Archaeological Essays Part 17

... "those deputed to inter the slain, Heap with a rising _pyramid_ the plain."

Professor Daniel Wilson, in alluding, in his _Prehistoric Annals_, vol.

i. p. 74, to this account by Homer of the ancient funeral-rites, and raising of the funeral-mound, speaks of the erection of Patroclus'

barrow as "the methodic construction of the Pyramid of earth which covered the sacred deposit and preserved the memory of the honoured dead."]

[Footnote 235: Colonel Pownall, while describing in 1770 the barrow of New Grange, in Ireland, to the London Society of Antiquaries, speaks of it as "a pyramid of stone." "This pyramid," he observes, "was encircled at its base with a number of enormous unhewn stones," etc. "The pyramid, in its present state, is but a ruin of what it was," etc. etc. See _Archaeologia_, vol. vi. p. 254; and Higgins' _Celtic Druids_, p. 40, etc.]

[Footnote 236: In his _Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_, Dr. Daniel Wilson states (vol. i. p. 87), that "the Chambered Cairn properly possesses as its peculiar characteristic the enclosed catacombs and galleries of megalithic masonry, branching off into various chambers symmetrically arranged, and frequently exhibiting traces of constructive skill, such as realise in some degree the idea of the regular pyramid."

He speaks again of the stone barrows or cairns of Scotland as "monumental pyramids" (vol. i. p. 67); of the earth barrow being an "earth pyramid or tumulus" (p. 70); of Silbury Hill as an "earth pyramid" (p. 62): and in the same page, in alluding to the large barrow-tomb of the ancient British chief or warrior, he states, "in its later circular forms we see the rude type of the great pyramids of Egypt." The same learned author, in his work on _Prehistoric Man_, refers to the great monuments of the American mound-builders as "earth pyramids" (p. 202), "huge earth pyramids" (p. 205), "pyramidal earth-works" (p. 203); etc.]

[Footnote 237: In his _History of Scotland_, Mr. Burton speaks of the barrows of New Grange and Maeshowe (Orkney), as erections which "may justly be called minor pyramids" (vol. i. p. 114).]

[Footnote 238: In mentioning the great numbers of sepulchral barrows spread over the world, Sir John Lubbock observes--"In our own island they may be seen on almost every down; in the Orkneys alone it is estimated that two thousand still remain; and in Denmark they are even more abundant; they are found all over Europe from the sh.o.r.es of the Atlantic to the Oural Mountains; in Asia they are scattered over the great steppes from the borders of Russia to the Pacific Ocean, and from the plains of Siberia to those of Hindostan; in America we are told that they are numbered by thousands and tens of thousands; nor are they wanting in Africa, where the pyramids themselves exhibit the most magnificent development of the same idea; so that the whole world is studded with these burial-places of the dead."--_Prehistoric Times_, p.

85. See similar remarks in Dr. Clarke's _Travels_, 4th edition, vol. i.

p. 276, vol. ii. p. 75, etc.]

[Footnote 239: Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson thinks that the pyramids of Sakkara are probably older than the other groups of these structures, as those of Gizeh or the Great Pyramid erected during the fourth dynasty of kings.--See Rawlinson's _Herodotus_, vol. ii. chap. viii. Manetho a.s.signs to Uenophes, one of the monarchs in the first dynasty, the erection of the Pyramids of Cochome. See Kenrick's _Ancient Egypt_, ii.

p. 112, 122, 123; Bunsen's _Egypt_, ii. 99, etc.]

[Footnote 240: On these Archaic forms of sculpture, see APPENDIX, No.

II. In many barrows the gallery in its course--and in some as it enters the crypt--is contracted, and more or less occluded by obstructions of stone, etc., which Mr. Kenrick likens to the granite portcullises in the Great Pyramid. See his _Ancient Egypt_, vol. i. p. 121.]

[Footnote 241: Mr. Birch, however--and it is impossible to cite a higher authority in such a question--holds the cartouches of Shufu and Nu Shufu to refer only to one personage--namely, the Cheops of Herodotus; and, believing with Mr. Wilde and Professor Lepsius, that the pyramids were as royal sepulchres built and methodically extended and enlarged as the reigns of their intended occupants lengthened out, he ascribes the unusual size of the Great Pyramid to the unusual length--as testified by Manetho, etc.--of the reign of Cheops; the erection of a sepulchral chamber in its built portion above being, perhaps, a step adopted in consequence of some ascertained deficiency in the rock chamber or gallery below. Indeed, the subterranean chamber under the Great Pyramid has, to use Professor Smyth's words, only been "begun to be cut out of the rock from the ceiling downwards, and left in that _unfinished_ state." (Vol. i. 156.) Mr. Perring, who--as engineer--measured, worked, and excavated so very much at the Pyramids of Gizeh, under Colonel Howard Vyse, held, at the end of his researches, that "the princ.i.p.al chamber" in the Second Pyramid is still undetected. See Vyse's _Pyramid of Gizeh_, vol. i. 99.]

[Footnote 242: The Mexican Pyramid of Cholula has a base of more than 1420 feet, and is hence about twice the length of the basis of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh. See Prescott's _Conquest of Mexico_, book iii. chap.

i., and book v. chap. iv.]

[Footnote 243: Herodotus states that the Egyptians detested the memories of the kings who built the two larger Pyramids, viz., Cheops and Cephren; and hence, he adds, "they commonly call the Pyramids after Philition, a shepherd, who at that time fed his flocks about the place."

They thus called the Second, as well as the Great Pyramid, after him (iii. - 128); but, according to Professor Smyth, the Second Pyramid, though architecturally similar to the first, and almost equal in size, has nothing about it of the "superhuman" character of the Great Pyramid.]

[Footnote 244: The extracts within inverted commas, here, and in other parts, are from--(1.) Mr. John Taylor's work, ent.i.tled _The Great Pyramid--Why was it Built, and Who Built it?_ London, 1859; and (2.) Professor Smyth's work, _Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid_, Edinburgh, 1864; (3.) his later three-volume work, _Life and Work at the Great Pyramid_, Edinburgh, 1867; and (4.) _Recent Measures at the Great Pyramid_, in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for 1865-66.]

[Footnote 245: Professor Smyth has omitted to state--what, after all, it was perhaps unnecessary to state--that one set of these measurements, which he has tabulated and published, viz., that given by Dr. Whitman, was taken for him "by a British officer of engineers;" as, when Dr.

Whitman visited Gizeh, he did not himself examine the interior of the Great Pyramid.--See Colonel Vyse's work, vol. ii. p. 286.]

[Footnote 246: "Its contents," says Mr. Taylor (p. 299), "are equal in cubic inches to the cube of 41,472 inches--the cubit of Karnak--viz., to 71,328 cubic inches." Elsewhere (p. 304) he states--"The Pyramid coffer contains 256 gallons of wheat;"--"It also contains 256 gallons of water, etc."]

[Footnote 247: At a later meeting of the Royal Society, on 20th April, Professor Smyth explained that, among the numerous instruments he carried out, he was not provided with calipers fit for this measurement.]

[Footnote 248: See plate iii. Fig. 1, in his great folio work on the _Pyramids of Gizeh from Actual Survey and Admeasurement_, Lond. 1839.

"The sarcophagus is," he remarks, "of granite, not particularly well polished; at present it is chipped and broken at the edges. There are not any remains of the lid, _which was however_, fitted on in the same manner as those of the other pyramids."]

[Footnote 249: "The western side," observes Professor Smyth, "of the coffer is, through almost its entire length, rather lower than the other three, and these have _grooves_ inside, or the remains of grooves once cut into them, about an inch or two below their summits, and on a level with the western edge; _in fact_, to _admit a sliding sarcophagus cover or lid_; and there were the remains of three fixing pin-holes on the western side, for fastening such cover into its place." (Vol. i. p.

85.)]

[Footnote 250: For age, etc., of Al Hakm, see Dr. Rieu in APPENDIX No.

III.; and Jomard on length of the Sarcophagus, No. IV.]

[Footnote 251: In the original Arabic, the expression is "birdlike (or hieroglyphic) characters writ with a reed."]

[Footnote 252: See Greaves' _Works_, vol. i. p. 61 and p. 115. In Colonel Vyse's works are adduced other Arabian authors who allude to this discovery of a body with golden armour, etc., etc., in the sarcophagus of the King's Chamber; as Alkaisi, who testifies that "he himself saw the case (the cartonage or mummy-case) from which the body had been taken, and that it stood at the door of the King's Palace at Cairo, in the year 511" A.H. (See _The Pyramids of Gizeh_, vol. ii. p.

334). See also to the same effect _Abon Szalt_, p. 357; and Ben Abd Al Rahman, as cited in the _Description de l'Egypte_, vol. ii. p. 191. "It may be remarked," observes Dr. Sprenger in Colonel Vyse's work, "that the Arabian authors have given the same accounts of the pyramids, with little or no variation, for above a thousand years." (Vol. ii. p. 328.) See further APPENDIX, p. 270.]

[Footnote 253: See APPENDIX, No. VII.]

[Footnote 254: Our great Scottish architect, Mr. Bryce, believes that, with these data given, any well-informed master-mason or clerk of works could have drawn or planned and superintended the building.]

[Footnote 255: See Newton's _Essay_, in Professor Smyth's work, vol. ii.

360; and Sir Henry James' masterly _Memorandum on the Length of the cubit of Memphis_, in APPENDIX, No. V.]

[Footnote 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 3438 = 20 cubits of 20628 inches.]

[Footnote 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."]

[Footnote 258: G.o.dfrey Higgins, in his work on _The Celtic Druids_, shows how, among the ancients, superst.i.tions 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 superst.i.tious 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."]

[Footnote 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 0967 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 a.s.suredly _not_ their lengths in English inches as understood and laid down by Newton himself.]

[Footnote 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 2568 inches of Roman measurement. Professor Smyth changes this Roman measurement into 2491 English inches, and then erroneously enters these same identical Roman and English measurements of Mersennus--viz., 2491 and 2568--not as _one_ identical quant.i.ty, which they are--but as _two_ different and contrasting quant.i.ties; 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.]

[Footnote 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 unciae 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 unciae, and the Sacred Cubit of 25-3/5 unciae, of the Roman foot." In other words, according to Sir Isaac Newton, the Sacred Cubit of 2560 inches of the Roman foot is equal to 2475 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 2482 instead of 2475 British inches. In doing so, he has calculated the English foot as equal to 970 of the Roman foot; but was he ent.i.tled 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 2482, instead of 2475 British inches.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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]

[Footnote 264: _Traite de la Grandeur et de la Figure de la Terre._ Amsterdam edition (1723), p. 195.]

[Footnote 265: _Tables Portatives de Logarithmes._ Paris, 1795, p. 100.]

[Footnote 266: The same idea of using the earth's axis as a standard of length has been suggested also by Professor Hennessy of Dublin, and by Sir John Herschel. See _Athenaeum_ for April 1860, pp. 581 and 617.]

[Footnote 267: The diameter of the earth in lat.i.tude 30 is really about 20 miles longer than the polar axis. But Mr. Taylor obviously did not know the nature of the spheroidal arcs of the meridian, and so falls into the most inconsistent a.s.sertions respecting the length of this particular diameter. Thus, in pp. 75 and 87, he a.s.serts the diameter in lat.i.tude 30 to be 500,000,000 inches [that is = 7891414 miles], which is 7756 miles _less_ than the polar axis--_the least_ diameter of all; whereas, in p. 95, he states this diameter in lat. 30 to be 17652 miles _greater_ than the polar axis.]

[Footnote 268: "The diameter of the earth, according to the measures taken at the Pyramids, is 41,666,667 English feet, or 500,000,000 inches." (See _The Great Pyramid_, p. 75.) "Dividing this number by 20,000,000 we obtain the measure of 25 (English) inches for the Sacred Cubit" (p. 67).]

[Footnote 269: "When" (says Mr. Taylor, p. 91) "the _new_ Earth was measured in Egypt after the Deluge, it was found that it exceeded the diameter of the _old_ Earth by the difference between 497,664,000 inches and 500,000,000 inches; that is, by 2,336,000 inches, equal to 36868 miles."]

[Footnote 270: _Alleged Sacred Character of the Scottish Yard or Ell Measure._--Professor Smyth tries to show (iii. 597), that if Britain stands too low in his metrological testing of the European kingdoms and races, its "low entry is due to accepting the yard for the country's popular measure of length." But long ago the "divine" origin of the Scottish ell--as in recent times the divine origin of the so-called pyramidal cubit and inch--was pleaded rather strenuously. For when, in the 13th century, Edward I. of England laid before Pope Boniface his reasons for attaching the kingdom of Scotland to the Crown of England, he maintained, among other arguments, the justice and legality of this appropriation on the ground that his predecessor King Athelstane, after subduing a rebellion in Scotland under the auspices of St. John of Beverley, prayed that through the intervention of that saint, it "might be granted to him to receive a visible and tangible token by which all future ages might be a.s.sured that the Scots were rightfully subject to the King of England. His prayer was granted in this way: Standing in front of one of the rocks at Dunbar, he made a cut at it with his sword, and left a score which proved to be the _precise_ length of an ell, and was adopted as the regulation test of that measure of length." This legend of the "miraculously created ellwand standard" was afterwards duly attested by a weekly service in the Church of St. John of Beverley.

(See Burton's _History of Scotland_, ii. 319.) In the official account of the miracle, as cited by Rymer, it is declared that during its performance the rock cut like b.u.t.ter or soft mud under the stroke of Athelstane's sword. "Extrahens gladium de v.a.g.i.n.a percussit in cilicem, quae adeo penetrabilis, Dei virtute agente, fuit gladio, quasi eadem hora lapis butirum esset, vel mollis glarea; ... et usque ad presentem diem, evidens signum patet, quod Scoti, ab Anglis devicti ac subjugata; monumento tali evidenter cunctis adeuntibus demonstrante." (Foedera, tom. i. pars ii. 771.)]

[Footnote 271: Elsewhere (p. 45) Mr. Taylor corroborates Sir Isaac Newton's opinion that the _working_ cubit by which the Pyramid was built was the cubit of Memphis.]

[Footnote 272: The interior of any Scottish cottage, where the inside of the thatched or slated roof is left exposed by uncovered joists within, contains, on the same principle, six sides, and a seventh or the floor.]

[Footnote 273: "The _clue_ was not prepared for any immediate successors of the builders, but was intended, on the contrary, to endure to a most remote period. And it has so endured and served such a purpose even down to those our own days." (Professor Smyth's _Life and Work at the Great Pyramid_, vol. i. p. 157.) "The builders, or planners rather, of the Great Pyramid, did not leave their building without sure testimony to its chief secret; for there, before the eyes of all men for ages, had existed these _two diagonal joints_ in the pa.s.sage floor, pointing directly and constantly to what was concealed in the roof just opposite them, and no one ever thought of it. Practically, then, we may say with full certainty that these two floor marks were left there to guide _men_ who, it was expected, would come subsequently, earnestly desiring, on rightly-informed principles, to look for the entrance to the upper parts of the Pyramid." (Vol. i. p. 156-7.) At p. 270 Professor Smyth again alludes to this supposed mark, made up by two diagonal joints in the pa.s.sage floor, as evading the notice of all visitors, except "those very few, or perhaps even that _one only man_, who had been previously instructed to look for a certain almost microscopic mark on the floor."]