CHAPTER VIII.

THE CONTAINED VESSEL:

Its Substance, Size, and Shape.

Granite the True Material of the Coffer.

A REFERENCE to the third column of the Coffer table on page 135 of the last chapter will show that travellers have assigned the coffer to almost every mineral, from black marble to red granite, and porphyry of a colour which no one has ventured to name. Yet John Taylor concluded for porphyry, and called the vessel “the Porphyry Coffer,” as I did also for a time, i.e. in my first book before going to Egypt; doubting then, if anything so well known and distinctly marked as red granite would ever have been called black marble; and having been further at that period so distinctly assured about the coffer, by a railway engineer who had been much in Egypt, that “it is undoubtedly porphyry”; an assertion which he backed up by describing some of the differences in character between the material of the coffer, as witnessed by himself, and the indubitable red granite walls of the containing chamber.

This wall granite the engineer traced to the quarries of Syene, 550 miles up the river from the Pyramid; for nearer than that, there is no granite rock on the banks of the Nile, or within many days' journey from them on either side: but there, at the cataracts of the Nile above Syene, it abounds; and Syene was in fact a storehouse 144of granite (of the syenitic variety, but still eminently to be called granite rather than by any other mineral name equally understood by the public at large) for the supply of every dynasty that sat on the throne of Egypt subsequently to the building of the Great Pyramid.

Porphyry may not improbably be also found at Syene, amongst the veins and extravasations of granite and basalt which there abound: but the most celebrated Egyptian quarries of porphyry, both red and green, were much nearer the Red Sea than the Nile, or at and about the Gebel Dokkan and Mount Porphorytes; therefore in much closer geographical proximity to, and, perhaps, geological connection with, the granite mountains of Sinai, than the plutonic beds of Philæ and Syene.

Nevertheless, I having at last visited Egypt in 1864-5, after the publication of the first edition of this book, spent almost whole days and weeks in this King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid, until all sense of novelty and needless mystery in small things had worn away; and then decided, without the smallest hesitation, for the material of the coffer being syenitic granite; exceedingly like, but perhaps a little harder as well as darker than, the constructive blocks of the walls of the King's Chamber containing it.

Granite in the Dark, and Semi-dark, Ages now gone by.

In either case, and in every possible or even imaginable instance, such hard granite is wonderfully distinct, naturally, from the soft lime-stone (sometimes, but with less error, called marble) of the rest of the Great Pyramid's structure; and it is not a little important, in all Pyramid research there, to be able in that monument to detect for certain whenever the primeval architect abandoned the use of the lime-stone he had at hand, 145and adopted the granite procured with utmost toil and expense from a distance; whether it came from Syene, as modern Egyptologists usually determine, or from Sinai, as Professor Greaves would rather infer.

Recent travellers have indeed abundantly perceived the cartouches or ovals of both King Cheops and King Chephren, or of Shofo and Nou-Shofo, of the Jeezeh Pyramids, on certain quarried rocks in the Sinaitic peninsula, near Wadee Maghara; but the "works" with which these inscriptions were connected are generally supposed to have been iron and copper mines and emerald pits; while the following original note by Professor Greaves, evidently written long before the day of mineralogy, may be useful for a different purpose. The passage runs as follows:—"I conceive it" (the material of the coffer) "to be of that sort of porphyry which Pliny calls leucostictos, and describes thus:—"Rubet porphyrites in eâdem Ægypto, ex eo candidis intervenientibus punctis leucostictos appellatur. Quantislibet molibus cædendis sufficiunt lapidicinæ." Of this kind of marble there were, and still are, an infinite quantity of columns in Egypt. But Venetian, a man very curious, who accompanied me thither, imagined that this sort of marble came from Mount Sinai, where he had lived amongst the rocks, which he affirmed to be speckled with party colours of black and white and red, like this; and to confirm his assertion, he alleged that he had seen a great column left imperfect amongst the cliffs almost as big as that huge and admirable pillar standing to the south of Alexandria. Which opinion of his doth well correspond with the tradition of Aristides, who reports that in Arabia there is a quarry of excellent porphyry."

Sad confusion here between granite and porphyry in the seventeenth century: while in the "unheroic eighteenth century" Anglo-Saxon ignorance of granite 146culminated. No fresh granite was then being worked anywhere direct from nature, and the monuments of antiquity composed of it were first suspected, and then alleged, to be factitious; as thus stated by a Mediterranean traveller in 1702:—“The column of Pompey at Alexandria. Some think it of a kind of marble, but others incline rather to believe that ’twas built of melted (dissolved?) stone cast in moulds upon the place. The latter opinion seems most probable, for there is not the least piece of that stone to be found (naturally) in any part of the world, and the pillar is so prodigiously big and high that it could hardly be erected without a miracle. I know ’tis alleged by those who believe the story of the Rhodian colossus, that the ancients had the advantage of admirable machines to raise such bulky pieces; but I should reckon myself extremely obliged to those gentlemen if they would show me any probable reason why among so great a variety of Egyptian monuments of antiquity, there is not one of marble; and by what unaccountable accident the stone called granite, which was then so common, is now grown so scarce that the most curious inquiries into the works of nature cannot find the least fragment of it, that was not employed in ancient structures.

“And even though I should suppose, with my adversaries, that the quarries out of which this stone was dug were by degrees so entirely exhausted that there is not the least footstep of ’em left, and that Nature herself has lost so much of ancient vigour and fecundity that she is not able to produce new ones, I may still be allowed to ask why granite was only used in obelisks or columns of a prodigious bigness; for if it were really a sort of (natural) stone or marble, I see no reason why we might not find small pieces of it, as well as of porphyry and other precious kinds of marble.

“These reflections, in my opinion, may serve to 147confirm the hypothesis of those who believe that all these admirable monuments were actually cast in a mould; and if they would take the pains to view this column attentively, they would soon be convinced by the testimony of their own eyes that ’tis only a kind of cement composed of sand and calcined stone, not unlike to mortar or lime, which grows hard by degrees.”

Another century of modern civilization rolled on, and then we find the celebrated traveller Dr. Clarke has burst his way to light; for he is then quite convinced that granite is a natural substance, and that hand specimens of it may be found by those who will search from country to country through the world. But yet was granite then so seldom met with or recognised, that he has all this further trouble in explaining to London society, of seventy years ago, what common rock material it is that he is talking about:—“By Greaves’s Thebaick marble is to be understood that most beautiful variety of granite called by Italian lapidaries granito rosso (see ‘Forbes’s Travels,’ p. 226; London, 1776), which is composed essentially of feldspar, of quartz, and of mica. It is often called Oriental granite, and sometimes Egyptian granite; but it differs in no respect from European granite, except that feldspar enters more largely as a constituent into the mass than is usual with the granite of Europe. The author has seen granite of the same kind, and of equal beauty, in fragments, upon the shores of the Hebrides, particularly at Icolmkill.”

Sixty more years of modern civilization passed away. Macdonald at Aberdeen had by that time taught his countrymen how to work in polished granite, both red and grey, far and wide over Scotland. From tombstones to brooches, and from banks and insurance offices to kettle-holders and earrings, cut granite (poured forth since then without any stint both by the cold, pale 148Queen of the North and her blushing sister of Peterhead) is now used on every side; until all society, and the children too, talk as glibly in these our days about the once awfully mysterious tri-speckled stone, “as maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs.” And yet the thing, in Nature, is not plain to all our educated gentlemen even yet.

When, for instance, my Wife and I were living through several months in a tomb of the eastern cliff of the Great Pyramid Hill in 1865, a Cambridge man, with a most respectable name in science, and a sage-looking, experienced head of iron-grey hair, called upon us and remarked (to the lady too, who knows a great deal more about minerals than I do), “What a fine granite cavern you are living in!” Granite, indeed! poor man! when the petrified nummulites were staring at him all the time out of the nought but lime-stone on every side! And other travellers within the last few years have confidently talked of having seen granite in the entrance-passage of the Great Pyramid, granite in the subterranean chamber, granite forming the casing-stone heaps outside, granite, in fact, anywhere and everywhere; and basalt dykes in the Pyramid hill too, though in a country of pure nummulitic lime-stone.

They, however, being free and independent writers, cannot be easily interfered with; but will my readers at least excuse me for insisting upon it, that for any would-be pyramidist scholar it is a most awful mistake to say granite when he means lime-stone, or vice versâ; and to see lime-stone, where the primeval architect went to infinite pains to place granite. To talk thus interchangeably of the two is, indeed, over and above saying the thing that is not in mineralogy, over and above taking hard for soft, and soft for hard; Neptunian for Plutonian; repletion with traces of organic existence for nought but crystals that never had a 149breath of life in them,—it is also on the part of such individual a depriving himself of the only absolutely positive feature that he can, or should, speak to in all Pyramid inquiry; as thus:—

Questions of amount of angle, length of line, and measure of weight are all, even in the best modern science researches, questions of degree of approximation only; or of limits of approach to a something which may never be actually touched, or finally defined. But if white nummulitic lime-stone cannot be distinguished absolutely from red granite, or if one of those substances is said to glide so insensibly into the other, that no man can say with confidence where one begins and the other ends—the age for interpreting the long-secret interior of the Great Pyramid has not yet arrived.

But I will not consent to any such state of mind afflicting the readers of this present edition of 1879; and would rather, with them, as one amongst friends and often, in many other learned subjects, betters than myself, request their attention (before further discussing the coffer in the King's Chamber) to a prevailing feature of the manner in which the Great Pyramid makes its chief mechanical use of this triple rock, of strong colours and strange traditions, granite.

There is granite in the Great Pyramid, and granite in various small Pyramids; yet so far from their being therefore alike, it is on that very account, or by that very means, that most difference may be detected both in their designs and even in the very minds of their designers.

Take the third Pyramid as an example; the Egyptological world hailed it as the “Coloured Pyramid”; coloured, forsooth, because its casing-stones more than half-way up, were of red granite. That that little third Pyramid was therefore more expensive than the Great one, all its friends admit, and even boast of: but what 150else did it gain thereby? Lasting power, is the general idea; because granite is so proverbially hard. But, alas! granite, besides being hard, is also so very brittle on account chiefly of its tri-crystallization, and is so largely expansible by heat,¹ that under the influence of a hot sun by day and cold sky by night, it loosens and crushes minutely the materials of its own surface to little pieces, film by film, and age after age—until now, after 3,000 years, those hard granitic casing-stones of the third Pyramid are rounded along their edges into pudding shapes, which can hardly indicate the angle they were originally bevelled to, within a handful of degrees. Yet the softer, and fair, white lime-stone which was chosen of old for the casing of the Great Pyramid (a variety it is of lime-stone found in the Mokattam hill on the east side of the Nile), and which was begun to be exposed to the weather before the third Pyramid or its builders were born, has, joined to that softness, so much tenacity, smallness of heat expansion, and strong tendency to varnish itself with a brownish iron oxide exudation, that it has in some instances preserved the original angle of the casing-stones within a minute of a degree, and their original surface within the hundredth of an inch.

But because the Great Pyramid architect found lime-stone to answer his purpose for casing-stones, did he therefore use it everywhere? No, certainly not. He knew it to be too soft to keep its size and figure in places where men do tend to congregate; and where strains and wear and tear may accumulate, and have to be strenuously resisted. In and towards the centre, 151therefore, of the whole mass of the Great Pyramid, where strains do increase and the treasure was supposed to be kept, and where Caliph Al Mamoun in one age, and middle-class passengers from Australian steamers in another, rush trampling in to see what they can get by force,—there, whatever other purposes we may presently discover he also had, the Great Pyramid architect began to use granite in place of lime-stone. And in the deep and solemn interior of that building, where he did so employ it, there was no sun to shine and heat up by day, no open sky to radiate cold at night; but only closed-in darkness and a uniform temperature from year to year, and century to century.

There was, therefore, no tendency in granite to separate its component crystals there; but very great necessity for its hardness to resist the continual treading, or hammering and mischief-working by the countless visitors of these latter days. For the granite portion of the Great Pyramid (excepting only the portcullis, or stopper, blocks at the lower end of the first ascending passage) begins in the so-called ante-chamber apartment. A narrow chamber through which all visitors must pass, in order to reach that further, grander, and final King's Chamber wherein the employment of granite culminates: and wherein is to be seen standing loose and quite movable, except for its immense weight, on the open, level, granite floor, that Pyramid coffer, or long and high granite box, which is still awaiting our further and higher examination.

Why of that Size?

If we grant, temporarily, for mere present argument's sake, that the long rectangular granite box, or coffer, in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid was intended by the precise, measured, amount of its cubic contents to typify, as Mr. Taylor has suggested, a grand and 152universal standard of capacity measure—can any reason in either nature or science be shown, why it should have been made of that particular size and no other?

In a later age the designer of such a metrological vessel would have been hampered by custom, confined by law, or led by precedent. But in the primeval day of the foundation of the Great Pyramid, who was there then to control its architect; or from whom could that truly original genius have copied anything; or lastly, what was there to prevent his making the coffer therein of any size he pleased?

Of Scientific References for Capacity Measure.

This affair of the wherefore of the coffer's precise size is no doubt a difficult question, for there is no ready explanation lying on the surface; and if we attempt to consider it from a theoretical point of view, as to what should regulate a system of capacity and weight measure adapted to intellectual and religious man both living upon this earth-ball, and in worship of, and obedience to, God, both his, and earth's, Creator,—we are met by an alarming degree of backwardness among all the modern science schools in developing the cosmical relations and peculiar refinements of which this particular subject is evidently capable.

Previous Attempts to account for the Coffer's Capacity-size.

On this present branch of our enquiry the estimable John Taylor had ventured some ideas, but up to the time of his lamented decease had not reached anything very definite, or capable either of inspiring confidence in others, or showing direct connection with the rest of the Great Pyramid theory.

Still less can be said for the very wild and foundation-less ideas, first, of Mr. Joseph Jopling (who never saw the Great Pyramid); second, of Hekekeyan Bey (an 153Armenian in Cairo, but who, though living in sight of the Great Pyramid, had never been into the interior of it), and third, of M. Dufeu of Paris (who has done little more than introduce Hekekeyan Bey's views to European readers). Little indeed then, can be urged for any yet published hypotheses, as to why the Coffer of the Great Pyramid was made of the shape and size we find it now; and indeed one reason of all their failures could not but be, the very imperfect knowledge those earlier authors had of the size and shape to be explained.

Let us therefore attend more painstakingly to getting up these necessary preliminary data. And immediately we begin this task, some very unexpected matters of detail present themselves.

The Ledge Anomaly of the Coffer.

How astounded, for instance, was not I, on first visiting the Coffer in January, 1865, to find that, though sure enough that remarkable vessel was still in the King's Chamber—and that no fine-art Egyptological thieves (whether aristocratic Earls of Belmore or plebeian Belzonis) had carried it off to enrich themselves or to sell to a distant museum—yet there was actually a ledge for a lid, cut out of, or into, the substance of the top of the sides of what had been styled proverbially for ages the “lidless box, or open chest, of stone!” (See Plate XVII.)

Compared with this discovery, it was nothing that the vessel was chipped and chipped again on every possible edge; that the south-eastern corner was broken away by fresh hammer fractures to an extent of eight or ten inches more than it was in the days of Colonel Howard-Vyse. But that ledge neatly, skilfully cut out, when was that introduced?

It has no existence in the French Academy's drawing 154of 1799, and which I had unfortunately followed in my first book of 1864; but it is found, as I afterwards discovered, in “ Perring’s Views of the Pyramids ” in 1840. Was the ledge then introduced by modern workers between 1799 and 1840?

Those who bow down to, and almost worship the infallibility of great Scientific Societies, and especially of the French Academy, are bound to conclude so. But I have not that ultra respect for any merely human institute, and simply consider that in this matter, as well as the three extra inches of both height and depth already spoken of, the Associated savants must have made a mistake. Wherefore, as I unwittingly tended to spread their ledge error in 1864, it is my duty now to set forth exactly how I found the Coffer in 1865.

The following is, consequently, an extract from my book, “Life and Work at the Great Pyramid,” published in 1867, and now revised, in order to introduce some still later and further observations by Dr. J. A. S. Grant, of Cairo, and Mr. Waynman Dixon, C.E.

THE COFFER, MEASURED IN BRITISH INCHES.

MARCH 20—23, 25, 1865.

This vessel, the sole contents of the dark King’s Chamber, and termed, according to various writers, stone box, granite chest, lidless vessel, porphyry vase, black marble sarcophagus, and coffer—is composed, as to its material, of a darkish variety of red, and possibly syenitic, granite. And there is no difficulty in seeing this; for although the ancient polished sides have long since acquired a deep chocolate hue, there are such numerous chips effected on all the edges in recent years, that the component crystals, quartz, mica, and felspar, may be seen (by the light of a good candle) even brilliantly.

The vessel is chipped around, or along, every line and edge of bottom, sides, and top; and at its south-east corner, the extra accumulation of chippings extends to a breaking away of nearly half its height from the top downwards. It is, moreover, tilted up at its south end by a black jasper pebble, about 1.5 inch high (such pebbles are found abundantly on the desert hills outside and west of the Great Pyramid), recently pushed in underneath the south-west corner. The vessel is therefore in a state of strain, aggravated by the depth to which the vertical sides have been broken down as above; and great care must be taken in outside measures, not to be misled by the space between some parts of the bottom and the floor, itself also of polished red granite.

155As for the under surface of the bottom of the coffer (speculated on by some persons as containing a long inscription, I felt it, near the south end, with my hand, and tried to look under it also when a piece of magnesium wire was burning there, without being sensible of any approach to hieroglyphics or engraving. But as to the inner, or upper surface, of the bottom, and also the vertical sides of the vessel, both inside and out—all the ancient surfaces there are plainly enough polished smooth, and are without any carving, inscription, design, or any intentional line or lines; they are also all of them simple, plain, and flat (sensibly to common observation); excepting only the top margin, which is cut into in a manner implying that a sarcophagus lid once fitted on, sliding into its place from the west, and fixable by three steady pins, entering from the lid into holes on that western side.

The west side of the coffer is therefore lowered all over its top surface, except at the north and south ends, by the amount of depth of such ledge cut-out, or 1.72 inch; and the other, or east, north, and south sides are, or should be, lowered to the same depth on their inner edges, and to a distance from inside to out of 1.63 inch. But the fulness of this arrangement cannot be seen now, because in some places both ledge and top of sides are broken away together; and in others, though much of the inner base-line of the ledge remains—thanks to its protected position—the upper and true surface of the coffer's side has all been chipped away. In fact, it is only over a short length near the north-east corner of the coffer that the chippers have left any portion of its original top edge. And a cast of that corner recently taken by Mr. Waynman Dixon shows, as compared with my photograph (and also with the frontispiece to Vol. I. of my “Life and Work”), that a further portion of the side's top surface, indeed an awfully large conchoidal-shaped block, has disappeared since 1865.

The whole question, therefore, of the full depth of the coffer rests on one very small portion of the north-east wall, so to speak, of the coffer—a portion, too, which becomes smaller and smaller every year that we live.

Only at that north-east corner, too, is there an opportunity of measuring the vertical depth between the ancient top surface of a side and the bottom surface of the ledge; and it was, by repeated measure, found by me = from 1.68 to 1.70 and 1.75; say mean = 1.72 inch.

The sides of the ledge depression appeared to me to have been vertical, or without any dovetailing; and the horizontal base-breadth of such cut-out—measuring from within, to, or towards the “without” of the coffer—and restoring the sides to their original completeness before the chipping away of the edges—is—

But this appearance of the coffer's ledge having been rectangular, has been, since my visit, successfully shown by Dr. Grant and Mr. W. Dixon to be a mistake. For although everywhere else all the overhangings of 156an acute ledge have been broken away to beyond the vertical, yet there is a small part left near the north-east corner, which speaks unmistakably to an acute-angled shape; not by any means so sharply acute as that of the sarcophagus of the Second Pyramid, but decidedly and intentionally on the acute side of rectangular.

Along the western side are three fixing-pin holes, $1.2$ deep, and $0.84$ in diameter, save where they are broken larger, as is chiefly the case with the middle and southern one. The three holes have their centres at the following distances from the north end: viz. 16.0, 45.3, and 75.1 respectively.

It is inconceivable how the French Academicians could have pictured the coffer, as they did, without representing anything of this ledge cut-out, or of the fixing-pin holes; unless they looked upon these traces as a comparatively modern attempt to convert the original pure coffer into a sarcophagus, and which they were therefore bound to overlook in their description of the original vessel. But we are to note both states.

OUTSIDE OF COFFER: MINUTER DETAILS OF ITS FIGURE.

The planes forming the four external vertical sides of the coffer, which have never yet been questioned by any other measurer, appeared to me to be not very true; excepting the east one, whose errors are under 0.02, or perhaps 0.01; while the north, west, and south sides are so decidedly concave as to have central depressions of 0.3 and 0.5 inches; or more particularly—

At North side, central hollow or depression of coffer's side (measured from a horizontal straight-edge touching the side at either end, and in a horizontal plane), or the quantity of central depression, near bottom, say d . . . . . = 0.45 Central depression, near middle of height . . = 0.20 ″ top. . . . . = 0.12 Mean. . . = 0.26 in.

At West side, central depression, near bottom . = 0.35 ″ ″ ″ middle . = 0.15 ″ ″ ″ top . = 0.10 Mean . . . = 0.20 in.

At South side, central depression, near bottom . = 0.28 ″ ″ ″ middle . = 0.18 ″ ″ ″ top . = 0.10 Mean . . . = 0.19

Again, when the straight-edge is applied vertically to the sides, east side comes out true, but the others concave—

On North side, the maxima of such vertical depression or d′ . . . . . = 0.20 and 0.28 On West side, d′, at South end . . . . = 0.00 ″ d′, at North end . . . . = 0.20 And on South side, d′, at different distances from East to West . . . . . = 0.08, 0.12, and 0.04 in.

EXTERNAL MEASURES OF THE COFFER.

The corners and edges of the coffer are so much chipped, that the steel claws I had had prepared for the sliding-rods, to adapt them from inside to outside measures, were found not long enough to span these modern fractures and reach the original polished surfaces. A method was therefore adopted, of making up the sides of the coffer with straight-edges projecting beyond it at either end; and then measuring between such straight-edges and on either side, or end, of the coffer.

LENGTH OF COFFER OUTSIDE, MEASURED WITH BAR 100 A.

The above mean, however, represents only the mean length of the edges of the two sides, not of the whole coffer, on account of the concavity of the two external ends; wherefore, if we desire to state the mean length for the mean of each end surface, we must subtract two-thirds of the mean central concavity, as previously determined; i.e. = 0.17 for the north end, and similarly 0.13 for the south end; so that, then, the mean length for mean of each end of coffer = 89.71 British inches.

= 89.62 Pyramid inches.

N.B.—An anomaly in the West side, near the bottom.

BREADTH OF COFFER, OUTSIDE.

HEIGHT OF COFFER, OUTSIDE.

Height of coffer outside, eliminating the stone under bottom, and the sarcophagus ledge of 1.72; i.e. measuring from coffer-bottom to extreme ancient top of sides, is—

Correction in capacity computations for a supposed hollow curvature of under side of bottom; agreeably with three, out of the four, upright sides; and also agreeably with the construction of the under sides of the casing-stones, which rest on their circumferences, on account of a slight hollowing away of their central areas; say = .10

Concluded capacity-computation height = 41.17 British inches.
= 41.13 Pyramid inches.

SIDES, THICKNESS OF.

For this purpose two vertical straight-edges higher than the sides were placed opposite each other, in contact with the inside and outside surfaces of any flank of the coffer, and the distance across was measured over the top edge of the coffer; finding at successive parts of the coffer circumference, bearing from centre—

The above measures were repeated on March 28, and proved sensibly true for this method of measurement over the top edge of the coffer; but 159if calipered lower down, it is probable that a slightly increased thickness would have been found there.

Bottom of the Coffer. Thickness of.

By difference of heights of two straight-edges of equal length, applied, one inside and one outside—the outside one being further propped up, where required, by a third straight-edge inserted under the bottom—there was found—

INTERNAL MEASURES OF THE COFFER.

The inside surfaces of the coffer seem very true and flat over the greater part of their extent; but betray, on examination by straight-edges, a slight convergence at the bottom towards the centre.

Inside Length of Coffer, by Slider 70.

(Correction +0.13 added to all the readings for length of this Slider.)

Mean of the whole, or the inside length of coffer = 77.93 British inches.
= 77.85 Pyramid inches.

INSIDE BREADTH OF COFFER.

(By Slider 25, not requiring any correction.)

Inside Depth of Coffer.

The measure of this element is taken from the inside bottom of the coffer,—which is apparently smooth and flat,—up in the shortest line to the level of the original top surface of the north, the east, and the south sides; and of the west side also, presumably, before it was cut down to the level of the ledge which runs round the inner edges of the north, east, and south sides, and all across the west side's top.

Now, the depth of that ledge was before ascertained = 1.72 inches below the original top; a block of wood was therefore prepared of that thickness, and placed on the west side, and also on the base-surface of the ledge wherever found on the other sides, to support one end of a straight-edge, whose other end rested on some part or parts of the original top of the coffer's sides, which are still visible at and about the north-east corner.

INSIDE DEPTH FROM ORIGINAL TOP OF NORTH, EAST, AND SOUTH SIDES.

(By Slider 25, not requiring any correction.)

COFFER, FURTHER INSIDE MEASURES OF.

DIAGONALS.

Diagonals inside the north end; from either low corner at bottom, up to a measured height of 30.0 inches, i.e. the greatest height quite free from fractures; then—

From low North-east to 30′ high North-west = 39.71 British inches, and from low North-west to 30′ high North-east = 39.70 ,,

Diagonals inside West side; from either corner below, up to a height of 30 inches measured at the sides—

or from low South-west to 30′ high North-west = 83.19 British inches, and from low North-west to 30′ high South-west = 83.13 ,,

CUBICAL DIAGONALS.

These cubical diagonals give sensibly less than the diagonals computed from the lengths and breadths; on account, apparently, of the extreme points of the corners of the bottom not being perfectly worked out to the exact intersections of the general planes of the entire sides. But they seem abundantly sufficient to prove general rectangularity of figure, in all the main part of the coffer’s interior.

The Sarcophagus Theory of the Coffer.

With all this accumulation of little bits of information, then, let us now try what is the size of the coffer as a whole. And on our so doing, we must, of course, let the opposition sarcophagus theory of Egyptologists be heard over again; especially when it has something to say touching shape, as well as size.

The inside dimensions of the coffer being by our own measures (roughly) 6.5 feet long, 2.2 feet wide, and almost 3 feet deep, are at least long enough and broad enough for a coffin; and if rather deeper than convenient or necessary, I will not object to that, as there is now proved to be a ledge cut into the top of the thick sides of the vessel, and quite suitably for a lid.

As there is a ledge, an intention at some time to put on a lid may or must be inferred; but it is still to be proved whether a lid ever was put on by the architect of 162the Great Pyramid, and especially for sarcophagus purposes; because, first, with a sarcophagus lid of the ordinary style and thickness fastened into that ledge, the coffer could not have passed through the closely fitting doorway of the room; it would have been several whole inches too high. Second, a sarcophagus lid fastened into that ledge would have betokened the accomplishment of the last rites to the dead; and they would have included among all Eastern nations, but more especially the contemporary, indigenous, profane Egyptians, the engraving the deceased's name, titles, deeds, and history on the coffer, both inside and out. But there is nothing of that kind there; so the Great Pyramid coffer remains still the smooth-sided, vacant, lidless chest of Caliph Al Mamoun's Arab tale; quite capable of having been made at any time into a sarcophagus; but testifying in the most positive manner that it never was completely so converted, whatever may have been the reason why or wherefore.

Considering, however, the coffer's approximate shape, size, and situation, I am quite ready to allow it to be "a blind sarcophagus"; viz. a deceiving blind to the eyes of the Pharaonic and idolatrous Egyptian workmen, as well as a symbol sarcophagus to others, reminding them of death, judgment, and eternity (as well taught by William Simpson, artist, archæologist, and traveller); but without thereby interfering one iota with its further more exact objects and intentions.

And what are they?

Only look at the beginning of them, as the vessel tells them off itself in number and measure, and see features thereby which cannot be accidental; features which have never been heard of in any other, or mere, sarcophagus; and which no Egyptologist, not even Lepsius himself, has ever attempted to publish as his, or any other person's, "law of Egyptian sarcophagus construction."

163Taking the coffer measures, for instance, as of the whole vessel before the ledge was cut out, from the previous pages, in Pyramid inches; then—

Length. Breadth. De. or Ht. Volume.

that is, within the limits of accuracy of the modern measures, the volume of the exterior is double that of the interior; and the simplest even relation between them is that of capacity.

Again, the mean thickness of the sides of the coffer being assumed from the measures, in Pyramid inches 5.952, and of the bottom 6.866, we have (from a formula first prepared by the ingenious Mr. Henry Perigal)—

or again, we find a duplicity of the one quantity against the other; and the only apparent simple relation between the two, and of the sum of both with the interior of the vessel, is that of capacity.

If then, now we may justifiably say, that though the coffer is probably what John Taylor did not think it, viz. a blind sarcophagus and a symbolical coffin, it is also most positively what he did consider it (though we say so by means of mensuration proof which he never lived to see)—viz. a vessel at whose birth certain leading geometrical requirements both of, and for, capacity measure presided and governed:—then in that case, what is its precise capacity?

What shall we consider the Capacity of the Coffer proved to be?

For the coffer's length and breadth elements we can quote plenty of measures, but the equally necessary depth is a weak point; because, as already explained, 164every particle of the original top of the sides is cut or broken away, except some little patches near the north-east corner. Those were in place in 1865, but who will guarantee that they are there still, when men will hammer that exquisite gift inherited from primeval time, merely in the ignorant notion of sending their friends at home a chip of “Cheops’ coffin”? When the last of those small pieces of the ancient top, which I mapped so carefully in “Life and Work,” (1867,) has disappeared (and Mr. Waynman Dixon’s cast shows that some of them are already gone), then comes the deluge among future coffer measures. A veritable chaos of uncertainty as to depth; in the midst of which chaos French Academicians might put on their three additional inches again, and upset all the geometrical duplications and equalities which have just been obtained by means of our having had, in 1865, a trace of the true height. But at this point of the discussion there comes in a strange use of the ledge cut out, though that feature has hitherto been thought of only for a lid and nothing else.

No lid has ever been seen by any historical individual; but every man of the present age may test the truth of the following mechanical adaptation: viz. the ledge, though acute angled, is cut out with precisely such a base-breadth and depth that a frame made to fit it flush with the ancient top of the sides would, when let down in vertical plane, and diagonally inside the coffer, just form the diagonal of said coffer’s interior; and the frame’s height at that moment would exactly measure the coffer’s depth. Hence the breadth of the ledge, continued across the coffer from west to east, would continue to give us an outstanding test of the coffer’s original depth, long after young cadets going out to India, and large holiday parties from Cairo, shall have thoughtlessly knocked away every particle of the original top of the sides.

165In coffer measuring, however,—just as it usually is in all matters of science,—no two human measures ever agree exactly even on the same parts; and all that finite man can hope for is, to come within moderate limits. So then must it be with the coffer’s cubic contents.

Taking the ledge breadth (from my “Antiquity of Intellectual Man,” p. 300) as 34.282 Pyramid inches, then the coffer’s cubic contents in cubic Pyramid inches are:—

Here then we have a vessel whose cubic contents are not only something, on the whole excessively near to 71,250. cubic Pyramid inches, but it was pretty evidently intended,—by enabling us so nearly to bring out that number in several different ways,—to carry a check and a witness thereto down through all fair accidents, even through all historic ages, to these mensuration times. While that precise quantity, and the care for that quantity, of just so many cubic inches, rather than any other, expressed in Great Pyramid measure, are so impossible for the Egyptologists to explain on any sarcophagus theory of their own, either pure and simple, or profane and ornate,—that they do not attempt it; and we must now strive to ascertain, on methods both absolutely new to Egyptology, and which must have been totally unknown to all the Pharaonic serfs of old Egypt, what the Great Pyramid itself may have to add to this; viz. its own preliminary setting forth of some science reason why this vessel before us, the coffer in the King’s Chamber, is not only “a symbolical sarcophagus, but one adapted likewise to something further and higher connected with capacity measure.”