we measure on this western side from this actual ledge brim, or from the imaginary higher brim? If reckoned as the true brim, "this ledge" (according to Professor Smyth) would "take away near 4000 inches from the cubic capacity of the vessel." Besides, he found three holes cut on the top of the coffer's lowered western side, as in all the other Egyptian sarcophagi, where these holes are used along with the ledge and grooves to admit, and form a simple mechanism to lock the lids of such stone chests.[249] In other words, it presents the usual ledge and apparatus pertaining to Egyptian stone sarcophagi, and served as such.

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(7.) _Sepulchral contents of Coffer when first discovered._--When, about a thousand years ago, the Caliph Al Mamoon tunnelled into the interior of the pyramid, he detected by the accidental falling, it is said, of a granite portcullis, the passage to the King's Chamber, shut up from the building of the pyramid to that time. "Then" (to quote the words of Professor Smyth) "the treasures of the pyramid, sealed up almost from the days of Noah, and undesecrated by mortal eye for 3000 years, lay full in their grasp before them." On this occasion, to quote the words of Ibn Abd Al Hakm or Hokm--a contemporary Arabian writer, and a historian of high authority,[250] who was born, lived, and died in Egypt--they found in the pyramid, "towards the top, a chamber [now the so-called King's Chamber] with an hollow stone [or coffer] in which there was a statue [of stone] like a man, and within it a man upon whom was a breastplate of gold set with jewels; upon this breastplate was a sword of inestimable price, and at his head a carbuncle of the bigness of an egg, shining like the light of the day; and upon him were characters writ with a pen,[251] which no man understood"[252]--a description stating, down to the so-called "statue," mummy-case, or cartonage, and the hieroglyphics upon the cere-cloth, the arrangements now well known to belong to the higher class of Egyptian mummies.

In short (to quote the words of Professor Smyth), "that wonder within a wonder of the Great Pyramid--viz., the porphyry coffer,"--that "chief mystery and boon to the human race which the Great Pyramid was built to enshrine,"--"this vessel of exquisite meaning," and of "far-reaching characteristics,"--mathematically formed under alleged Divine inspiration as a measure of capacity (and, according to M. Jomard, probably of length also) for all men and all nations, for all time,--and particularly for these latter profane times,--is, in simple truth, nothing more and nothing less than--an old and somewhat misshapen stone coffin.

STANDARD OF LINEAR MEASURE IN THE GREAT PYRAMID.

The standard in the Great Pyramid, according to Messrs. Taylor and Smyth, for _linear_ measurements, is the length of the base line or lines of the pyramid. This, Professor Smyth states, is "_the function proper of the pyramids base_." It is professed also that in this base line there has been found a new mythical inch--one-thousandth of an inch longer than the British standard inch; and in the last sections of his late work Professor Smyth has earnestly attempted to show that the status of the kingdoms of Europe in the general and moral world may be measured in accordance with their present deviation from or conformity to this suppositious pyramidal standard in their modes of national measurement.[253] "For the linear measure" (says Professor Smyth) "of the base line of this colossal monument, viewed in the light of the philosophical connection between time and space, has yielded a standard measure of length which is more admirably and learnedly earth-commensurable than anything which has ever yet entered into the mind of man to conceive, even up to the last discovery in modern metrological science, whether in England, France, or Germany."

The engineers and mathematicians of different countries have repeatedly measured arcs of meridians to find the form and dimensions of the earth, and the French made the metre (their standard of length), 1/10,000,000 of the quadrant of the meridian. Professor Smyth holds that the basis line of the pyramid has been laid down by Divine authority as such a guiding standard measure.

* * * * *

_What, then, is the exact length of one of its basis lines?_ The sides of the pyramid have been measured by many different measurers. Linear standards have, says Professor Smyth, "been already looked for by many and many an author on the sides of the base of the Great Pyramid, even before they knew that the terminal points of those magnificent base lines had been carefully marked in the solid rock of the hill by the socket-holes of the builders." But--as in the case of the cubic capacity of the coffer--these measurers sadly disagree with each other in their measurements, which, in fact, vary from some 7500 or 8000 inches to 9000 and upwards. Thus, for example, Strabo makes it under 600 Grecian feet, or under 7500 English inches; Dr. Shawe makes it 8040 inches; Shelton makes it 8184 inches; Greaves, 8316; Davison, 8952: Caviglia, 9072; the French academicians, 9163; Dr. Perry, 9360, etc., etc.

At the time at which Professor Smyth was living at the Pyramids, Mr. Inglis of Glasgow visited it, and, for correct measurement, laid bare for the first time the four corner sockets. Mr. Inglis's measurements not only differed from all the other measurements of "one side" base lines made before him, but he makes the four sides differ from each other; one of them--namely, the north side--being longer than the other three. Strangely, Professor Smyth, though in Egypt for the purpose of measuring the different parts of the pyramid--and holding that its base line ought to be our grand standard of measure, and further holding that the base line could only be accurately ascertained by measuring from socket to socket--never attempted that linear measurement himself after the sockets were cleared. These four corner sockets were never exposed before in historic times; and it may be very long before an opportunity of seeing and using them again shall ever be afforded to any other measurers.

Before the corner sockets were exposed, Professor Smyth attempted to measure the bases, and made each side of the present masonry courses "between 8900 and 9000 inches in length," or (to use his own word) "_about_" 8950 inches for the mean length of one of the four sides of the base; exclusive of the ancient casing and backing stones--which last Colonel Howard Vyse found and measured to be precisely 108 inches on each side, or 216 on both sides. These 216 inches, added to Professor Smyth's measure of "about" 8950 inches, make one side 9166 inches. But Professor Smyth has "elected" (to use his own expression) not to take the mathematically exact measure of the casing stones as given by Colonel Vyse and Mr. Perring, who alone ever saw them and measured them (for they were destroyed shortly after their discovery in 1837), but to take them, without any adequate reason, and contrary to their mathematical measurement, as equal only to 202 inches, and hence "accept 9152 inches as the original length of one side of the base of the finished pyramid." He deems, however, this "determination" not to be so much depended upon as the measurements made from socket to socket.

The mean of the only four series of such socket or casing stone measures as have been recorded hitherto by the French Academicians (9163), Vyse (9168), Mahmoud Bey (9162), and Inglis (9110), amounts to nearly 9150. The first three of these observers were only able to measure the north side of the pyramid. Mr. Inglis measured all the four sides, and found them respectively 9120, 9114, 9102, and 9102, making a difference of 18 inches between the shortest and longest. Professor Smyth thinks the measures of Mr. Inglis as on the whole probably too _small_, and he takes two of them, 9114 and 9102--(but, strangely, not the largest, 9120)--as data, and strikes a new number out of these two, and out of the three previous measures of the French Academicians, Vyse, and Mahmoud Bey; from these five quantities making a calculation of "means," and electing 9142 as the proper measure of the basis line of the pyramid--(which exact measure certainly none of its many measurers ever yet found it to be); and upon this _foundation_, "derived" (to use his own words) "from the best modern measures yet made," he proceeds to reason, "as the happy, useful, and perfect representation of 9142," and the great standard for linear measure revealed to man in the Great Pyramid. Surely it is a remarkably strange _standard_ of linear measure that can only be thus elicited and developed--not by direct measurement but by indirect logic; and regarding the exact and precise length of which there is as yet no kind of reliable and accurate certainty.