part
of the earth's polar diameter, and that the side of the base contained
as many cubits and parts of a cubit as there are days and parts of a day
in the tropical year (or year of seasons), requires that the length of
the side should be 9140 inches, lying between the limits indicated, but
still so widely removed from either that it would appear very unsafe to
base a theory on the supposition that the exact length is or was 9140
inches. If the measures 9168 inches and 9110 inches were inferior, and
several excellent measures made by practised observers ranged around the
length 9140 inches, the case would be different. But the best recent
measures gave respectively 9110 and 9130 inches; and Smyth exclaims
against the unfairness of Sir H. James in taking 9120 as 'therefore the
[probable] true length of the side of the great pyramid when perfect,'
calling this 'a dishonourable shelving of the honourable older observers
with their larger results.' The only other measures, besides these two,
are two by Colonel Howard Vyse and by the French _savants_, giving
respectively 9168 and 9163.44 inches. The pyramidalists consider 9140
inches a fair mean value from these four. The natural inference,
however, is, that the pyramid base is not now in a condition to be
satisfactorily measured; and assuredly no such reliance can be placed
on the mean value 9140 inches that, on the strength of it, we should
believe what otherwise would be utterly incredible, viz. that the
builders of the great pyramid knew 'both the size and shape of the earth
exactly.' 'Humanly, or by human science, finding it out in that age was,
of course, utterly impossible,' says Professor Smyth. But he is so
confident of the average value derived from widely conflicting base
measures as to assume that this value, not being humanly discoverable,
was of necessity 'attributable to God and to His Divine inspiration.' We
may agree, in fine, with Smyth, that the builders of the pyramid knew
the earth to be a globe; that they took for their measure of length the
sacred cubit, which, by their earth measures, they made very fairly
approximate to the 20,000,000th part of the earth's mean diameter; but
there seems no reason whatever for supposing (even if the supposition
were not antecedently of its very nature inadmissible) that they knew
anything about the compression of the earth, or that they had measured a
degree of latitude in their own place with very wonderful accuracy.[