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 p????, wheat, and et???, 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 p??, 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 p??a?? (from p????, wheat, and e??t??, 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 ?e???, 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:—

"Without attempting to solve the mystery connected with these archaic lapidary cups and ring cuttings, I would venture to remark that there is one use for which some of these olden stone carvings were in all probability devoted—namely, ornamentation. From the very earliest historic periods in the architecture of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, etc., down to our own day, circles, single or double, and spirals, have formed, under various modifications, perhaps the most common fundamental types of lapidary decoration. In prehistoric times the same taste for circular sculpturings, however rough and rude, seems to have swayed the mind of archaic man. This observation as to the probable ornamental origin of our cup and ring carvings holds, in my opinion, far more strongly in respect to some antique stone cuttings in Ireland and in Brittany, than to the ruder and simpler forms that I have described as existing in Scotland and England. For instance, the cut single and double volutes, the complete and half-concentric circles, the zig-zag, and other patterns which cover almost entirely and completely some stones in those magnificent though rude western Pyramids that constitute the grand old mausolea of Ireland and Brittany, appear to be, in great part at least, of an ornamental character, whatever else their import may be."

In a communication on the Great Pyramid, made to the Royal Society 16th December 1867, Professor Smyth most unexpectedly, and quite out of his way, took occasion to criticise severely the remarks contained in the preceding extract, on two grounds:

First, He laid down that the term pyramid was misapplied, as the term referred only to figures and structures of a special mathematical form; being apparently quite unaware that, as shown in the text and notes, pp. 219 and 220, it was often applied archÆologically to sepulchral mounds and erections that were not faced, and which did not consist of a series of triangles meeting in an apex.

Secondly, He objected to the statement that, "from the very earliest historic periods in the architecture of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, etc., circles and spirals, or modifications of them, constituted perhaps the most common fundamental types of lapidary decoration;" because, though circles, spirals, etc., occurred in the later architecture of Thebes, etc., yet in the Great Pyramid of Gizeh no such decorations were to be found, nor, indeed, lapidary decorations of any other kind. Cheops, the builder of the Great Pyramid, was, according to Manetho, "arrogant towards the gods." Was it this spirit of religious infidelity or scepticism that led to the rejection of any ornamentation? Professor Smyth notices what he himself terms an "ornament," "a most unique thing certainly," on the upper stone of what Greaves calls "the granite leaf" portcullis, in the interior of the Great Pyramid (ii. 100), and he represents it, it is now said erroneously in plate xii. as a portion of a double circle instead of a general raised elevation.[275]

All the other Pyramids of Gizeh seem, like the Great Pyramid, wonderfully free from lapidary decorations on their interior walls, the exteriors of all of them being now too much dilapidated to offer any distinct proof in relation to the subject; though in Herodotus' time there were hieroglyphics, at least on the external surface of the Great Pyramid. The whole surface of the basalt sarcophagus in the Third Pyramid, or that of Mycerinus, was sculptured. "It was," to use the words of Baron Bunsen, "very beautifully carved in compartments, in the Doric style" (vol. ii. 168). This carving, in the well-known carpentry form, was, according to Mr. Fergusson, a representation of a palace (Handbook of Architecture, p. 222).

Fragments, however, of lapidary sculpture have been found among the ruins of Egyptian pyramids supposed to be older than those of Gizeh, or than their builders, the Memphite kings of the fourth dynasty. Thus one of the most able and learned of modern Egyptologists, Baron Bunsen, has written at some length to show that the great northern brick pyramid of Dashoor belongs to the preceding or third dynasty of kings. Colonel Vyse and Mr. Perring, when digging among its ruins, discovered two or three fragments of sculptured casing and other stones, with a few pieces presenting broken hieroglyphic inscriptions. One of the ornamented fragments represents a row of floreated-like decorations, and each decoration shows on its side a concentric circle, consisting of three rings,—the whole ornament being one which is found in later Egyptian eras, not unfrequently along the tops of walls in the interior of chambers, etc. Mr. Perring represents this fragment of sculpturing from the brick Pyramid of Dashoor, in his folio work, The Pyramids of Gizeh, plate xiii. Fig. 7. Hence among the very earliest Egyptian lapidary decorations we have, as in other countries, the appearance of the simple circular ornamentation.

Besides, more complex circular and spiral decorations, in the form of the well-known guilloche and scroll, were made use of in Egypt during the sixth dynasty, or immediately after the Memphite dynasty that reared the larger Pyramids of Gizeh. Thus, speaking of the ancient Egyptian architectural decorations, Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson observes—"The Egyptians did not always confine themselves to the mere imitation of natural objects for ornament; and their ceilings and cornices offer numerous graceful fancy devices, among which are the guilloche, miscalled Tuscan borders, the chevron, and the scroll patterns. They are to be met with in a tomb of the time of the sixth dynasty; they are therefore known in Egypt many ages before they were adopted by the Greeks, and the most complicated form of the guilloche covered a whole Egyptian ceiling, upwards of a thousand years before it was represented on those comparatively late objects found at Nineveh."—Popular account of the Ancient Egyptians, ii. 290.

III.—ERA OF THE ARABIAN HISTORIAN, IBN ABD AL HAKM. (Page236.)

Professor Smyth owns that the grooves and pin holes which the coffer in the King's Chamber presents, were (to use his own words) "in fact to admit a sliding sarcophagus cover or lid" (see ante, p. 236, footnote). But in his recent communication to the Royal Society on the 20th April, he doubted Al Hakm's account of the mummy having been actually found in the sarcophagus when the King's Chamber was first entered by the Caliph Al Mamoon, in the ninth century, arguing, on the authority of a Glasgow gentleman, that the historian himself, Al Hakm, did not live for three or four centuries afterwards, and, therefore, could not be relied upon. But all this reasoning or assertion is simply a mistake. In a late letter (7th April), Dr. Rieu of the British Museum,—the chief living authority among us on any such Arabic question,—writes, "The statement relating to Al Mamoon's discovery could hardly rest on a better authority than that of Ibn Abd Al Hakm; for not only was he a contemporary writer (having died at Old Cairo, A.H. 269, that is, thirty-eight years after Al Mamoon's death), but he is constantly quoted by later writers as an historian of the highest authority. You will find a notice of him in Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary, vol. ii. etc." He was a native of Egypt, and chief of the Shafite sect. Born in A.D. 799, he died in A.D. 882, or at the age of 83.

IV.—LENGTH OF THE SARCOPHAGUS IN THE KING'S CHAMBER. (Page 236.)

M. Jomard, in the Description de l'Egypte, drawn up by the French Academicians, remarks in vol. ii. p. 182, that looking to the length of the cavity or interior of the sarcophagus in the King's Chamber, that it could not hold within it a cartonage or mummy case, enclosing a man of the ordinary height. This statement proceeds entirely upon a miscalculation. The length of the interior or cavity of the sarcophagus is six and a half English feet; and the average stature of the ancient Egyptians, "judging from their mummies, did not" observes Mr. Kenrick, "exceed five feet and a half." (See his Ancient Egypt, vol. i. p. 97.) The space thus left, of one foot, is much more than sufficient for the thickness of the two ends of a cartonage or mummy case; and the embalmed body was generally, or indeed always, closely packed within them. The length of the coffin was, long ago, quaintly observed Professor Greaves, "large enough to contain a most potent and dreadful monarch being dead, to whom, living, all Egypt was too strait and narrow a circuit" (Works, i. p. 131).

V.—MEMORANDUM ON THE CUBIT OF MEMPHIS AND THE SACRED CUBIT, BY SIR HENRY JAMES. (Page 242.)

Sir Isaac Newton says, "for 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, where the king's monument stood, which length contained 20 cubits, and was very carefully measured by Mr. Greaves." (See vol. ii. p. 362 of Professor Smyth's Life at the Pyramids, etc.)

Greaves' measures of the King's chamber are given at p. 335, vol. ii. of the same work.

The length of the chamber on the south side, he says, is

34·380 feet = 20 cubits.
17·190 " = 10 cubits.
12
———-
206·280 inches = 10 cubits,
and 20·628 " = 1 cubit of Memphis;

and Newton himself says, at p. 360, vol. ii. Life at the Pyramids,—

"The cubit of Memphis of 1·719 English feet,"
12
———
or 20·628 inches,

and, therefore, there can be no possible doubt but that this is Newton's determination of the length of the cubit of Memphis.

But Newton goes on to say in the same page, the cubit "double the length of 12-3/8 English inches (=24·75 inches) will be to the cubit of Memphis as 6 to 5."

Therefore, if we add 1/5 to 20·628 inches,
4·126
———
we have 24·754

as Newton's determination of the length of the Sacred Cubit.

Newton's determinations are therefore—

Length of Sacred Cubit 24·754 inches.
" Cubit of Memphis 20·628 "

The cubit measured by Mersennus (see p. 362, vol. ii. Life at the Pyramids) was 23-1/4 Paris inches, and Mr. Greaves estimated the Paris foot as equal to 1·068 of the English foot; therefore 23·25 + 1·068=24·831 was the length of this cubit, if we take Greaves' proportion of the Paris to the English foot; but by the more exact determination of the proportion of the Paris to the English foot made at the Ordnance Survey Office, Southampton, it is found to be as 1 to 1·06576 and 23·25 + 1·06576=24·780 English inches, which differs only in excess ·026 from the length of the Sacred Cubit determined by Newton.

The double Royal Cubit of Karnak, which is in the British Museum, was found by Sir Henry James to measure 41·398 inches; the length of the single cubit was therefore 20·699 inches, and differs only in excess ·071 inches from the length of the cubit of Memphis, as determined by Newton.

It will be observed that the lengths of the cubits derived by Newton from the length of the King's chamber are shorter than the measured lengths of the cubits which have come down to us. But if

we add 1/5 or = 4·140 to the length of the
Karnak cubit = 20·699,
———
we have 24·839 for the Sacred Cubit.
The one measured by Mersennus = 24·780 and the
———
mean of the two = 24·810, whilst the
length derived by Newton was = 24·754, showing
———
a difference of only ·056 between the
======

length of the Sacred Cubit derived from the actual lengths of the two cubits which have come down to us, and the length of the Sacred Cubit derived by Newton from the length of the King's chamber.

The method adopted by Professor P. Smyth, to find the length of the Sacred Cubit, in p. 458, vol. ii. Life at the Pyramids, is also wrong in principle. He has no right to take the means between the limits of approach, or to say that the Sacred Cubit was, according to Sir Isaac Newton, 25·07 inches, when, as I have shown in his own words, Sir Isaac says it was 24·754 inches.

VI.—PROFESSOR SMYTH'S RECENT COMMUNICATION TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY on 20th April 1868.

It has been already stated (see footnote, p. 248) that, on the 20th April Professor Smyth brought before the Royal Society a new communication on the pyramids, the principal part of which consisted of a criticism upon the preceding observations, and a defence of his hypotheses regarding the Great Pyramid. His chief criticisms related to points already adverted to, and answered in footnotes, pp. 234, 248, etc. In addition, he expressed great dissatisfaction that the quotation from Sprenger, in Vyse's Work, quoted in footnote, p. 237, was not extended beyond the semicolon in the original, at which the quotation ends, and made to embrace the other or latter half of the sentence, viz., " ...; and that they appear to have repeated the traditions of the ancient Egyptians, mixed up with fabulous stories and incidents, certainly not of Mahometan invention."[276] But this latter half, or the traditions about the pyramid builders, Surid, Ben Shaluk, Ben Sermuni, etc., who lived "before the Flood," etc. etc., did assuredly not require to be quoted, as they had really nothing whatever to do with the object under discussion—viz., the opening of the sarcophagus under the Caliph Al Mamoon, and the accounts or history of the pyramids, as given by Arabian authors themselves.

In the course of this communication to the Royal Society, Professor Smyth did not allude to or rescind the erroneous table and calculations from Sir Isaac Newton regarding the Sacred Cubit, printed and commented upon in some of the preceding pages (see ante, p. 244, etc.) But, at the end of the subsequent discussion he handed round, as a printed "Appendix" to his three volume work, a total withdrawal of this table, etc., and in this way so far confessed the justice of the exposition of his errors on this all-vital and testing point in his theory of the Sacred Cubit, as given in p. 243, etc., of the present essay. He attributes his errors to "an unfortunate misprinting of the calculated numbers;" and (though he does not at all specialise what numbers were thus misprinted) he gives from Sir Isaac Newton's Dissertation on the Sacred Cubit a new and more lengthened table instead of the old and erroneous table. For this purpose, instead of selecting as he did, without any attempted explanation in his old table, only five of Sir Isaac Newton's estimations or "methods of approach," he now, in his new table, takes seven of them to strike out new "means." The simple "mean" of all the seven quantities tabulated—as calculated, in the way followed, in his first published table—is 25·47 British inches; and the "mean" of all the seven means in the Table is 25·49 British inches. Unfortunately for Professor Smyth's theory of the Sacred Cubit being 25·025 British inches, either of these numbers makes the Sacred Cubit nearly half a British inch longer than his avowed standard of length—an overwhelming difference in any question relating to a standard measure. What would any engineer, or simple worker in metal, wood, or stone, think of an alleged standard measure or cubit which varied so enormously from its own alleged length? But, surely, such facts and such results require no serious comment.

In this, his latest communication on the Pyramids, Professor Smyth also offered some new calculations regarding the measurements of the interior of the broken stone coffin standing in the King's Chamber. Formerly (1864), he elected the cubic capacity of this sarcophagus to be 70,900 "pyramidal" cubic inches; latterly he has elected it to be 71,250 cubic inches. According, however, to his own calculations, he found, practically, that it measured neither of these two numbers; but instead of them 71,317 pyramidal inches (see vol. iii. p. 154). The capacity of the interior of this coffin does not hence correspond at all to the supposititious standard of 71,250 pyramidal cubic inches; but in order to make it appear to do so he has now struck a "mean" between the measurement of the interior of the vessel and some of the measurements of its exterior, in a way that was not easily comprehensible in his demonstration. But what other hollow vessel in the world, and with unequal walls too (see p. 233), had the capacity of its interior ever before attempted to be altered and rectified by any measurements of the size of its exterior? What, for example, would be thought of the very strange proposition of ascertaining and determining the capacity of the interior of a pint, a gallon, a bushel, or any other such standard measure by measuring, not the capacity of the interior of the vessel, but by taking some kind of mean between that interior capacity and the size or sizes of the exterior of the vessel? According to Messrs. Taylor and Smyth, this standard measure—along with other supposed perfect metrological standards—in the Great Pyramid is "of an origin higher than human," or "divinely inspired;" and yet it has proved so incapable of being readily measured, and hence used as a standard, that hitherto it has been found impossible to make the actual capacity of this coffer to correspond to its standard theoretical or supposititious capacity; whilst even its standard theoretical capacity has been declared different by different observers, and even at different times by the same observer, as shown previously at p. 231.

VII.—METROLOGICAL TABLES AND TESTS OF THE EUROPEAN RACES. (See p. 238.)

Professor Smyth believes that among the nations of Europe the metrology used will be found closer and closer to the Hebrew and "Pyramid" standards, according to the amount of Ephraimitic blood in each nation. He further inclines to hold, with Mr. Wilson, that the Anglo-Saxons have no small share of this Israelitish blood, as shown in their language, and in their weights and measures, etc. After giving various Tables of the metrological standards of different European nations, Professor Smyth adds, "It is not a little striking to see all the Protestant countries standing first and closest to the Great Pyramid; then Russia, and her Greek, but freely Bible-reading church; then the Roman Catholic lands; then, after a long interval, and last but one on the list, France with its metrical system—voluntarily adopted, under an atheistical form of government, in place of an hereditary pound and ancient inch, which were not very far from those of the Great Pyramid; and last of all Mahommedan Turkey." Subsequently, when speaking of British standards of length, etc., Professor Smyth remarks,—"But let the island kingdom look well that it does not fall; for not only has the 25·344 inch length not yet travelled beyond the region of the Ordnance maps,—but the Government has been recently much urged by, and has partly yielded to, a few ill-advised but active men, who want these invaluable hereditary measures (preserved almost miraculously to this nation from primeval times, for apparently a Divine purpose) to be instantly abolished in toto,—and the recently atheistically-conceived measures of France to be adopted in their stead. In which case England would have to descend from her present noble pre-eminence in the metrological scale of nations, and occupy a place almost the very last in the list; or next to Turkey, and in company with some petty princedoms following France, and blessed with little history and less nationality. 'How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!' might be then, indeed, addressed to England with melancholy truth. Or more plainly (Professor Smyth adds), and in words seemingly almost intended for such a case, and uttered with depressing grief of heart, 'O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself!'" (Professor Smyth's Life and Work at the Great Pyramid, 1867, vol. iii. p. 598.)

In his previous work in 1864, Professor Smyth denounced also, in equally strong terms, the French decimal system of metrology, considering it as—to use his own words—"precisely one of the most hearty aids which Satan, and traitors to their country, ever had to their hands." (Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, p. 185, etc.)

END OF VOL. I.

Printed by R. & R. CLark, Edinburgh.