t out
around the interior of the other sides at the same height. Should we
measure on this western side from this actual ledge brim, or from the
imaginary higher brim? If reckoned as the true brim, "this ledge"
(according to Professor Smyth) would "take away near 4000 inches from
the cubic capacity of the vessel." Besides, he found three holes cut on
the top of the coffer's lowered western side, as in all the other
Egyptian sarcophagi, where these holes are used along with the ledge and
grooves to admit, and form a simple mechanism to lock the lids of such
stone chests.[249] In other words, it presents the usual ledge and
apparatus pertaining to Egyptian stone sarcophagi, and served as such.

* * * * *

(7.) _Sepulchral contents of Coffer when first discovered._--When, about
a thousand years ago, the Caliph Al Mamoon tunnelled into the interior
of the pyramid, he detected by the accidental falling, it is said, of a
granite portcullis, the passage to the King's Chamber, shut up from the
building of the pyramid to that time. "Then" (to quote the words of
Professor Smyth) "the treasures of the pyramid, sealed up almost from
the days of Noah, and undesecrated by mortal eye for 3000 years, lay
full in their grasp before them." On this occasion, to quote the words
of Ibn Abd Al Hakm or Hokm--a contemporary Arabian writer, and a
historian of high authority,[250] who was born, lived, and died in
Egypt--they found in the pyramid, "towards the top, a chamber [now the
so-called King's Chamber] with an hollow stone [or coffer] in which
there was a statue [of stone] like a man, and within it a man upon whom
was a breastplate of gold set with jewels; upon this breastplate was a
sword of inestimable price, and at his head a carbuncle of the bigness
of an egg, shining like the light of the day; and upon him were
characters writ with a pen,[251] which no man understood"[252]--a
description stating, down to the so-called "statue," mummy-case, or
cartonage, and the hieroglyphics upon the cere-cloth, the arrangements
now well known to belong to the higher class of Egyptian mummies.

In short (to quote the words of Professor Smyth), "that wonder within a
wonder of the Great Pyramid--viz., the porphyry coffer,"--that "chief
mystery and boon to the human race which the Great Pyramid was built to
enshrine,"--"this vessel of exquisite meaning," and of "far-reaching
characteristics,"--mathematically formed under