the authority of Sir John Herschel to substantiate his position.

As it is now known that the pyramid was closed absolutely immediately upon completion, Prof. Wackerbarth, of Upsal, takes up his fellow-professor thus:-"This hypothesis is liable to the objection that, the mouth of the passage being walled up, it is not easy to conceive how a star could be observed through it." But this is a fallacious argument; for it may be equally said that, as the coffer or sarcophagus and the King's Chamber were to be for ever shut off from gaze, they had no special meaning in their wonderful measurements. To the question, "What was the use of the passages?" one replies, "The answer is, no use at all, but there they are as a matter of fact; and it is no more improbable that the principal passage was designed with a view to recording its date by the Pole star than that an external shape should have been selected because it satisfied certain mathematical conditions, in themselves of still less use than the recording of a date."

Mr. Smyth has a perfect right to assume a date, and then establish arguments to support it. It was natural that he, as an astronomer, should seek an astronomical origin. But is his discovery of a Polar star then looking down that passage, and in conjunction with the movement of the Pleiades in the opposite side of the Pole on the meridian, any more than a happy coincidence? Because a Draconis was so situated in relation to the passage 2170 B.C., does it necessarily follow that that was the era of construction? Is there anything to prevent Mr. Smyth, or any other man, from selecting another date, earlier or later, which should suit the passing of another Polar star on the meridian? Could we not obtain as many ages as we could discover such astronomical coincidences?

As to the weight of Sir John Herschel's authority, it now appears that the worthy man is not responsible for the theory. The Rev. Dr. Nolan naïvely informs us that, "at the request of Colonel Vyse, Sir J. Herschel calculated the place of the star which was Polar at the time when, according to the reduced chronology, the pyramids were erected." That is, the date was assumed when an interesting heavenly coincidence fitted it. But against the assumed 2170 B.C. there is the weight of Egyptologists' arguments for a more extended period. As Mr. Smyth is an advocate for supposed Biblical chronology, he must surely find it difficult to account for so vast a progress in government, the arts, and material prosperity, during 178 years, the interval between the Deluge and the erection of the pyramid.

As Noah is stated to have lived 350 years after the Flood, he must have died 172 years after the building of the Great Pyramid, according to the professor and his school of thought. If it be said that men who lived so long added largely to the population, and that, in 180 years, millions could have proceeded from the loins of Noah, it is somewhat remarkable that Holy Scripture shall make Adam 130 at the birth of Seth, Methuselah 187 at the birth of Lamech, and give Noah but three sons in 500 years. Surely the disciples of Mr. Smyth have more reverence for Bible dates than to content themselves with so remote an age as 2170 B.C. While the Hebrew Text gives 352 years from the Deluge to Terah, the Vatican LXX. makes the time 1172 years. They who do not pledge themselves to Usher's chronology, for the Deluge or the Creation, find no difficulty in realising for the era of the Great Pyramid an additional two thousand years.

WHO BUILT THE GREAT PYRAMID?

THE Greeks, who were the talebearers of antiquity, are not always to be relied upon. Not content with telling what they were told, or giving an enlarged version of the same, they too often constructed a pretty story from their own fertile imaginations. The Arabs, as an oriental people, are too fanciful in their narratives. Sober-minded, matter-of-fact Englishmen are quite modern travellers and historians. The question of authorities, therefore, as to the authorship of the pyramid is a puzzling

one.

When men looked up at the stupendous building, so dwarfing the structures of their own age, it was quite natural that they should attribute its origin to the giants that lived before the Flood; or, at any rate, to the intellectual giants of that remote period.

An Arab tradition states that Gian ben Gian, the distinguished pre-Adamite Monarch of the World, reared it. Firouzabadi was assured that the Adamites very early procured its erection. The Rev. T. Gabb, in 1806, declared it "the production of those immediate descendants of Seth and the Faithful who adhered to them." He meets one supposed difficulty thus :-"Surely," says he, "the immediate descendants of Seth and Enos were of larger stature than we are." In that way he saw how they could lift stones which other men must needs lift "by jacks." The very sands at its base made the good man exclaim, "This pyramid must have been erected by the Antediluvians; and the universal Deluge, called Noah's Flood, and the description of it in Holy Writ, will account, in a satisfactory manner, for the

lodgment of sands on the surface of the extensive rock." He adds, "These sands, on the subsiding of the waters, were probably very near the summit of the pyramid."

Josephus rehearses the tradition of the Shemites going to Siriad, or Egypt, and erecting there two monuments, one of brick and one of stone, on which they inscribed astronomical discoveries; and one of these must, it is said, be the pyramid. Mr. John Taylor, the celebrated writer on "The Great Pyramid, Who built it? and Why was it built?" says, "To Noah we must ascribe the original idea, the presiding mind, and the benevolent purpose. He who built the ark was of all men the most competent to direct the building of the Great Pyramid."

But honest John Greaves, who visited Egypt in 1637, gathering fable and fact in his travels, gives this excellent story from an Arabic book, which he translated :

"The writer of the book, entitled Morat Alzeman, writes: 'They differ concerning him that built the pyramids. Some say Joseph, some say Nimrod, some Dalukah the queen, and some that the Egyptians built them before the Floud, for they foresaw that it would be, and they carried thither their treasures, but it profited them nothing. In another place he tels us from the Coptites (or Egyptians) that these two greater pyramids, and the lesser, which is coloured, are Sepulchers. In the East pyramid is King Suurid, in the West pyramid his brother Hougib, and in the coloured pyramid Fazfarinoun, the sonne of Hougib. The Sabæans relate that one of them is the sepulcher of Shiit (that is, Seth), and the second sepulcher of Sab, the sonne of Hermes, from whom they are called Sabaans. They goe in pilgrimage thither, and sacrifice at them a cocke and a black calfe, and offer up incense.'

"Ibn Abd Alkokm, another Arabian, discoursing of this Argument, confesses that he could not find amongst the learned men in Ægypt, any certaine relation concerning them. Wherefore what is more reasonable (saith he) then that the pyramids were built before the Floud? For if they had been built after, there would have been some memory of them amongst men; at last he concludes, The greatest part of chronologers affirmed that he which built the pyramids was Saurid ibn Salhouk, the King of Egypt, who was before the Floud 300 yeares. And this opinion he confirmes out of the books of the Egyptians; To which he addes, The Coptites mention in their books, that upon them is an inscription ingraven; the exposition of it in Arabicke is this: I Saurid, the king, built the Pyramids in such and such a time, and finished them in six yeares; he that comes after me, and sayes he is equall to me, let him destroy them in six hundred yeares; and yet it is knowne that it is easier to plucke doum then to build; and when I had finished them, I covered them with Sattin, and let him cover them with slats.' The same relation I found in severall others of them."

Josephus, full of the glorification of his people, and having the average oriental disregard of strict veracity, and nearly the average oriental power of constructive invention, inclines to the erection by his forefathers. "The Egyptians," he says, "inhumanly treated the Israelites, and wore them down in various labours, for they ordered them to divert the course of the river (Nile) into many ditches, and to build walls, and raise mounds, by which to confine the inundations of the river; and, moreover, vexed our nation in constructing foolish pyramids." Mr. Yeates suspects they had nothing to do at Gizeh, but may have made brick ones elsewhere. Norden, the Danish traveller, in 1737, has simi