What was the object of constructing those massive and expensive piles of masonry know us the Pyramids of Egypt? Especially what was the use of the largest one Its unfitness for a royal tomb, or fora place of worship, has suggested the question when ther it had a secular wse, the preservation of important records, or important. standards of weight and measure, The recent in vestigation of C. P. Smith, astronomer royal for Scotlind, give considerable weight to the last mentioned suggestion. He determined to measure with nccurey the di-mansions of the Great Pyramid. To secure inaccurate standard of measure, he obtained piece of onk that had seasoned for four hundred years in the organ loft of a Cathedral.
In one of the upper chambers of the Great Pyramid, he found w vessel constructed of the hardest stone, Its interior shape was that of a perfect cube, and one end of the cube, when measured, proved to be one ten-muillionth part of the axis of the earth, from the north to the south pole. One half of this length, the ten-miillionth part of the earth's semials (equal to about twenty-five English inches) appeared, on subsequent investigation, to be the cubit or the standard of length used in the construction of the. Pyramid; and probably the national standait of length in Egypt." It is well known that the Freich have similar standard of length, namely the ten-millionth part of the earth's quadrant (as measured at Paris)
ud called the metre. The weight of a cube of water on the metre is the standard of weight, and the vessel which this water will fill is the standard: of capacity of France, The investigations of Smith suggest that a similar system of weight and measure is preserved in. this Great Pyramid. We have described the cubit, the apparent. standard of length. The cubical vessel found in the. upper chamber, ity is the cube of the double-cubit, appears to have been the ard for measures of capacity; and the weight of the quantity of water, at the temperature of sixty degrees Fahrenhei contained in it, seems to have been ti Egyptian standard of weight, Adopting this cubit as the standard of length, he measured the side of the Py. ramid, and found it three hundred an sixty-five cubits and a quarter in len thus corresponding to the number of days in a year. The second chamber of the sides, apparently alluding to the length of Pyramid has an entrance compose of seven the eck The third. ckataber: sees furnish an era, by which to fix the date of events: an ra definitely known and fixed. For in this chamber there is a built of stone most exquisitely polished and fit-tod together, and with a very curious angle of elevation. About twenty two hundred years before the Christian era, this passage Pointed to the North star, at the same moment that a line passing from it through the apex of the Pyramid pointed to that highly esteemed constellation, the Pleiades. Tt almost scorns as if man had availed himself of the heavens as his clock.
The meoing of the word Pyramid (as derived from the Coptic) is "division by tens." If this derivation is the correct one, it would certainly favor the theory suggested. Two coincidences in modern measures have been adduced as consistent with this
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