hat the
architects would have made a circuit of the base correspond in length
with the number of days in the year--a relation which, according to
Prof. P. Smyth, is fulfilled in this manner, that the four sides contain
one hundred times as many pyramid inches as there are days in the year.
The pyramid inch, again, is itself mystically connected with
astronomical relations, for its length is equal to the five hundred
millionth part of the earth's diameter, to a degree of exactness
corresponding well with what we might expect Chaldaean astronomers to
attain. Prof. Smyth, indeed, believes that it was exactly equal to that
proportion of the earth's polar diameter--a view which would correspond
with his theory that the architects of the Great Pyramid were assisted
by divine inspiration; but what is certainly known about the sacred
cubit, which contained twenty-five of these inches, corresponds better
with the diameter which the Chaldaean astronomers, if they worked very
carefully, would have deduced from observations made in their own
country, on the supposition which they would naturally have made that
the earth is a perfect globe, not compressed at the poles. It is not
indeed at all certain that the sacred cubit bore any reference to the
earth's dimensions; but this seems tolerably well made out--that the
sacred cubit was about 25 inches in length, and that the circuit of the
pyramid's base contained a hundred inches for every day of the year.
Relations such as these are precisely what we might expect to find in
buildings having an astrological significance. Similarly, it would
correspond well with the mysticism of astrology that the pyramid should
be so proportioned as to make the height be the radius of a circle whose
circumference would equal the circuit of the pyramid's base. Again, that
long slant tunnel, leading downwards from the pyramid's northern face,
would at once find a meaning in this astrological theory. The slant
tunnel pointed to the pole-star of Cheops' time, when due north below
the true pole of the heavens. This circumstance had no observational
utility. It could afford no indication of time, because a pole-star
moves very slowly, and the pole-star of Cheops' day must have been in
view through that tunnel for more than an hour at a time. But, apart
from the mystical significance which an astrologer would attribute to
such a relation, it may be shown that this slant tunnel is precisely
what the astrologer