Archaeological Essays Part 19

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, 2507 inches, when, as I have shown in his own words, Sir Isaac says it was 24754 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 princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.suredly 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 quant.i.ties tabulated--as calculated, in the way followed, in his first published table--is 2547 British inches; and the "mean" of all the seven means in the Table is 2549 British inches.

Unfortunately for Professor Smyth's theory of the Sacred Cubit being 25025 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 supposit.i.tious 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 supposit.i.tious 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 25344 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 n.o.ble 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.)

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 274: Sh.e.l.ley himself is now interred in the same cemetery, near the pyramid of Cestius, and a little above the grave of Keats.]

[Footnote 275: In vol. i. p. 365, this "raised ornament" is described as "a very curious, and, for the Pyramid, perfectly unique adornment, of a semicircular form, raised about one inch above the general surface, and bevelled off on either side and above," etc.]

[Footnote 276: The whole sentence runs thus, and is punctuated thus:--"It may be remarked that the Arabian authors have given the same accounts of the pyramids with little or no variation, for above a thousand years; 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." Vol. iii. p. 328.]

END OF VOL. I.