Mr. Wild, C. E., nearly thirty years ago, had a pretty calculation of his own to prove the Great Pyramid a true chronometer, or time-measurer, and a dial in a higher sense than Plato meant when he applied that title to it.

As is well known, the entrance passage is not in the centre of the north side of the pyramid. Mr. Wild, who makes use of a cubit-the Memphis one-quite different to that employed by Prof. Smyth, assumes the eastern side from the entrance to be 210 cubits, and the western 238. The difference, 28 cubits, he discovers to be the exact distance, 0.4758", indicated by Maedler as the annual diminution of the obliquity of the ecliptic.

As the entrance is 14 cubits eastward of the middle of the north face, he finds that "during the half of the year in which the sun lights the northern side of the pyramid (intended as a chronometer) the tropic retrogrades 14 cubits; that is, exactly the same distance as the entrance of the Great Pyramid is removed eastward from the middle of the northern face."

More singular, "In 210 years the tropic retrogades 100", exactly in the same number of years as the eastern portion of the base contains cubits." That is, taking Maedler's rate of 0.4758" for the year. "Then," says he, "in 500 years the tropic retrogrades 238"; that is, as many seconds as the western portion contains cubits."

Again,-" According to the above-mentioned operations, the proportion between the base and height of the pyramid is as 16 to 10. The tropic retrogrades in sixteen years the full length of the base, and in ten years the full height of the Great Pyramid; for the length of the base is 16 × 28 = 448 cubits, and the height is 10 × 28 280 cubits."

=

It is an equally remarkable coincidence that 25,000 times the annual diminution of 0.4758", or 3° 18′ 15′′, if added to what he recognises as the inclination of the entrance passage, 26° 41′, would give the latitude of the pyramid, 29° 59′ 15′′. The difference between the inclination of 26° 41' and that of the Ascending Passage, 26° 18', is 23'. This amount represents 2900 years obliquity, or nearly one-ninth of the cycle of precession.

This very convenient pyramid gives astronomical results of as striking and as perfect a character for Mr. Wild with 20 inch cubits as for Prof. Smyth with 25 inch ones.

26. CONNECTION WITH SIRIUS, THE DOG-STAR. Several writers, including Arabian philosophers, have fancied some "mystic correlation," to use the words of M. Dufeu, "between the design and age of the pyramid and the revolutions of Sirius, the judge-god of the dead."

at.

In the present work the religious question can but be glanced Sirius was known as Sothis by the Egyptians, whence the so-called Sothic year, or revolution of 1460 years. Hermes, god of wisdom, says Champollion, was Sirius, or Sothis. Hermes is Thoth, or Anubis, the deity presiding over the dead, and yet being the originator of learning. Popular tradition among the Arabs, revived among certain mystical Christian writers of our own day, indicates Seth as the builder of the pyramid. Seth, in this case, is probably Sothis, or Sirius.

No star was so venerated in Egypt as Sirius, associated, as it was, with the time of the annual overflow of the Nile, which the rising of the star foreshadowed. The hieroglyphic for Sirius is, oddly enough, the triangular face of a pyramid. Dufeu and

others suppose that the pyramid may have been dedicated to this venerated star or period. Proclus relates the belief in Alexandria that the pyramid was used for observations of Sirius.

Murtadi, 1584, says that the magical priest Saiouph made his abode, at the time of the Deluge, in the pyramid; "which," says he, " was a temple of the stars, where there was a figure of the sun, and one of the moon, both of which spoke." He mentions the great grandson of Noah, Bardesi, who, as priest, "applied himself to the worship of the stars." He adds, "It is reported that he made the great laws, built the pyramids, and set up for idols the figures of the stars."

M. Dufeu finds the total height from the soil of the syringe to the roof to be 2920 noctas, or twice the Sothic period of 1460 years. "We consider that," says he, "a proof that the Great Pyramid had been dedicated to this memorable Sothic period, or rather to Sothis, the star justly venerated in Egypt. One sees by that that the hypogeum takes its point of departure from the beginning of the revolution of Sothis anterior to the sixty years before the coming of Menes, the same as Manetho takes his point of departure from the initial point of that same revolution of Sothis, in attributing to Cerpheres a Sothic height of 839 years, or chronological noctas, at the moment when he founded the subterranean construction of the Great Pyramid."

Having come to the close of the interesting lessons of an astronomical kind, communicated by the Great Pyramid, we discover that the measurements are assumed to have some direct and important relation to religious subjects. Reference will

therefore be made to some of these ideas.

27. THE UNITY OF GOD.

Prof. Smyth, in Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, thus writes: "The Great Pyramid, a pre-historic and entirely preMosaic monument, had remained sealed in all its more important divisions, from the date of its foundation up to an advanced period of the Christian dispensation; and was then found, on being opened and examined, entirely free from that accursed thing which formed the leprosy of the East in ancient daysidolatry."

No hieroglyphics occur on the sarcophagus. This fact he declares to be "that astonishing isolation, not only from other pyramids, but from everything of Egyptian intentions, such as now appears to be, and to have been from the beginning, the attribute of the pyramids."

He contrasts it thus with the Sphinx; "That monster, an idol in itself, with a wig and painted cheeks, and symptoms typifying the lowest mental organisation, positively reeks with idolatry throughout its substance; for, when the fragments, or component masses, of its colossal stone beard were discovered in the sandexcavation of 1817, it was perceived that all its internally joining surfaces of the blocks had been figured, full of the 'impure' Egyptian gods."

It is unfortunate for the professor's theory that “impure hieroglyphics were found in the pyramid, even the quarry marks of the two kings; and these, as in all cartouches of kings, are idolatrous emblems-the serpent and birds of Egyptian worship. In a subsequent work it will be shown that gods, and not the God, were the objects of adoration, even before the age of the pyramid.

28. DIVINE ORIGINATION OF MEASURE.

The assumption of some writers is, that a correct standard being of inestimable value, and it being faithfully exhibited by the pyramid, none could have originated such a scheme of weights and measures therein but Deity Himself.

There has been a time in the history of every race when nothing could occur beyond the comprehension of ignorance that was not attributed to the direct interposition of local divinities. In every language, perhaps, thunder is God's voice. An aerolite, or a lightning flash, was sent direct from the hand of the thunderer.

It was natural for the rude peasant Egyptians in the days of the pyramid to believe that their god Thoth had revealed a system of measures, a mode of building, or a style of writing, to their priests, but it is hardly according to modern habits of thought to see a necessity for Divine inspiration in such matters. Can there be more occasion for the Edinburgh professor to bring down the Deity for the regulation of the size of the sarcophagus in the pyramid, than for the President of the Royal Academy to require special inspiration from Jehovah for the earliest known, and yet most beautifully chiselled, sculpture of a prepyramid age?

It is the architect Fergusson who says, "It has been even asserted that God revealed to Cheops a variety of interesting astronomical information, and commanded him to build these facts into the Great Pyramid in British inches."

There is no mistake in the language of the advocates of inspiration. Prof. Piazzi Smyth says, "That metrology at large was a subject not beneath the dignity of Divine attention in the