The great pyramid passages and chambers
base.’ It is to John Taylor that the credit of this discovery is due.
19 The Great Pyramid unit of measure. Asa result of painstaking investigation, Professor C. Piazzi Smyth ascertained that the unit of measure employed by the builders of the Great Pyramid, was a cubit which was exactly equal to 25-025 British inches, and was divided into five parts, and each of these into five smaller parts, named by Professor Smyth, Pyramid inches. Thus there are 25 Pyramid inches in a Pyramid cubit, and one Pyramid inch equals 1-001 British inch, or 999 Pyramid inches equal 1000 British inches. Sir Isaac Newton, in his Dissertation on Cubits, claimed that the sacred cubit of the Israelites approximately equalled 25 British inches, while the Egyptian cubit measured 20°68, and the Greek and Roman cubit 18°24, British inches.
20 The relation of the Pyramid inch and cubit to the earth’s axis of rotation. The earth’s axis of rotation, or distance through the earth from the North Pole to the South Pole, is approximately 7900 miles, or 500,500,000 inches by British measure. As 1 Pyramid inch equals 1:001 British inch, and the Pyramid cubit contains 25 Pyramid inches, it follows that the earth’s axis of rotation measures five hundred million Pyramid inches, or twenty million Pyramid cubits, and the semi-axis of rotation, the distance from either Pole to the centre of the earth, measures two hundred and fifty million Pyramid inches, or ten million Pyramid cubits. Accordingly, Professor Smyth argued that the unit of measure employed in the design of the Great Pyramid was deduced from the earth’s semi-axis of rotation. The French metre was deduced from the measurement of the earth’s curved surface from the North Pole to the Equator. It was supposed to be the ten millionth part of this measurement, though, owing to an error in the calculation, it is not really so. Professor Smyth contended that the French method of basing their unit of measure on the curved line from Pole to Equator, is not so scientifically true as that employed by the builders of the Great Pyramid, which was based upon the straight line of half the earth’s polar axis.
21 The measurement of the day and year in the Great Pyramid. Having seen that the Pyramid unit of measure, the cubit, was deduced from the earth’s axis of rotation, it is not surprising to find it employed to symbolize a day, the period of the earth’s revolution round its axis; nor to find the breadth of the Pyramid between the corner sockets employed to symbolize a solar year, the exact period of the earth's revolution round the sun. Both the day and the year are thus recorded in the Great Pyramid, for, on calculating the length of the four sides of the Pyramid’s square base, Professor Smyth found that they each measured 365:242 Pyramid cubits, or as many cubits exactly as there are days in a solar year to the fraction. Thus, the four sides measure as many cubits as there are days in four years including the leap year. Another method of representing the fact that the Great Pyramid records the exact length of the solar year is to consider its top-stone as the sun ; and then measure round the square base by lengths of four cubits (100 Pyramid inches). The total length of the base thus ascertained is 365:242 ; it thus represents the annual revolution of the earth round the sun at the rate of exactly four cubits per day.
22 The mean distance of the earth from the sun. William Petrie, the father of Professor Flinders Petrie, reflecting on the fact just stated, connected it with John Taylor's discovery that the vertical height of the Great Pyramid was the length of the radius of a circle, the circumference of which equalled the total measurement of the
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