l occupying precisely the position of the
tunnel which should, according to this view, have been formed in order
accurately to orient the pyramid's base, assuming that the time of the
building of the pyramid corresponded with one of the epochs when the
star Alpha Draconis was distant 3 deg. 42' from the pole of the heavens.
In other words, there is a slant tunnel directed northwards and upwards
from a point deep down below the middle of the pyramid's base, and
inclined 26 deg. 17' to the horizon, the elevation of Alpha Draconis at
its lower culmination when 3 deg. 42' from the pole. The last epoch when
the star was thus placed was _circiter_ 2160 B.C.; the epoch next before
that was 3440 B.C. Between these two we should have to choose, on the
hypothesis that the slant tunnel was really directed to that star when
the foundations of the pyramid were laid. For the next epoch before the
earlier of the two named was about 28,000 B.C., and the pyramid's date
cannot have been more remote than 4000 B.C.

The slant tunnel, while admirably fulfilling the requirements suggested,
seems altogether unsuited for any other. Its transverse height (that is,
its width in a direction perpendicular to its upper and lower faces) did
not amount to quite four feet; its breadth was not quite three feet and
a half. It was, therefore, not well fitted for an entrance passage to
the subterranean chamber immediately under the apex of the pyramid (with
which chamber it communicates in the manner suggested by the above
theory). It could not have been intended to be used for observing
meridian transits of the stars in order to determine sidereal time; for
close circumpolar stars, by reason of their slow motion, are the least
suited of all for such a purpose. As Professor Smyth says, in arguing
against this suggested use of the star, '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_.' (The italics
are his.) It is precisely such a purpose (the adjustment, however, not
of an instrument, but of the entire structure of the pyramid itself),
that I have suggested for this remarkable passage--this 'cream-white,
stone-lined, long tube,' where it traverses the masonry of the pyramid,
and below that dug through the solid rock to a distance of more than 350
feet.

Let us next consider the