CHAPTER XVII.

TIME MEASURES,

And the Fixation of Absolute Dates.

WHAT affairs of mankind can prosper without attention to time? and what is history with an uncertain, or perhaps an utterly erroneous, chronology?

It is, I fear, very much like the history of ancient Egypt, as composed by the modern Egyptologists from the profane, hieroglyphic-bearing monuments which they study: none of which, according even to those gentlemen's own confession, are capable of fixing an absolute date. And yet on the strength of their learning in these things, the said gentlemen go on assigning dates, and have gone on continually increasing them too during the last 30 years; until it has recently been anounced, that "possibly more than seven thousand years have passed over the pyramids of Egypt."

As the Great Pyramid is not a hieroglyphic-adorned monument, it does not of itself lead anyone into any of those errors touching exact chronology. But has it any better method of pronouncing on time?

On this important question there is but one mode of inquiry, viz. attention to the measures of the whole built monument, and its parts; coupled with the quality of the work concerned, and followed by the theory, whatever that may ultimately prove to be, which explains the greatest number of facts.

Now one time measure has already been indicated in 360the circumstance that the sacred, Hebrew, or Pyramid cubit is of such a length that it measures the base-side of the Great Pyramid by the number of days, and fractions of a day, that do actually exist in a year of the earth; while another includes a practical demonstration of our modern leap-year arrangement in the exhibition of the four sides, or years, which make up a cycle of years complete to the nearest even day. (See Chapter X. p. 180.)

But a still grander time measure of that kind is obtained by viewing the whole Pyramid's base periphery in the light of its equivalent circle, struck with a radius equal to the vertical height of the Pyramid; which height, by its sun-distance commensurability, symbolises the sun in the centre of that circle; for then the interval of twenty-four solar hours, or the time elapsing between the sun apparently leaving the meridian of any place and returning to it again, by virtue of the rotation of the earth on its axis before the sun, i.e. a mean solar day,—is measured off on that circle's circumference by 100 Pyramid inches evenly.

But if this first time-symbolism of the exterior of the Pyramid is thus clear and simple enough, that of the interior presents many difficulties.

The entrance-passage has indeed already been elsewhere shown to be connected with the meridian transit of a circumpolar star; but why did the builders make both that passage and the first ascending passage so excessively low, that a man can hardly pass through them, even crawling on his hands and knees; and another, the Grand Gallery, so astonishingly high, that the blazing torches of Arab guides seldom suffice, in its mere darkness rendered somewhat visible, to show the now smoke-blackened ceiling to wondering visitors?

No approach to a sufficient answer to these questions has yet been given anywhere; and all that violent, and 361apparently unreasonable, contrast of heights, remains the most mysterious thing in its origin, at the same time that, in its existence, it is one of the best-ascertained facts about the whole Great Pyramid.

Professor Greaves describes the Time Passages of the Great Pyramid.

Where many great men have failed, we must proceed with caution indeed; and commencing therefore at the beginning, with what has been known to, and confessed by, most travellers for ages, I will, at present, merely call attention to the extraordinary pains that were taken by the original builders with the structure of all these passages.

Even with the first, or entrance passage, the most used and abused of the whole, both in mediæval and modern times,—yet the regularity and beauty of its fabric, composed of whiter, more compact, and homogeneous stone than is to be seen anywhere else, and in enormous blocks admirably worked, seem to have been ever the admiration of all beholders. Professor Greaves, in 1638, exclaims (with almost a Tennysonian feeling of the romantic belonging rather to 1860 A.D.), on beholding this passage some 3,800 years after its builders had been laid in the dust, and their spirits had returned to God who gave them, "‘The structure of it hath been the labour of an exquisite hand."

Yes, truly; and then the Savilian professor goes on methodically to describe the mechanical elements of that excellence which he had noted; such as, "the smoothness and evenness of the work," "the close knitting of the joints," and the accuracy with which the exact breadth of 3.463 of the English foot¹ is kept up through 362a length of 92.5 feet. But when he comes soon afterwards over against a portion of that rough fragment of a side-passage forced in barbarous times of spoliation by Caliph Al Mamoun, he correctly describes that as “a place somewhat larger, and of a pretty height, but lying incomposed; an obscure and broken place, the length 89 feet, the breadth and height various, and not worth consideration.” And again, “By whomsoever (among the moderns) it was constructed, is not worth the inquiry; nor does the place merit the describing; but that I was unwilling to pretermit anything, being only an habitation for bats, and those so ugly and of so large a size, exceeding a foot in length, that I have not elsewhere seen the like.” ²

When, on the contrary, the same Professor Greaves, by aid of the yawning hiatus in the masonry to the west of the portcullis, got round and above that granite block obstruction between the entrance descending, and first ascending, passages proper, and reached this latter work of the ancient builders,—a passage of the same breadth nearly as the entrance passage,—he then resumes his more graceful imagery, and writes, “‘The pavement of this rises with a gentle acclivity, consisting of smooth and impolished marble (lime-stone), and, where not smeared with filth, appearing of a white alabaster (cream) colour; the sides and roof, as 363Titus Livius Burretinus, a Venetian, an ingenious young man, who accompanied me thither, observed, were of impolished stone, not so hard and compact as that of the pavement, but more soft and tender." And I, in my turn, have now, 235 years after King Charles the First's professor of astronomy left the Pyramid, to report, as an apparent consequence of that tender softness described by him, that the upper part of the walls, and more especially the roof of much of this passage, have exfoliated or decayed to the extent of a foot or more in many places,—while the floor, on the other hand, has rather hardened to the feet (usually naked feet, though) of Arabs, and exhibits a peculiar change in the surface of the limestone; hardening as it does there, until it actually verges upon the consistence of flint, yet keeping nearly true still to the ancient test-marks of the floor-level on either side wall.

And then when he arrives in the far freer and much more elevated space of the second ascending passage, or the Grand Gallery, the fine old Oxford professor, who well knew what architectural beauties were, speaks of it as "a very stately piece of work, and not inferiour either in respect of the curiosity of art, or richness of materials, to the most sumptuous and magnificent buildings." And again, "This gallery or corridor, or whatsoever else I may call it, is built of white and polished marble (lime-stone), the which is very evenly cut in spacious squares or tables. Of such materials as is the pavement, such is the roof, and such are the side walls that flank it; the coagmentation or knitting of the joints is so close, that they are scarce discernible to a curious eye; and that which adds grace to the whole structure, though it makes the passage the more slippery and difficult, is the acclivity and rising of the ascent. The height of this gallery is 26 (more nearly 28) feet; the breadth 6.870 feet, of which 3.435 feet are to be allowed 364for the way in the midst, which is set and bounded on both sides with two banks, like benches, of sleek and polished stone; each of these hath 1.717 of a foot in breadth, and as much in depth.”³

“Upon the top of these benches (the ‘ramps’ of Col. Howard-Vyse), near the angle where they close and join with the wall, are little spaces cut in right-angled parallel figures set on each side opposite one another, intended, no question, for some other end than ornament.”

“In the casting and ranging of the marbles (limestone), in both the side walls, there is one piece of architecture in my judgment very graceful, and that is that all the courses or ranges, which are but seven (so great are these stones), do set and flag over one another about three inches; the bottom of the uppermost course overflagging the top of the next, and so in order the rest as they descend.”

In the edition of Greaves’s works by Dr. Birch in 1737, from which I quote, there is an attempt to represent these things graphically, the book being “adorned with sculptures,” and “illustrated with cuts by a curious hand”; and in the great French work some efforts in a high class of design are engraved in line, to represent perspective views looking both upward and downward in the Grand Gallery; but they are all of them to some extent failures. The circumstances are above the scope of orthodox pictures by reason of the narrow breadth, the lofty vaulting height, and the very peculiar sloping angle of the long floor; a floor, when one looks from its north end southward, ascending and ascending through the darkness apparently for ever; and with such 365steepness, that no artist's view of it, painted on a vertical plane, could ever hope to represent more than a small part of that floor, rising upward through the whole canvas, and going out at the top. While on looking horizontally northward again, from the south end of the gallery, you lose the floor instantly, and see on the level of your eyes, in the extreme distance, part of the steeply descending ceiling; descending, too, still further, and going out at the bottom of the picture, if your means of illumination extend so far. (See Plate XIII.) Otherwise, it is the solemn overlappings of the high dark walls (very dark now, because blackened by the smoke of travellers' torches during a thousand years), passing you by on either side, to draw together in dim and unknown perspective beyond, above or below, which mysteriously case you in on every hand.

Modern Measures of the Passages.

In the first edition of this book, I was positively puzzled to make out, let alone the architecture of the Grand Gallery, the simple sizes of the smaller passages; and erred considerably in choosing among the conflicting testimonies of former travellers. But a four months' residence on the spot, most completely settled all that class of difficulties; and enables me now to speak confidently thus:—Although there are some pieces of horizontal passage in the Great Pyramid, their united length is as nothing compared with the length of the inclined passages. The angle of the inclination in a vertical plane of these passages is 26° 18′ nearly, being the same whether the passages are ascending or descending (within errors partly of construction amounting to 1-120th of the whole); and the transverse size, that is, breadth and height, excepting only the utterly diverse Grand Gallery, being also the same; or at least having 366certainly been so, before the abrading and exfoliating of the more “soft and tender” of the stones began. Confining myself, however, to well-preserved portions of the ancient surface, and just now to the entrance-passage alone, I obtained the following measures for its breadth and height:—

ENTRANCE PASSAGE.

Breadth and Transverse Height as measured in 1865.

The manner in which these numbers run, will of itself indicate to any practical man the degree of opportunity which the Great Pyramid still presents for respectable accuracy of measure, when the measuring-rods are applied by those who will trouble themselves to seek out the best-preserved parts, and endeavour to 367do them justice. But what is the meaning of the word height in the above table being qualified as “ transverse height ? ”

These Pyramid passages being all of them inclined, have two sorts or kinds of height: First, transverse height, or the shortest distance between floor and ceiling, and which was the easier kind of height to measure accurately with the sliding scales which I had had constructed for the purpose; and, second, vertical height, or height in the direction of a plumb-line, and the more usual, indeed almost the universal, mode of measuring heights in any masonry structures elsewhere.

Now, putting all the observations together, I deduced 47.24 Pyramid inches to be the transverse height of the entrance-passage; and computing from thence, with the observed angle of inclination, the vertical height, —that came out 52.76 of the same inches. But the sum of those two heights, or the height taken up in one way and down in the other, = 100 inches: which length, as elsewhere shown (p. 360), is the general Pyramid linear representation of a day of 24 hours. And the mean of the two heights, or the height taken one way only, and impartially to the middle point between them, = 50 inches; which quantity is, therefore, the general Pyramid linear representation of only half a day. In which case let us ask, what the entrance-passage has to do with half, rather than a whole, day?

Astronomy of the Entrance Passage.

If you descend at night some long distance down the sloping floor of the entrance-passage, and then turn round and look upwards and northwards to its open mouth, you will see just there any large star whose distance is 3° 42′ nearly from the Pole, if it should chance to be crossing the meridian at that moment in 368the lower part of its very small daily circle:—always supposing that there is at this present time a star at that Polar distance, bright enough to be easily seen by the naked eye; and indeed there is such a one very nearly in the required position, viz. $\delta$ Ursæ Minoris, 3° 24′ from the Polar point.

But that star was not always there; being in reality in continual slow movement, year after year, quite independently of diurnal rotation; so that it is, to all appearance from this earth, carried on and on, cumulatively, together with all the other stars, through an immense celestial round at the rate of several whole degrees for every thousand years, by that grand mechanism of the earth and the apparent heavens called amongst astronomers the precession of the equinoxes;—the most important too of all celestial phenomena, for fixing the exact and absolute chronology of the earlier periods of man upon earth. (See Chapter XV. p. 324.)

It was Sir John Herschel who, in answer to a letter from Colonel Howard-Vyse on his return from his immortal Pyramid explorations in Egypt, in 1837-8, first laid down the application of this essential astronomical law with regard to the Great Pyramid. And, indeed, he did more; for, assuming the prevailing idea of his then time, that the Great Pyramid's foundation was somewhere about 4,000 years ago, he searched the starry heavens, as moving under the influence of precession, and found that for two thousand years before, and as many after, that time, only one notable star had been at the required Polar distance, viz. the distance of 3° 42′; so as to look down the descending entrance-passage of the Great Pyramid (descending at 26° 18′ from the horizon, in a latitude of 30° 0′, neglecting small corrections) at its—the star's—lower meridian culmination; and that star—$\alpha$ Draconis by modern name—was in that critical position somewhere about 2160 B.C. 369That date, therefore, made up with 1840 A.D. (and excluding for the time all question about one or more possibly unrecorded years at the beginning of our era), 4,000 years ago as the epoch of the passage-angle being laid; and then evidently to suit a chronological phenomenon of excellent astronomical kind, and peculiar to the Pyramid builders' day.

This near agreement of computations by modern astronomy, with the results of Egyptological scholarship as it was in London in 1840 A.D., took the English world by a storm of admiration; and every one allowed, for awhile, that the whole affair of the date of the Great Pyramid was quite settled. But, alas! those were simple, innocent days under good King William and the quiet Queen Adelaide. The up-springing of German critical and philosophical theology in this country, and the demands of natural-history science overleaping itself, and calling out everywhere for long dates, began soon after that. Presently too certain Syro-Egyptian antiquarians objected in their line that the astronomy of Sir John Herschel's paper must have been only an accidental coincidence with the passage-angle. And why? Because said passage, having been made, as they knew, merely to slide a sarcophagus down to its resting-place, and having been filled up choke-full to its mouth, after that was done, with solid blocks of stone,— it could never have been used as an observatory by any ancient astronomers.

The first answer to this earliest Egyptologic dictum was easy enough. Sir John Herschel had not said that the passage was intended to serve as a permanent observatory; but that its cream-coloured, stone-lined, long, long tube seemed to memorialize, or further still, to monumentalize, the once occurrence, of a particular phenomenon of the day when it was being built, and of that day only; a record, therefore, once for all, by 370memorial and monumental astronomy (whatever other practical use the passage may, or may not, have afterwards served), of a former special sidereal fact, but whose memory was destined to become increasingly important in distant ages for the purposes of exact chronology.

That explanation holds perfectly true yet. But with regard to the other part of the question, as to whether Sir John Herschel's astronomical conclusion is still to be held as confirming, and confirmed by, the date arrived at by the very latest studies of the present Egyptologists; alas! what a change had passed over London society by the time that it had come to be my privilege to go out to the Great Pyramid in 1864, and my turn to print upon it in 1867, 8, and 9!

Then to talk, in ordinary scientific society, of 4,000 years ago for the Great Pyramid's date of foundation! All Egyptologists of any pretension, and the world following at their heels, had learned to scorn such a petty conception; and had begun to assert entirely new Egyptological epochs, ranging, most of them, anywhere between 5,200 and 6,600 years ago. Whereupon Sir John Herschel was left, with his astronomy alone, in violent discrepance from, instead of singular agreement with, the Egyptologists of our present universities and museums.

Moreover, as soon as I came to extend Sir John Herschel's computations, it appeared that when the star α Draconis had in a manner chanced to come to that passage-angle distance of 3° 42′ from the Pole in about 2160 B.C.,—it was from a nearer, instead of a further, Polar distance which the star had previously occupied. In which case, the said star must have passed through the passage-angle on a previous occasion also, or somewhere about 3440 B.C.

Here then was a most divided duty: 3440 B.C. might 371satisfy some of the Neologians among our most learned Egyptologists of the last ten years; though certainly not all. But then, what case could be made out, independently of all Egyptology of the profane monument order, for choosing 3440 B.C., as better than 2160 B.C., or vice versâ? There were no astronomical reasons then known applying to one occasion, more than the other; Colonel Howard-Vyse was dead; John Taylor also; Sir John Herschel remained silent; a noisy military man would persist that Sir John had given up his former views, and now agreed with him in maintaining, that the peculiar passage-angle was chosen for easy sarcophagus sliding alone; and the astronomical world, whatever the reason why, would give the subject no attention.

The Great Pyramid's use of a Polar Star.

But there was happily more in the ancient Great Pyramid than any one had suspected, and it began to manifest itself thus:—

Did not the very entrance passage, chiefly concerned in the affair, speak by its 50, in place of 100, inch height, to a half, and not a whole, day; or a 12-hour interval for some purpose unknown? And did not the axis of the passage point, neither to the one, central, Pole of the sky (30° Alt.), nor to an upper culmination (33° 42′ Alt.) of a close Polar star,—but to a region of lower culmination only, at or near 26° 18′ Alt.?

This was indeed the fact; and no one had yet anxiously inquired, “Why did the builders memorialize, out of the two meridian passages of their circumpolar star, at 12-hour distances of time in occurrence from each other, only the lower, less visible, culmination of the two?” Neither had any one yet suggested scientifically, “What did any able astronomer, whether of the 372Pyramid or any other, day intend or mean, if time was his object, by observing the transit, whether above or below the Pole, of a close circumpolar star; and of that kind of star only?”

Why! such a star moves so slowly, by reason of the very small size of its daily circle in the sky, that the instant of its passing the meridian is difficult to observe and decide on even with modern telescopic power: and no observer in his senses, in any existing observatory, when seeking to obtain the time, would observe the transit of a circumpolar star for anything else than to get the direction of the meridian to adjust his instrument by. But having done that, he would next turn said instrument round in the vertical plane so ascertained towards the South, and observe there any quick-moving, nearly equatorial, star when crossing that part of the meridian. And then such astronomer would obtain the time with proper accuracy and eminent certainty.

Now to myself, who have been an astronomical transit observer for a great part of my life, it immediately occurred that the narrow entrance-passage of the Great Pyramid directed up northward, looked very like a meridian Polar pointer; while the grand gallery rising up southward at an opposite, and so far wrong, angle of altitude, but in the right meridian plane, and with its high walls scored with broad bands, looked amazingly like a reminder of the wide equatorial zone. This too it did, though not pointing to the angular height of the equator; nor indeed having any aperture in its truly southward direction for actual observing astronomy of any kind or at any altitude; but having all that quarter blocked out by 200 feet in thickness of solid masonry. Wherefore I then ventured to argue thus:—

The ancient architect’s reason why the 373entrance-passage points to the lower or less important culmination only, of its Northern Polar star, a Draconis, must be because another and more important star was, at the moment so defined, at its upper culmination; or was crossing the meridian above the Pole; and for chronological purposes, such more important star could be no other than a nearly equatorial one, South of the Zenith. Was there then, at either the earlier date 3440 B.C., or the later 2160 B.C. (at each of which dates, but at no other for 25,827 years, a Draconis was, when crossing the meridian each day below the Pole, Northward, equally at the entrance-passage's angle of height), was there any notable equatorial star in the exact southern vertical plane of direction of the Grand Gallery? (Not at the altitude angle of the said gallery in that plane; for such an altitude would imply a declination for the star 34° South of, or below, and distant from, the Equator, and very unfit for either time observation or time symbolization.)

Now here was a question put by the Pyramid's actual construction, and to be answered by astronomy alone; or without any of the Egyptologists, with all their learned lore of false gods and animal idolatry, being consulted.

The answer too might have come out, either that there was no signal equatorial star in such a position at either date; or there might have been such stars at both dates, and then no discrimination could have been effected. But the answer that did come out was, that no such star existed at the circumpolar star's lower transit of 3440 B.C., but that there was one most eminently and exactly in position at the 2160 B.C., or rather, as it turned out a little more exactly in my calculations, 2170 B.C., circumpolar transit; and that well-fitting and then very nearly equatorial star was Alcyone. (See Plates XXIII. and XXIV.)

The Pleiades Year.

Now Alcyone, or $\eta$ Tauri as the stricter astronomical observers choose at present to call it, is not a very large or bright star in itself, but then it is the centre of a group of stars more bound up with human history, hopes, and feelings than any other throughout the sky, viz. the Pleiades; and there have been traditions for long, whence arising I know not, that the seven overlappings of the grand gallery, so impressively described by Professor Greaves, had (though not pointing to them in altitude) something to do with the Pleiades, those proverbially seven stars of the primeval world, though already reduced to six (i.e. six visible to the ordinary naked eye), so early for certain as the time of the Latin poet Virgil; and probably, according to poetic tradition, as the siege and burning of Troy.

Here then is what those overlappings in the deeply built-in Grand Gallery had to do; viz. to symbolize, or remind of, the Pleiades in that early and still septennial day of their's, both on the celestial meridian and to the south (though not at their then actual and enormous altitude therein; viz. more than 60°, or vastly too much for any passage flooring to be ascended by visitors), and as part of the memorial, rather than observing, astronomy of the Great Pyramid; for the Pleiades evidently were de facto, the superior, high southern and equatorial, or time star to be taken in concert with the inferior transit of the low circumpolar $\alpha$ Draconis star on the opposite or northern side of the sky, and 12 Polar hours distant the Pleiades from. And how well they performed their part, as well as how capable they were of it, appeared from this further result of calculation, that when they, the Pleiades, crossed the meridian at midnight above the Pole, at 375the same instant that a Draconis was crossing below the Pole, and at the particular distance from the Pole indicated by the entrance-passage,—then in the autumn season of the Northern hemisphere of that one year (2170 B.C.), the meridian of the equinoctial point of the heavens, coincided with the Pleiades.⁴ That autumn night, therefore, of that particular year, was not only, in the primeval fashion, the beginning of that year,—but that year was, with the Pleiades to lead it out in that significant manner, the beginning of the first humanly noted example of a period of *the precession of the

To that usually, but in a manner incorrectly as to the best time of observation for it, called the vernal. And from inattention to this practical condition of stellar observation, some needless difficulties have arisen elsewhere in certain pre-historic studies of mankind.

Thus M. Thomas Brunton, of Paris,—finding by his otherwise most praiseworthy researches that it is the equinoctial point in the constellation of Taurus, which was generally referred to in primeval times, and which is now denominated “the Vernal Equinox” by the moderns (basing on the Alexandrian-Greek, or Pagan, Astronomy),—he at once declares that the beginning of the ancient year of mankind, and indeed the epoch of the creation of Adam, must have occurred in the springtime of the northern hemisphere. Whereby he, M. T. Brunton, fights against both much of ancient tradition, as well as the Bible itself; which describes that the evening and the morning, not the morning and evening, were the first day; therein leading to the idea of the sacred Biblical year beginning for the Northern hemisphere residence of the Patriarchs, with its evening or autumn, not its morning or spring.

But the Great Pyramid method of observing settles the whole difficulty. For in place of vainly trying, like the Greeks, to see what stars the sun was amongst, and whereabouts exactly, when the sun was amongst them and was extinguishing their light right and left of him through the whole breadth of the sky, by his brilliancy of daylight; the Great Pyramid Architect observed the anti-sun, or the point of the heavens opposite to the sun at midnight. Wherefore his time of the year for making his observations of those Taurus stars which the sun is amongst in spring, is evidently in the autumn. He observed them in the crucial position of the meridian cutting through the crossing of the invisible, but yet definable, equatorial circle, at midnight on the 21st of September: or in the autumn of the hemisphere of the earth containing the Great Pyramid, the Holy Land, and the whole of the countries wandered over by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 376equinoxes; a cycle destined not to repeat itself, in that manner, until 25,827 years shall have come and gone.

This peculiar celestial cycle, the grand chronological dial in fact of the Great Pyramid,—so much is its architecture found to base upon it, is further defined at that Pyramid, but at no other throughout all Egypt, by, amongst other intentional features, the length of the two diagonals of the base, which so eminently lay out its whole position; when their sum is reckoned up in inches, at the rate of a Pyramid inch to a year. For each diagonal, duly computed, gives 12,913.26 of those units; or the two, 25,827 nearly.

Further still, this feature is memorialized again at the King's Chamber's level of the Great Pyramid; for that chamber's floor being by measure 1,702 inches above the base of the whole building, Professor H. L. Smith has shown, that the circuit of the Pyramid at that level = 25,827 Pyramid inches. And if the whole vertical height of the Great Pyramid, 5,813 inches, typifies the sun-distance (See pp. 56, 57), the partial vertical height from the King's Chamber level upwards, 4,110, indicates the radius of the precessional circle of the equinoxes, in years.

During the very little portion of human history which is all that modern astronomy can claim to have flourished in, the following are some of the principal attempts of mankind to state the full length of this period of the precession of the equinoxes:—

No one whatever amongst men, from his own, or school, knowledge knew anything about such a phenomenon until Hipparchus, some 1,900 years after the 377Great Pyramid's foundation, had a glimpse of the fact; —and yet it had been ruling the heavens for ages, and was recorded by measure, and utilized too, in Jeezeh's ancient structure.

Virgil, 200 years later still than Hipparchus, just as might be expected of a poet, was greater in tradition than astronomical observation; and when he uses the phrase,⁵ that it is “the constellation of the white Bull with the golden horns which opens the year,” many of our own scientific commentators have wondered what Roman Virgil could mean, by claiming as a phenomenon for his own day, that which the precession of the equinoxes had caused to cease to be true 2,000 years before his time, and had, during his day, given to the next zodiacal constellation, Aries, instead.

No profane philosopher or academic observer of any country in the world is known to have lived at the epoch when that Virgilian phrase about Taurus was true. In fact, as recently well shown by M. Thomas Brunton, of Paris (who has proposed that the angular place of the equinoctial point in the zodiac, for the time being, shall form a general chronological system for all nations), the location or presence of the equinoctial point in Taurus was chiefly a feature of Antediluvian times. Thus it was in the front part of the constellation, the very tips of the horns, at the Biblical date of the Creation of Adam; and from thence it proceeded backwards through the zodiacal figure as yet drawn on our globes; so that at the date of the building of the Great Pyramid, the equinoctial point, though still in Taurus, was at that last part of the figure, just issuing out of a cloud, where the Pleiades stars appear.

Now hereupon, we may all well wonder how it came about that, according to the invaluable researches of Mr. R. G. Haliburton, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, that 378amongst the origines of almost all nations, and among many unaltered savage tribes still, such as Australians, Fijians, Mexicans, and many others (peoples never reached by the Greeks or Romans), a similar beginning of the year to that described by Virgil is still perpetuated; the Pleiades, or the star group chiefly characterizing for those nations the constellation of Taurus, being annually appealed to for the purpose; and in Australia, most strange to say, by precisely the Pyramid method, in so far that the natives there do begin their year on the night when "they see most of the Pleiades"; otherwise, when they continue to see them all the night through, from their rising at sunset to their setting at sunrise; and that must be when they, the Pleiades, cross the meridian at midnight.⁶

But, just as the Romans adhered to those stars in themselves alone, and saw not that they had left the fiducial and chronological test of coinciding with the meridian of the equinoctial point by two hours of the equator (equivalent to a month of error on the autumn equinox),—so the Australians adhere to them still, implicitly, not seeing that the same point is now more than three and a half of those hours (or 7 weeks behind the true autumnal day) removed from them; and also, that on account of the residual, or transverse, effect in declination, of 4,000 years of precession, the Pleiades stars, though so admirably seen by us in the north because they are now 24° above the Equator, no longer rise high and gloriously in those southern skies. But 379Wait, the header must be as printed: "CHAP. XVII.] TIME MEASURES. 379".

that, in itself, is a test, in so far, of when those peoples first received the Pleiades system of sidereal chronology to hold; a system grandly adapted for the longest, most difficult, national periods, and which is only found in all its completeness, as well as with testimony to the date of its beginning, and equal fitness then for all inhabited lands, both South and North of the Equator laid up in the Great Pyramid building. (See Plates XXIV. and XXV.)

Transcendentalisms of the Great Pyramid Astronomy.

Now the only source from whence one uniform system of sidereal chronology, and which, though endued with some change in respect to the seasons, yet alters so slowly year by year and generation after generation as to require 25,827 years before it passes through all the seasons,—the only source, I say, from whence it could have emanated in that early age of the world, and been impressed upon the origines of all races of mankind, is, was, and ever will be, Divine inspiration; and the Divine intention touching that mystery of God, the human race on earth.

But not by any means implying, that the terrestrial human race is the only object cared for by God, throughout all the sidereal universe. For had it been so, the stars might have been created for man's chronological purposes alone,—instead of man being taught, as in this case, to make the best practical use of pre-existent, pre-created means.

Here, accordingly, what we are called upon to note, may rather remind us of that which Josephus records of the descendants of Seth, viz. that no Creation miracles were wrought for them, but that they, though favoured with Divine assistance, had to study astronomy in the laws of the stars as they already existed. And on pushing our calculations to the extreme of modern 380science, we shall undoubtedly find that those stars were by no means in themselves absolutely perfect for this one end alone. But take them as they were 4,000 years ago, and after they had been already set in motion by the Divine power æons on æons of ages before the Pyramid day,—and you will find that they did, at that epoch, come quite near enough to form an excellent practical chronological system of the kind indicated; and no better mode of utilizing those actual phenomena of the starry sky, nor any better choice among the stars, ever has been imagined since then, in any country of the world.

Thus, to moderate observation (and with far greater accuracy than the annals of the profane history of mankind have been kept to), all these hereinafter-following features may be said, in ordinary terms, to obtain,—

1. The Great Pyramid is astronomically oriented in its sides; and its passages are in the plane of the meridian.

2. The entrance-passage, with its alt. angle of 26° 18′ nearly, points 3° 42′ vertically below the Northern Pole of the sky.

3. In the year 2170 B.C. α Draconis was 3° 42′ from the Pole of the sky, and therefore looked down the axis of the entrance-passage, when at its lower culmination.

4. When α Draconis was so looking down the entrance-passage in the North, then η Tauri, the chief star in the Pleiades group, was crossing the local terrestrial meridian, towards the South; in the vertical plane of direction of the Grand Gallery, but at a point high up in the sky, near the equator.

5. At the same moment of that year, 2170 B.C., the celestial meridian of the Vernal Equinox also coincided with that same η Tauri star, and gave

381it for the time an extraordinary, chronological, super-eminence over all others.

6. That whole stellar combination had not taken place for 25,827 years previously, and will not take place again for 25,827 years subsequently. It has not consequently repeated, or confused, itself yet in all the history of the human race; though the Sothiac cycle, the Phœnix cycle, and other chronological inventions of the profane Egyptian priests, men long after the Pyramid day, and supposed generally to have been the most learned of the ancients,—have done so again and again; to the lamentable confounding of dates in the old Pagan, and modern Egyptological, world too.

But if the calculations on which the above Pyramid results are founded, shall be pushed to much greater refinement, or to portions of space invisible to the naked eye,—it then appears that (1) the Pole-star, when it was 3° 42′ from the Pole, (2) the equatorial star opposite to it, and (3) the celestial meridian of the equinox, were not all of them on the Pyramid's meridian, below and above the Pole, precisely at the same instant, either in the year 2170 B.C., or in any other year.

But this difficulty is not by any means entirely dependent on the stars, in their places, not being as exact as if they had been created originally for no other than the above purpose; for there are hindrances also to modern astronomy, in precisely realising every single thing in number, weight, and measure, that has taken place in Nature during the last 4,000 years. Two astronomers, for instance, using the same data, may compute back the place of a given star 4,000 years ago from its present place, and they shall agree to a second in the result; but it does not therefore follow that the 382star was as precisely there at that time, as though a contemporary astronomer had observed it then; because proper motion, and variations of proper motion, may exist, quite unknown to the short period of surveillance over the stars yet enjoyed by modern astronomy. Some of the quantities, too, of the celestial mechanics concerned, such as the precise amount of the very precession of the equinoxes itself, and its accompanying phenomena of nutation and aberration, may have been erroneously assumed, and never can, or will, be ascertained perfectly by man. The accepted numerical values of such quantities do, in fact, vary at the same time between one astronomer and another (unless both were brought up in the same school, and then both may differ from truth), and also between one generation and another of astronomers in the same place.⁷

After, therefore, doing my best with the Pyramid star calculations, and publishing my result, together with a repetition of Sir John Herschel's, so far as it went, I advertised, after a manner, for help or criticism from other astronomers,—in the way of each of them computing the whole of the quantities with the data he now thinks best, and also with the data most approved in the astronomical world of his youth, as well as with the quantities thought correct at the end of the last century.

But none of them have ventured to expose to modern society the weaknesses of their favourite science, multiplied by 4,000 years; and I should have been left without anything whatever to show from any other modern 383Wait—the header as printed reads "CHAP. XVII.] TIME MEASURES. 383".

quarter, but for the kindness of Dr. Brünnow, (late) Astronomer-Royal for Ireland; who, kindly and without needing any second asking, performed the first part of my request: that is, with the quantities which he then, in 1871, thought should be adopted as correct, he most ably, and by special methods of astronomy which no one in all the world understands better than himself, computed the following numbers:—

We have now to deal with the last three dates. Of these three, the first two evidently include between them my own previous mean quantity of 2170 B.C.; but the third differs extravagantly. Nevertheless, the visible effect in the sky of that one apparently very large difference in absolute date, is merely this, according to Dr. Brünnow's computation; viz. that when η Tauri, or the Pleiades, were crossing the meridian above the Pole, at my Pyramid date of 2170 B.C., α Draconis was not doing the same thing, exactly beneath the Pole, at the same instant; for the star was then at the distance of 0° 17′ west of the meridian. But it would have been doing the same thing perfectly, according to an entrance-passage observation of it, if the northern end of that 384passage had been made, by the builders, to trend 17′ westward, still keeping to its observed angular height in the vertical plane; viz. 26° 18′.

Whereupon comes the question whether,—granting temporarily that Dr. Brünnow’s excellent calculations in modern astronomy replace everything that has happened in Nature during the last 4,000 years,—whether that 17′ of the Pole-star’s west distance from the meridian was a thing of moment;—and if so, is this the first occasion on which the divergence has been discovered?

Seventeen minutes of space, or less than the thousandth part of the azimuthal scale, is but a small quantity for any one to appreciate in all the round of the blue expanse, without instruments; and the first effort of Greek astronomy 1,800 years after the Pyramid was built, is reported to have been the discovery that the Pole-star of that day, then 6 degrees from the Pole, was not as they, the Greeks, had previously held, exactly on the Pole.

Greek and other profane nations, then, had been in the habit of overlooking, long, long after the epoch of the Pyramid, an error twenty times as great as this which is now charged on the Great Pyramid astronomy, by the present day science of precision, which has been at last elaborated amongst men after a further consumption of 4,000 valuable years.

And yet it was not all error either, on the part of the Great Pyramid. For here we should take account of the results of my observations in 1865, when I succeeded in comparing the directions of both the outside of the Pyramid, the internal axis of the entrance-passage, and the axis of the azimuth trenches⁸ separately and successively with the Polar star. These observations were made with a powerful altitude-azimuth instrument, reading off its angles with 385micrometermicroscopes to tenths of seconds; and the conclusions from them were, that everything at the Great Pyramid trended, at its, north end towards the west,—the azimuth trenches by 19 minutes, the socket-sides of the base by 5 minutes, and the axis of the entrance-passage by more nearly 4 minutes and a half.

What could all these features have been laid out for with this slight tendency to west of north? was a question which I frequently pondered over at the Great Pyramid, and sometimes even accused the earth's surface of having shifted with respect to its axis of rotation during 4,000 years. But now the true explanation would appear to be, that the Seth-descended architect, knowing perfectly well the want of exactly the 12 hours, or 50 inch, correspondence between his Polar and Equatorial stars (though they were the best in the sky), had so adjusted in a minute degree the position of the Great Pyramid when building it, as to reduce any error in his Pleiades system of chronology, arising out of the stellar discrepance, to a minimum. Whence the fact of the western divergence of the north pointing of the entrance-passage, as detected by the modern astronomy observations in 1865, combined with the computation in 1871, —becomes the most convincing practical proof of intention, and not accident, having guided all these time arrangements at the Great Pyramid.

Further still too I may perhaps be allowed to mention in this Edition, that on discussing recently with some of the astronomers who were sent to Egypt in December, 1874, to observe the Transit of Venus (as a stepping-stone towards attaining a knowledge of the sun-distance),—the palm of merit for the best time observations seemed to be unanimously accorded to those of them who had adopted a new method of using their transit instruments, recently elaborated by M. Otto Struve, of the Central Russian Observatory; and which consisted in 386observing, not exactly in the plane of the meridian (as usually done or tried to be done), but in the vertical of the Pole-star at the instant;—or, as nearly as possible, on the very method of ultra-refinement adopted at the ancient Great Pyramid. Hence the object of this chapter is now fully obtained; for not only does the ancient monument fix an absolute date for itself, viz. something very close to 2170 B.C., which all the profane monuments were confessed to be incapable of even approximately attempting, but it does so by methods unknown of old elsewhere, and only recently begun to be appreciated in the best European astronomy.

APPENDIX IN 1879.

In the Contemporary Review of September in the present year, has appeared an Article entitled, “The Problem of the Great Pyramid,” by that unceasing writer in scientific periodicals, Mr. R. A. Proctor, B.A., Cambridge. It touches on the subject of the present chapter, and, I am told, calls for remark.

Mr. Proctor cannot deny the measures, observations, star conclusions and general astronomy here just set forth; but he is anxious to take up with the Egyptologists in their long dates, wherefore he endeavours to show that the Pyramid’s entrance passage must have memorialized the earlier of the two appulses of the α Draconis Pole-star; viz. that of 3300 B.C., and not that of 2170 B.C.

To this end he is content to lose, abolish, or be blind to, all the invaluable Pleiades traditions of the early families of mankind; all the unique astronomical perfections of the Equinoctial coincidence with the Pleiades in 2170 B.C., as well as their nearly Equatorial place then;—and makes everything hinge upon one other star without any traditional memorial, with a fabulous 387Greek natural-history name (a Centauri); far from the Equinoctial Meridian, and unsuitable for time work, being 34° away from the Equator, and in the very low-altitude direction of the Grand Gallery, which is further impenetrably sealed towards the South by 200 feet in thickness of solid masonry.

For the removal of this remarkable difficulty, Mr. Proctor invents a scheme of a temporary observing having been carried out, when the Great Pyramid might have been less than half built. But as that would not be very useful in scientific astronomy, he borrows an astrological excuse from the mediæval Constantinopolitan, Proclus (480 A.D.); he, a mystical philosopher of that day, who knew in reality nothing of the Great Pyramid and its very ancient builders; but, while following in the steps of the Emperor Julian the Apostate, against Christianity, perverted, paganised, and diabolised whatever he touched. Under this sorry and dangerous leader then, Mr. Proctor declares in London, with the most astounding improbability in the history of the human mind, that King Cheops of the Great Pyramid must have been an astrologer; and observed stars in the once half-finished Grand Gallery there, when it was still open to the South, in order to compute the horoscope of his own life, in the dark, mediæval manner that was coming into fashion in the corrupt society of Byzantine cities in Proclus' own day, and on his peculiar pattern.⁹

So hollow and far-fetched a scheme for making the 388Great Pyramid lengthen out its dates from 2170 to 3300 B.C., really needs no answer: though I am happy to point out that its author does one good thing towards the end of his essay, on his own sound knowledge of modern practical astronomy and its methods of calculation.

This good thing is, that he computes the date for the Pleiades stars being in the position described in No. 4 of Dr. Brünnow's list (p. 383); and says that he finds it, not 2248 B.C., but more nearly 2140 B.C. To which I can only say for the reasons pointed out on pp. 381, 382, very probably.