The great pyramid passages and chambers

11 Of all the pyramids the one which pre-eminently attracts the attention of tourists as well as of pyramid students, is that which by common consent has been named the Great Pyramid, or simply The Pyramid. This is partly because of its superior size, but chiefly because of the extraordinary skill of workmanship which it displays.

12 Location of the Great Pyramid. It is one of a group of nine, known as the nine pyramids of Gizeh, erected on a rocky plateau about ten miles to the west of the modern city of Cairo. The Great Pyramid is the most northern of the group, and is situated near the cliff which forms the edge of the plateau—Plate II. A short distance directly south-west from it is the Second Pyramid, which, though smaller, appears from some view-points, because its foundation is higher, as if it were larger than the Great Pyramid. Still further to the south-west is the Third Pyramid, which is much smaller than the other two. The remaining six are in two groups of three, one to the south of the Third Pyramid, and the other to the east of the Great Pyramid. These are comparatively very small and are in ruins. To the south-east of the Great Pyramid lies the Sphinx, carved out of the rock, and with its gaze directed towards the rising sun.

13 Professor C. Piazzi Smyth first drew attention to the fact that the Great Pyramid is exactly oriented, that is to say, its four sides are directed to the four cardinal points of the compass ; and he pointed out further that when the vertical plane of the Pyramid passages is produced northwards, it passes along the central axis of the Delta region; while the north-east and the north-west diagonals of the building similarly produced, enclose the Delta “in a symmetrical and well-balanced manner'’—Plate III. In 1868, Mr. Mitchell, chief hydrographer to the United States Coast Survey, was struck with the regularity of the general convex curvature of the northern coast of the Delta. Taking a good map and a pair of compasses, he tried various lengths and directions of radius till “he had got all the prominent coast points to be evenly swept by his arc; and then looking to see where his southern centre was, found it upon the Great Pyramid.’’ Commenting upon this, Professor Smyth writes :—‘‘ Now Lower Egypt being as already described, of a sector, still more exactly than of a Delta, shape, it must have its centre, not like a circle in the middle of its surface, but at one extreme corner thereof. Whereupon Mr. Mitchell has acutely remarked that the building which stands at, or just raised above, such a sectorial centre, must be at one and the same time both at the border thereof, and yet at its quasi, or practically governing, middle. That is to say, just as was to be that grandly honoured prophetic monument, pure and undefiled in its religious bearing, though in the idolatrous Egyptian land, alluded to by Isaiah (ch. xix); for was it not fore-ordained by the Divine Word to be both ‘an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar' at the border thereof,’—an apparent mechanical impossibility, yet realized in the sectorial centre condition of the Great Pyramid.”

14 Of several other geographical peculiarities possessed by the site of the Great Pyramid, mention may be made of the fact that there is more land surface in both its meridian and its latitude than in any other meridian and latitude; while its nether meridian, the longitude continuous with it on the other side of the globe, ranges its whole length through water except for a short distance near Behring’s frozen straits —Plate IV. For this reason, Professor C. Piazzi Smyth claimed that the meridian of the

'The Hebrew word translated ‘pillar" in Isa. 19:19 is Matsebhah, and signifies anything set up

or erected to commemorate something remarkable.

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