Part 18

If of this Divine origin, the work should be absolutely perfect; but, as owned by Professor Smyth, the structure is not entirely correct in its orientation, in its squareness, etc. etc.--all of them matters proving that it is human, and not superhuman. It was, Professor Smyth further alleges, intended to convey standards of measures to all times down to, and perhaps beyond, these latter days, "to herald in some of those accompaniments of the promised millennial peace and goodwill to all men." Hence, if thus miraculous in its forseen uses, it ought to have remained relatively perfect till now. But "what feature of the pyramid is there" (asks Professor Smyth) "which renders at once in its measurements in the present day its ancient proportions? None." If the pyramid were a miracle of this kind, then the Arabian Caliph Al Mamoon so far upset the supposititious miracle a thousand years ago--(of course he could not have done so provided the miracle had been truly Divine)--when he broke into the King's Chamber and unveiled its contents; inasmuch as the builders, according to Professor Smyth, intended to conceal its secrets for the benefit of these latter times, and for this purpose had left a mathematical sign of two somewhat diagonal lines or joints in the floor of the descending passage, by which secret sign or clue some men or man in the far distant future, visiting the interior, should detect the entrance to the chambers; and which secret sign Professor Smyth himself was, as he believes, the first "man" to discover two years ago. The secret, however, thus averred to be placed there for the detection of the entrance to the interior chambers in these latter times, has been discovered some 1000 years at least too late for the evolution of the alleged miraculous arrangement. And in relation to the Great Pyramid, as to other matters, we may be sure that God does not teach by the medium of miracle anything that the unaided intellect of man can find out; and we must beware of erroneously and disparagingly attributing to Divine inspiration and aid, things that are imperfect and human.

* * * * *

The communication concluded by a series of remarks, in which it was pointed out that at the time at which the Great Pyramid was built, probably about 4000 years ago, mining, architecture, astronomy, etc., were so advanced in various parts of the East as to present no obstacle in the way of the erection of such magnificent mausoleums, as the colossal Great Pyramid and its other congener pyramids undoubtedly are.

FOOTNOTES:

... "those deputed to inter the slain, Heap with a rising pyramid the plain."

Professor Daniel Wilson, in alluding, in his Prehistoric Annals, vol. i. p. 74, to this account by Homer of the ancient funeral-rites, and raising of the funeral-mound, speaks of the erection of Patroclus' barrow as "the methodic construction of the Pyramid of earth which covered the sacred deposit and preserved the memory of the honoured dead."]

APPENDIX.

I.--DERIVATION OF THE TERM PYRAMID. (Page 219.)

Professor Smyth suggests the origin of the term Pyramid from the two Coptic words, "pyr," "division," and "met," "ten." This derivation, which he first heard of in Cairo, is, he believes, a significant appellation for a metrological monument such as the Great Pyramid, and coincides with its five-sided, five-cornered, etc., features (see anteriorly, p. 255) and decimal divisions. But surely a name, which in this metrological and arithmetical view of "powers and times of ten and five," meant division into ten, and which divisional metrological ideas applied, according to Professor Smyth, to one pyramid only, namely the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, was not likely to have been applied as a general term to all the other pyramidal structures in Egypt--not one of which had, according to Professor Smyth himself, anything whatsoever of this metrological or divisional character in their composition and object. It is not likely that all these structures should have been named from a series of qualities supposed to belong to one; but altogether hidden and concealed, in these early times, even in that one pyramid, being for the information of future times and generations.

In a similar spirit of exclusiveness, Mr. John Taylor derives the word pyramid from the two Greek words [Greek: pyros], wheat, and [Greek: metron], measure--apparently in the belief that the coffer or sarcophagus within one pyramid (the Great Pyramid) was intended as a chaldron measure of wheat--though none of the sarcophagi, in any of the many other royal pyramidal sepulchres of Egypt, were at all intended for such standard measures; and although, according to Mr. Taylor's theory, the Greeks, too, who out of their own language applied the term of Pyramid, or Wheat-Measurer, to all these structures,--never dreamed of the Great Pyramid or of any other of them having locked up in one of its concealed chambers a supposed standard measure of capacity of wheat, water, etc., for all nations and all times.

Fifteen centuries ago, Ammianus Marcellinus derived the word pyramid from another Greek word [Greek: pyr], fire; because, as he argues, the Egyptian Pyramid rises to a sharp pointed top, like to the form of a fire or flame. This derivation, which, of course, excludes the mathematical idea of the sides of the pyramid being a series of flattened triangles that meet in a point at the apex, has been adopted by various authors.

Keats, the poor surgeon, but rich poet, who died at Rome at the early age of twenty-six, was buried in the beautiful Protestant Cemetery there, amid the ruins of the Aurelian Walls. His grave is surmounted by a pyramidal tomb, which Petrarch romantically ascribed to Remus, but which antiquarians generally accord, in conformity with the inscription which it bears, to Caius Cestius, a tribune of the people, who is remembered for nothing else than his sepulchre. In his elegy of Adonais, Shelley, in alluding to the resting-place of Keats beside this remarkable monument, brings in, with rare poetical power, the idea of the word pyramid being derived from [Greek: pyr], and signifying the shape of flame:--

And one keen pyramid with edge sublime, Pavilioning the dust of him who planned This refuge for his memory, doth stand Life flame transformed to marble.

If the word pyramid is of Greek origin, the suggestion of that able writer and scholar, Mr. Kenrick of York, is probably more true, viz. that the term [Greek: pyramis] (from [Greek: pyros], wheat, and [Greek: melitos], honey) was applied by the Greeks to a pointed or cone-shaped cake, used by them at the feasts of Bacchus (as shown on the table at the reception of Bacchus by Icarus; see Hope's Costumes, vol. ii. p. 224), and when they became acquainted with the Pyramids of Egypt, they, in this as in other instances, applied a term to a thing till then unknown, from a thing well known to them; in the very same way as they applied to the tall pointed monoliths peculiar to Egypt, the word obelisk--no doubt a direct derivation from the familiar Greek word [Greek: obelos], a spit.

For a learned discussion on various other supposed origins of the word pyramid, see Jomard, in the Description de l'Egypte, vol. ii. p. 213, etc.

II.--ARCHAIC CIRCLE AND RING SCULPTURES. (Page 222.)

Representations of incised cups, rings, circles, and spirals, are found on stones connected with other forms of ancient sculpture besides chambered barrows or cairns,--as on the lids of stone cists, megalithic circles, etc.; and, from this connection with the burial of the dead, these antique sculpturings were possibly of a religious character. In a work on "Archaic Sculpturings of Cups, Rings, etc. upon Stones and Rocks of Scotland, England, and other Countries," published last year by the author of the present communication, it was further argued that they were probably also ornamental in their character, in a chapter beginning as follows:--

"Without attempting to solve the mystery connected with these archaic lapidary cups and ring cuttings, I would venture to remark that there is one use for which some of these olden stone carvings were in all probability devoted--namely, ornamentation. From the very earliest historic periods in the architecture of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, etc., down to our own day, circles, single or double, and spirals, have formed, under various modifications, perhaps the most common fundamental types of lapidary decoration. In prehistoric times the same taste for circular sculpturings, however rough and rude, seems to have swayed the mind of archaic man. This observation as to the probable ornamental origin of our cup and ring carvings holds, in my opinion, far more strongly in respect to some antique stone cuttings in Ireland and in Brittany, than to the ruder and simpler forms that I have described as existing in Scotland and England. For instance, the cut single and double volutes, the complete and half-concentric circles, the zig-zag, and other patterns which cover almost entirely and completely some stones in those magnificent though rude western Pyramids that constitute the grand old mausolea of Ireland and Brittany, appear to be, in great part at least, of an ornamental character, whatever else their import may be."

In a communication on the Great Pyramid, made to the Royal Society 16th December 1867, Professor Smyth most unexpectedly, and quite out of his way, took occasion to criticise severely the remarks contained in the preceding extract, on two grounds:

First, He laid down that the term pyramid was misapplied, as the term referred only to figures and structures of a special mathematical form; being apparently quite unaware that, as shown in the text and notes, pp. 219 and 220, it was often applied archæologically to sepulchral mounds and erections that were not faced, and which did not consist of a series of triangles meeting in an apex.

Secondly, He objected to the statement that, "from the very earliest historic periods in the architecture of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, etc., circles and spirals, or modifications of them, constituted perhaps the most common fundamental types of lapidary decoration;" because, though circles, spirals, etc., occurred in the later architecture of Thebes, etc., yet in the Great Pyramid of Gizeh no such decorations were to be found, nor, indeed, lapidary decorations of any other kind. Cheops, the builder of the Great Pyramid, was, according to Manetho, "arrogant towards the gods." Was it this spirit of religious infidelity or scepticism that led to the rejection of any ornamentation? Professor Smyth notices what he himself terms an "ornament," "a most unique thing certainly," on the upper stone of what Greaves calls "the granite leaf" portcullis, in the interior of the Great Pyramid (ii. 100), and he represents it, it is now said erroneously in plate xii. as a portion of a double circle instead of a general raised elevation.

All the other Pyramids of Gizeh seem, like the Great Pyramid, wonderfully free from lapidary decorations on their interior walls, the exteriors of all of them being now too much dilapidated to offer any distinct proof in relation to the subject; though in Herodotus' time there were hieroglyphics, at least on the external surface of the Great Pyramid. The whole surface of the basalt sarcophagus in the Third Pyramid, or that of Mycerinus, was sculptured. "It was," to use the words of Baron Bunsen, "very beautifully carved in compartments, in the Doric style" (vol. ii. 168). This carving, in the well-known carpentry form, was, according to Mr. Fergusson, a representation of a palace (Handbook of Architecture, p. 222).

Fragments, however, of lapidary sculpture have been found among the ruins of Egyptian pyramids supposed to be older than those of Gizeh, or than their builders, the Memphite kings of the fourth dynasty. Thus one of the most able and learned of modern Egyptologists, Baron Bunsen, has written at some length to show that the great northern brick pyramid of Dashoor belongs to the preceding or third dynasty of kings. Colonel Vyse and Mr. Perring, when digging among its ruins, discovered two or three fragments of sculptured casing and other stones, with a few pieces presenting broken hieroglyphic inscriptions. One of the ornamented fragments represents a row of floreated-like decorations, and each decoration shows on its side a concentric circle, consisting of three rings,--the whole ornament being one which is found in later Egyptian eras, not unfrequently along the tops of walls in the interior of chambers, etc. Mr. Perring represents this fragment of sculpturing from the brick Pyramid of Dashoor, in his folio work, The Pyramids of Gizeh, plate xiii. Fig. 7. Hence among the very earliest Egyptian lapidary decorations we have, as in other countries, the appearance of the simple circular ornamentation.

Besides, more complex circular and spiral decorations, in the form of the well-known guilloche and scroll, were made use of in Egypt during the sixth dynasty, or immediately after the Memphite dynasty that reared the larger Pyramids of Gizeh. Thus, speaking of the ancient Egyptian architectural decorations, Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson observes--"The Egyptians did not always confine themselves to the mere imitation of natural objects for ornament; and their ceilings and cornices offer numerous graceful fancy devices, among which are the guilloche, miscalled Tuscan borders, the chevron, and the scroll patterns. They are to be met with in a tomb of the time of the sixth dynasty; they are therefore known in Egypt many ages before they were adopted by the Greeks, and the most complicated form of the guilloche covered a whole Egyptian ceiling, upwards of a thousand years before it was represented on those comparatively late objects found at Nineveh."--Popular account of the Ancient Egyptians, ii. 290.

III.--ERA OF THE ARABIAN HISTORIAN, IBN ABD AL HAKM. (Page 236.)

Professor Smyth owns that the grooves and pin holes which the coffer in the King's Chamber presents, were (to use his own words) "in fact to admit a sliding sarcophagus cover or lid" (see ante, p. 236, footnote). But in his recent communication to the Royal Society on the 20th April, he doubted Al Hakm's account of the mummy having been actually found in the sarcophagus when the King's Chamber was first entered by the Caliph Al Mamoon, in the ninth century, arguing, on the authority of a Glasgow gentleman, that the historian himself, Al Hakm, did not live for three or four centuries afterwards, and, therefore, could not be relied upon. But all this reasoning or assertion is simply a mistake. In a late letter (7th April), Dr. Rieu of the British Museum,--the chief living authority among us on any such Arabic question,--writes, "The statement relating to Al Mamoon's discovery could hardly rest on a better authority than that of Ibn Abd Al Hakm; for not only was he a contemporary writer (having died at Old Cairo, A.H. 269, that is, thirty-eight years after Al Mamoon's death), but he is constantly quoted by later writers as an historian of the highest authority. You will find a notice of him in Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary, vol. ii. etc." He was a native of Egypt, and chief of the Shafite sect. Born in A.D. 799, he died in A.D. 882, or at the age of 83.

IV.--LENGTH OF THE SARCOPHAGUS IN THE KING'S CHAMBER. (Page 236.)

M. Jomard, in the Description de l'Egypte, drawn up by the French Academicians, remarks in vol. ii. p. 182, that looking to the length of the cavity or interior of the sarcophagus in the King's Chamber, that it could not hold within it a cartonage or mummy case, enclosing a man of the ordinary height. This statement proceeds entirely upon a miscalculation. The length of the interior or cavity of the sarcophagus is six and a half English feet; and the average stature of the ancient Egyptians, "judging from their mummies, did not" observes Mr. Kenrick, "exceed five feet and a half." (See his Ancient Egypt, vol. i. p. 97.) The space thus left, of one foot, is much more than sufficient for the thickness of the two ends of a cartonage or mummy case; and the embalmed body was generally, or indeed always, closely packed within them. The length of the coffin was, long ago, quaintly observed Professor Greaves, "large enough to contain a most potent and dreadful monarch being dead, to whom, living, all Egypt was too strait and narrow a circuit" (Works, i. p. 131).