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XXIX.—A Notice of Recent Measures at the Great Pyramid, and some Deductions flowing therefrom
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 January 2013
Extract
Mr President and Gentlemen,—I beg to thank you for the favourable opportunity which you have kindly afforded, and the facilities you have granted, for enabling me now to try to lay before you some short and simple account of my chief employments last winter at the Great Pyramid of Jeezeh.
My object in going there, was not to excavate, nor to collect antiquities, but merely to inquire instrumentally, and by my own individual labour, into the very discrepant, and sometimes mutually contradictory, accounts which have been published of the form and detail of that ancient monument by writers of almost all nations; and as one chief source of their unfortunate variations seems to have been the usually short and hurried character of their visits, my first care was to apply for leave, from His Highness the Viceroy of Egypt, to occupy the ground at the Pyramid with a permanent establishment, and to stay there as long as might be necessary for the work in hand. His Highness, as I am extremely happy to confess, and with the best of my thanks to acknowledge, was most liberal in his condescensions; conveyed our party, at his own expense to the Pyramids; lent us tents for the period of our stay; and sent a force of twenty men for a month to clean out the interior of the Great Pyramid, or otherwise prepare its more than classic walls for the examination to be made, and which lasted from that time uninterruptedly for a period of four months.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , 1866 , pp. 385 - 406
- Copyright
- Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1866
References
page 385 note * ERRATA.
Page 394, line 2, for measure, read measures.
Page 395, last line, for This last important elemcnt, read This important density element.
Page 397, line 26, for it is, read such pound is.
Page 400, line 15, for in ten, read in terms of ten.
page 401, line 4 ab imo, for been marked, read been passage-marked.
page 402, line 11, after the Pleiades, insert or their lucida n Tauri,.
page 402, line 22, after than, insert, but equally primeval with,.
page 396 note * As an illustration of the necessity of the present remeasurement, the following contradictory accounts by modern travellers, of the wall-courses of this room, the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid, may be cited:—
George Sandys, A.D. 1610.—“Eight stones flagge the ends, and sixteen the sides.”
Professor Greaves, A.D. 1639.—“From the top of it descending to the bottom, there are but “six ranges of stone, all of which, being respectively sized to an equal height, very gracefully in one “and the same altitude run round the room.”
Lord Egmont, A.D. 1709.—“The walls were composed of five ranges of stone.”
Dr Shaw, A.D. 1721.—“Height (of five equal stones) = 16 feet.”
Dr Pococke, A.D. 1743.—“Six tiers of stones, of equal breadth, compose the sides.”
M. Fourmont, A.D. 1755.—“The walls were composed of six equal ranges.”
Dr Clark, A.D. 1801.—“There are only six ranges of stone from the floor to the roof.”
Dr Richardson, A.D. 1817.—“Lined all round with broad flat stones of large red grained “granite, smooth, highly polished, each stone ascending from the floor to the ceiling.”
Lord Lindsay, A.D. 1838.—“A noble apartment, cased with enormous slabs of granite twenty “feet high.”
W. R. Wilde, M.R.I.A., A.D. 1838.—“An oblong apartment, the sides of which are formed of “enormous blocks of granite reaching from the floor to the ceiling.”
Mr E. W. Lane and Mrs Poole, A.D. 1843.—“Number of courses in walls of King's “Chamber, six.”
Sir Robert Ainslie, in 1804, copied by J. Taylor in 1859.—An engraving, showing six courses between floor and ceiling.
page 403 note * “New Materials for the History of Man, derived from a Comparison of the Calendars and Festivals of Nations,” by Haliburton, R. G., F.S.A., Halifax, Nova Scotia. 1863. Printed privately.Google Scholar